Privacy Policy

In a nutshell
CCS takes the safeguarding of your privacy and information very seriously and this policy explains how we collect, use, and dispose of your information, the conditions under which we disclose it and how we keep it secure.

Who is CCS?

The Community Council for Somerset (CCS) is a Charitable Company Limited by Guarantee, No. 3541219 and a Registered Charity No.1069260, established in 1926. CCS is a member of the Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) Network. ACRE is our national body and there are 38 county-based independent network members.

How do we collect information about you?

We have the following ways to collect information about you:

  • Contact-us form
  • E-newsletter sign-up form
  • Collected in person or via membership forms by CCS employees
  • Anonymous cookie information online
  • Event, training, or workshop forms
  • Job applications
  • Telephone enquiry
  • Email enquiry
  • By filling out our contact form, or e-newsletter sign up, we will collect the following data:
  • Your name
  • Your contact information; email addresses
  • Organisation name if applicable

We may collect additional information with written consent if you become a client/customer in receipt of one of our projects or services. This additional information can include sensitive data:

  • Address
  • Telephone number(s)
  • Equal opportunities information
  • Health information
  • Action plans

This information is securely stored and accessed via our cloud/web-based CRM Data Base.

Legal basis for processing

CCS collects your data and relies on legitimate interest and consent as some clients are required to complete a referral form depending on how we are supporting, working and delivering our work.

How we collect your data physically or verbally

We collect consented sign up via our Community Buildings membership form, newsletters, client referral forms and event sign-in sheets. We capture consent to provide information, services, share information and advice that is relevant. We may take verbal consent, but this is captured via our database to reflect the contact was by phone, face-to-face and if consent was taken.

How we collect your data Online
We may process data about your use of our website and services (“usage data”). The usage data may include your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation paths, as well as information about the timing, frequency and pattern of your service use. The source of the usage data is our analytics tracking system. This usage data may be processed for the purposes of analysing the use of the website and service. The legal basis for this processing is our legitimate interests, namely monitoring and improving our website.

How your information is used
We may use your data for the following reasons:

  • To respond to your request
  • To provide contracted services
  • Internal records: accounts / insurance documents
  • Improvement of our products/services
  • Reporting to our funders – no personal data is shared unless consented.

In addition, with your consent, we will also:

  • Send by email news, events and promotional materials that may be of interest of you if you sign up to our Thatch Bulletin, Carers, Community Buildings Newsletter.
  • Members received a bespoke E-Newsletter and Bulletins that support their type of membership – the contacts that are supplied have consented via our membership form.
  • We review our retention periods on a regular basis, but we are legally required to hold some information to fulfil statutory obligations. We will hold your information for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Third party service providers

  • We will not sell or share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
  • We may pass your information to our third-party service providers, subcontractors, and other associated parties for the purposes of completing tasks on our behalf.
  • When we use third-party providers, we disclose only the information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes.
  • We employ the services of other trusted parties for dealing with certain processes necessary for our operations for collating e-newsletter responses and for online payments.
  • We use a secure Cloud-based CRMs and accounts system for managing our customer details and service records.

Children’s Privacy
We seek parental consent for the collection of Personal Information about children in delivering our projects and services or through the CCS website and are committed to protecting the privacy of online visitors under the age of 16.

Children online
Parents should supervise the online activities of their children, and consider the use of tools available from online services and software providers that help provide child-friendly Internet environments.

Your rights
At any time, you have the right to request and view your personal data held by CCS. Your rights also include:
• The right to be informed
• The right of access
• The right to rectification
• The right to removal of information
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you; provision of such information will be subject to the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity. You may instruct us at any time not to process your personal information for marketing purposes. Please contact us at info@somersetrcc.org.uk or call 01823 331222 if you would like to exercise any of the above rights. We will provide a response with 30 days.

See the CCS Individual Rights Policywww.ccslovesomerset.org/ccs-policies

You also have the choice to unsubscribe from any direct marketing that we send you. This feature is included in all e-marketing campaigns. If you are having problems unsubscribing, please contact us. We will promptly take action to ensure you are “opted-out” from receiving further mailings. Although we will remove your name from our e-newsletter mail list as quickly as possible, please recognise that there may be a period of time after you unsubscribe during which you may still receive e-mails from us.

If you have a concern about how we have handled your information you can report this to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

Updating information and contact details
Please let us know if the personal information that we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated. CCS controls its website content and information can be changed easily.

Security precautions

Data security is of great importance to CCS and to protect your data we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure data collected via our employees or volunteers.

  • CCS Data Security
  • Cyber Essentials Accredited

Websites

CCS has achieved Cyber Essentials Scheme accreditation. The Certificate certifies that this organisation was assessed as meeting they Cyber Essentials implementation profile [BIS/14/696/1.5] and thus that, at the time of testing, the organisation’s ICT defences were assessed as satisfactory against commodity based cyber-attack. However, this does not in any way guarantee that the organisation’s defences will remain satisfactory against future cyber-attack.

View our Cyber Essentials Certificate here

CCS is registered as a data controller with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) our data protection registration number is Z3356691. If you have any questions regarding the CCS, Somerset Carers or Village Agents websites or the data we may hold please contact CCS info@somersetrcc.org.uk or call 01823 331222 to make a Subject Access Request.

Disclaimer

This policy is intended as guidance for management and employees.
It does not confer any contractual rights on individuals