Introduction

At Richmond AID we collect and use your personal information to help solve your problems, improve our services and tackle wider issues that impact on the lives of disabled people.

We only ask for the information we need. We always let you decide what you’re comfortable telling us, explain why we need it and treat it as confidential. We handle and store your personal information in line with the law.

When we record and use your personal information we:

  • Only access it when we have a good reason
  • Only share what is necessary and relevant
  • Don’t sell it to anyone

Privacy Notice

Our Privacy Notice sets out how Richmond AID uses and protects personal information, i.e. any information provided to the charity that can be used to identify an individual. This Privacy Notice has been revised in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) implemented on 25th May 2018. This Privacy Notice may be revised so please check for updates. The version date and version number are at the end of the document.

You may give us personal information through any form of communication with members of our staff or volunteers or through our website. This may be as a result of face-to-face meetings, attending an event organised by us, sending us letters or emails, contacting us by telephone or using our website. You may be communicating with us in order to make enquiries about our services, use our services, give us a donation, apply for or undertake a role as a volunteer or member of staff or become a member of the charity.

Richmond AID is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified, then you can be assured that it will only be recorded and used in accordance with this privacy notice. We will always respect your rights and choices.

The information in this notice is provided in the following sections:

  • Who we are
  • What information we collect about you
  • What we do with the information you have given us
  • Sharing your information
  • Legal disclosure
  • Legal basis for processing personal information
  • Your rights
  • How long we hold your information for
  • How we will keep your information secure
  • Social media
  • Analytics
  • How we use website cookies

Who we are

Richmond AID is a registered charity (No: 1074788) run by and for disabled people in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and surrounding areas. We support people of all ages with all disabilities, including physical and sensory impairments, mental health issues and learning difficulties. Our aim is to support disabled people to live independent lives and to have the same opportunities as non-disabled people. Richmond AID is also a Company Limited by Guarantee, registered in England No: 3612476.

Richmond AID both controls and processes personal data. We are a “data controller” for the purposes of GDPR. This means we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

What information we collect about you

Personal information is any information that can be used to identify you.  We may collect the following information:

  • Name and date of birth
  • Contact information including telephone number, postal and email addresses
  • Information about which services you may be interested in using or finding out about
  • Information in connection with an application for employment or as a volunteer such as previous roles and employers, national insurance numbers and tax codes
  • Debit or credit card details in order to pay us for a service or make a donation
  • Computer IP address, and
  • Any other personal information you may share with us in order to make best use of our services, apply for a role as a volunteer or member of staff, work for us or give us a donation.

Sensitive Personal Information

Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive. Sensitive Personal Information can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Information by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

You may decide you want to remain anonymous, if so please let us know and we will record your contact anonymously.

We will only use this information:

  • For the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, training, and quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.
  • We will not pass on your details to anyone else without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others or children contacting us and sharing serious issues such as physical abuse or exploitation.
  • Where you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us that you are happy for us to share your story, then we may publish it on our Website or in other media.

Children’s Information

We may require signed consent from parents and guardians for young people under the age of 18 that use our services, except in event of a safeguarding or similar issue when there may be a need for confidentiality.

What we do with the information you have given to us

We require this information to understand your needs and provide services to you, or alternatively to offer volunteering and employment roles.

For all of any of these purposes we may require personal information to:

  • Provide the services that you have requested
  • Keep a record of your relationship with us
  • Keep internal records including records required by law, regulations or contracts or for other administration purposes
  • Update you with important information about our services
  • Working or volunteering arrangements
  • Process your donations or other payments, to claim gift aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.

We may also contact you to:

  • Obtain feedback or for research purposes to improve our products and services
  • Tell you about our work and how you can support richmond aid
  • Invite you to participate in events, surveys or research

When we use your information without permission

In most cases, we’ll get your permission to collect, use, store and share your information. At times we might use or share your information without your permission.

If we do, we’ll always make sure there’s a legal basis for it. This could include situations where we have to use or share your information:

  • To comply with the law, called ‘legal obligation’ – for example, if a court orders us to share information
  • To protect someone’s life, called ‘vital interests’ – for example, sharing information with a paramedic if a client was unwell at our office
  • To carry out our aims and goals as an organisation, called ‘legitimate interests’ – for example, to create anonymous case studies and statistics for our national research
  • For us to carry out a task in the public interest or for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law, called ‘public task’ – for example the Consumer Service
  • To carry out a contract we have with you, called ‘contract’ – for example, if you’re an employee we might need to store your bank details so we can pay you
  • To defend our legal rights – for example, to resolve a complaint that we gave the wrong advice

For a list of the definitions of each legal basis, see page 5.

Marketing

You can update your choices or ask us to stop sending you these communications at any time by contacting emailing [email protected] or clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication or make a request in writing to Marketing, Richmond AID, Disability Action and Advice Centre, 4 Waldegrave Road, Teddington, TW11 8HT.

Applying for a job with us

Our purpose for processing this information is to assess your suitability for a role you have applied for. We ask you for your personal details including name and contact details. We’ll also ask you about previous experience, education, referees and for answers to questions relevant to the role. Our recruitment team will have access to all this information.

We may ask you to attend an interview, complete a test or do a presentation task; or a combination of these. Information will be generated by you and by us. For example, you might complete a written test or we might take interview notes. This information is held by us.

If we make a conditional offer of employment, we’ll ask you for information so that we can carry out pre-employment checks. You must successfully complete pre-employment checks to progress to a final offer. We must confirm the identity of our staff and their right to work in the United Kingdom, and seek assurance as to their trustworthiness, integrity and reliability.

If you start a role with us we will need proof of your identity, your bank details to process salary payments, emergency contact details, pension scheme membership details and we will carry out a Criminal Records Check. We will share relevant information with our payroll company, pension provider, accountants and Disclosure and Barring Services.

Volunteers

We may hold your application on file. If we agree you can volunteer with us, we will need to check you references and we will store your contact details in our database.

Sharing your Information

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) at Richmond AID so that they can support you.

We will never sell or share your personal information to organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.

We use data processors who are third parties who provide elements of services for us. We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. They will not share your personal information with any organisation apart from us. They will hold it securely and retain it for the period we instruct.

We input your data into a database, supported by a third party company. We use a payroll company for our payroll services. We have contracts in place to ensure that they operate satisfactory security procedures.

We may share your information with a variety of third parties depending on the service you are receiving from us. We share your data on different legal bases. For example, with your explicit consent e.g. when you are receiving our advice services and we are liaising with third parties on your behalf or due to contract compliance e.g. anonymised client data to commissioners.

Legal disclosure

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority).

Legal basis for processing personal information

The law requires us to set out the lawful grounds on which we collect and process your personal information as described in this notice.  Depending on the purposes for which we use your data, one of the following grounds may be relevant:

  • Consent. In many instances, we will rely on obtaining your consent to our use of your personal information in a certain way.
  • Legitimate interest. In certain instances, we may conclude that in order to pursue our aims as a charity it is in the interest of the charity to contact you or report information to a third party. This will typically be where we wish to provide information about new services, events, engage your support, or promote roles within the charity.
  • Legal requirement. We need to collect, process and report personal information in order to comply with a legal obligation such as those relating to employment or for the purposes of claiming gift aid on a donation.
  • Performance of contract. We may need to process your information in relation to a contract for funding our services of which you are a user and for employment purposes.

Your rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint please contact [email protected] or call 020 3393 7011 or in writing to Richmond AID, Disability Action and Advice Centre, 4 Waldegrave Road, Teddington, TW11 8HT. For more details on making a complaint please see https://richmondaid.org.uk/complaints-procedure/

  • Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge.
  • Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.  Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.
  • Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
  • Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
  • Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
  • Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
  • Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.

How long we hold your information for

We keep your personal information only for as long as we need to use it for the purposes set out in this notice. This may be governed by statutory rules on retention of records e.g. financial records, including donation records, will be kept for a minimum of seven years.

Personal information that we no longer need is securely disposed of and/or anonymised so that you can no longer be identified by it.

How we will keep your information secure

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

Social media

If you send us a private or direct message via social media it will not be shared with any other organisations. We see all this information and decide how we manage it. For example, if you send a message via social media that needs a response from us, we may process it in our case management system as an enquiry or complaint.

Analytics

When you visit richmondaid.org.uk, we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out such things as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do collect personal data through our website, we’ll be upfront about this. We’ll make it clear when we collect personal information and we’ll explain what we intend to do with it.

How we use website cookies

Cookies are small files, usually of letters and numbers, which are downloaded onto your device when you visit a website. They let websites recognise your device, so that the sites can work more effectively, and also gather information about how you use the site. A cookie, by itself, can’t be used to identify you.

They have a number of uses: to make the website work properly for you, to help you navigate the site and to enable us to monitor how our website is being used.