Privacy Policy
Your privacy is essential to us as an organisation. This policy serves as one of the ways in which we can demonstrate our engagement to ensuring that your personal information is safeguarded and kept confidential at all times.
Our Privacy statement defines how we gather, use and store your personal data (this means any information that identifies or could potentially identify you).
We are committed to treating you with respect and openness at all times.
1. Who we are
2. How we collect information from/about you
3. Information we collect and why we use it
4. Legal basis for using your information
5. Marketing
6. Sharing your Information
7. General Principles for the Processing of Personal Data
8. Keeping your information safe
9. Rention Period
10. Your rights
11. Cookies
12. Variation to this policy
1. Who we are
Our charity is Arbours Association Ltd (company number 01038983 and registered charity no. 263608 in England).
We are registered with the ICO ( Information Commissioner’s Office) as a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (“Data Protection Law”). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal data
Our Registration Number with the ICO is Z7015123
For further information about our privacy practices, please contact our General Manager by:
Writing to Arbours Association Ltd, 6 Church Lane, Hornsey, London, N8 7BU
Calling us on 020 8340 7646
Emailing to info@arboursassociation.org
2. How we collect information from/about you
One of our main objectives is to assist anyone experiencing a mental health difficulty/emotional distress to get support and respect whilst protecting their dignity. Our aim is to ensure that you receive the communications that are most relevant, beneficial and significant to you, be it through visiting our website or receiving emails, posts or phone calls. We want to make sure you receive the best attention/service when you make an enquiry to us or register your interest in our services.
We collect information from you in the following ways:
When you liaise with us directly: This could be if you ask us about our activities/services, make a donation to us, ask a question about our work practices/code of ethics, apply for volunteering/placement opportunity or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you phone us, visit our website or get in touch through the post, or in person.
When you interact with us through third parties and partners: This could be if you apply/enquire for a job vacancy at Arbours through a third party such as ‘Guardian Job’ or one of the other third parties that we work with and provide your consent for your personal/confidential information to be shared with us.
When you visit our website: We collate general information which might include which webpages you visit more frequently and which services or information is of most interest to you.
We use “cookies” to help our site run effectively. For more information, please see section ‘Cookies’.
*We may also obtain personal information by email, phone or mail from other sources such as mental health organisations, medical professionals, health and social workers, advocates, family members, relatives & friends etc
3. Information we collect and why we use it
Personal Information
Depending on your relationship with the organisation, personal information we collect include details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number as well as information you provide to us in any form of communication between us. For example, you will have given us this information whilst submitting an enquiry on our website or by contacting us by phone, email, by post or in person.
We will mainly use this information (not exclusively):
- To provide the services that you have requested.
- To answer your queries
- For internal record keeping
- investigate and respond to complaints
- Improving service delivery;
- Contacting you for surveys or research
- To process your financial donations to our charity
- To assist in assessment of eligibility for funding, where grants and public funding is applied.
- To comply with our regulatory and legal obligations, including but not exclusively to, local authorities, NHS, Health and Safety Executive and the Charity Commission.
If you do not provide this information, we may not be able to provide the services you have requested.
Special Category of Personal Data (Sensitive Personal Information)
Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive. Special categories of personal data can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation, religious or philosophical beliefs and criminal convictions.
If you provide us with this informaton by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in strict accordance with this Privacy Policy
Depending on your relationship with the Arbours, we will only use this information:
- For the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.
- To enable us to fully assess your individual needs and put together the most appropriate care/support/therapeutic package for you.
- We will not pass on your details to anyone else or to a third party without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances. Examples of this might include anyone reporting severe self-harm or posing a threat to others, physical abuse or exploitation.
- Where you have given us your express consent (for example by submitting an article relating your experience of our services) and that you are happy for us to share your article/testimony, then we may publish it on our website or on other media.
4. Legal basis for using your information
In most cases, we will only use your personal data where we have your consent or because we need to use it in order to enter into/fulfil a contract with you or with your sponsor (for example, undergoing a residential placement in one of our therapeutic communities).
There are other lawful basis that gives us the right to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. This means that the reason that we are processing your information is because there is a legitimate interest for Arbours to process your information in order to allow us to carry out our charitable activities.
Whenever we process your Personal Information under our ‘legitimate interest’, we make sure that your personal rights and interests are taken into account. We will not process your personal information if we feel that there is an imbalance.
Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your Personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, use your personal information for conducting research, improving our services, for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission.
In some other cases, the legal justification for us to process your personal data is to protect your vital interests or those of another person in an emergency
Please contact us at info@arboursassociation.org should you need specific details about the purposes and legal basis for which we are processing your specific personal data.
5. Marketing
We will only contact you about our work and how you can support the Arbours by phone, email or text message, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.
However, if you have provided us with your postal address we may send you information about our work and how you can support us unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way.
You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by emailing us at ‘info@arboursassociation’ or by writing to our; Marketing Team, 6 Church Lane, London, N8 7BU.
6. Sharing your Information
The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff at Arbours so that they can support you.
We will never sell or share your personal information with other organisations or marketing establishments.Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.
We may however disclose personal data to third parties, but only where; it is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, or where permitted under data protection legislation, e.g. where the disclosure is necessary for the purposes of prevention and/or detection of crime
Depending on your relationship with our organisation, the information you provide us may also be shared for example, with Local Authorities, GPs, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), HMRC and the Home Office.
We may share your information with our trusted partners and contractors who work with us on or on our behalf to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction. We make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. An example of where we may share your information is with our partners who provide our Psychotherapy service.
Once your details are no longer required they will be disposed of securely. Hard copies/prints will be shredded and digital data will be deleted from our workstation’s hard drives, back up drives and servers.
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); or, in order to enforce our conditions for service provisions and other agreements.
7. General Principles for the Processing of Personal Data
Personal Data will be collected, stored, processed and transmitted in accordance with Arbours established policies, the General Data Protection Regulations and other applicable laws, rules and regulations.
The principles of Arbours with respect to the processing of Personal Data are as follows:
- Personal Data will be processed fairly and lawfully;
- Personal Data will be collected for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes and not further processed for incompatible purposes;
- Personal Data collected by Arbours will be adequate, relevant, and not excessive in relation to the purposes for which it is collected;
- Personal Data collected by Arbours will be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date to the best of our ability; and
- Personal Data collected by Arbours will be retained as identifiable data for no longer than necessary to serve the purposes for which the Personal Data was collected.
If Arbours engages in the processing of Personal Data for purposes other than those specified in this Policy, Arbours will provide notice of these changes, the purposes for which the Personal Data will be used, and the recipients of Personal Data.
8. Keeping your information safe
We take our responsibility for looking after your information very seriously. We have adopted appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal data we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper and unauthorised access, use, modification, destruction and loss.
Unfortunately the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site. Any transmission is at your own risk.
Our website may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.
9. Retention Period
Arbours keep your data only for as long as is reasonably needed for each purpose and in accordance with any applicable legal or ethical reporting or documentation retention requirements. We retain your Personal Data for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or allowed by law or to otherwise fulfill a legal obligation.
10. Your rights
You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below.
- 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. Please make all requests for access in writing, and provide us with evidence of your identity. We will respond to you within 30 days of receiving your request.
- 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.
- No automated-decision making: Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting our General Manager at Arbours, 6 Church Lane, Hornsey, London; by email at info@arboursassociation.org and by phone on 0208 340 7646.
Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.
If you feel that Arbours has not satisfactorily handled your request and/or complaint, you can report your concerns to the Information Commissioner’s Office at:
https://ico.org.uk/concerns/
Tel: 0303 123 1113
or by writing to: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow SK9 5AF
11. Cookies
‘Cookie’ is a name for a small file, usually of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or tablet 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, cannot be used to identify you.
How do we use cookies?
This site only uses cookies for Google Analytics which we use to generate visitor statistics and learn about how the site is being used so we can make improvements to the site content and design. It does not personally identify you or your computer.
No cookies, please
However, if you don’t want cookies please turn off the cookie setting in your browser. For more information on how to do this, please visit
www.aboutcookies.org/how-to-delete-cookies/
12. Variations to the Policy
This policy was last updated on the 24th of May 2018.
We reserve the right to alter and/or update this policy at our own discretion. Where we have made any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will make this clear on our website. This document should be regularly referred to for updates and variations.