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The privacy and security of your personal Data is extremely important to us. This notice explains how and why we use your personal data, to ensure you remain informed and in control of your information. We regularly review this document (Minimum of every 12 months) to ensure it remains accurate and up-to-date, and incorporates any changes required by amendments to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other legislation. Any updates replace previous versions of this Notice. This Notice was last updated in October 2023.
We will never sell your personal data.
You can decide not to receive communications or change how we contact you at any time. If you wish to do so, please contact Plantlife by emailing enquiries@plantlife.org.uk
or writing toPlantlife InternationalBrewery House36 Milford StreetSalisbury, SP1 2APor telephoning 01722 342730 (Lines open 9am – 5pm, Mon – Fri).
Any questions you have in relation to this notice or how we use your personal data should be sent to enquiries@plantlife.org.uk or addressed to The Data Protection Officer, Plantlife International, Brewery House, 36 Milford Street, Salisbury, SP1 2AP.
Your personal data (i.e. any information which identifies you, or which can be identified as relating to you personally) will be collected and used by Plantlife International, charity no. 1059559 in England and SC038951 in Scotland with data controller number ZA835542 and Plantlife Trading Limited, a private limited company with registration number 02742265 and data controller number ZA835551.
Both Plantlife International and Plantlife Trading Limited, together referred to as “Plantlife” are based at Brewery House, 36 Milford Street, Salisbury, SP1 2AP. For the purposes of data protection law, Plantlife International will be the controller.
We collect the data and information you give when joining or registering, placing an order or communicating with us. For example:• personal details such as name, date of birth, email, postal address, telephone and mobile numbers when you join as a member or supporter, if you tell us information about a gift you have made in your will or apply to volunteer with us;• financial information such as credit/debit card or direct debit details, details about the donations or purchases from our online shop you have made and whether donations are gift-aided. Please see Section 8 for more information on payment security• details of your interests and preferences such as campaigns, the ways you support us or types of habitats you are involved with. This could include survey responses you send to us or registration and attendance at events.• Relationships you have to other donors and organisations. If you purchase Plantlife membership as a gift for someone, join as a family or are the parent of one of our youth supporters, your details will be recorded along with the recipients and your relationship to that person.
Your activities or involvement with Plantlife will result in personal data being created. This could include details of how you’ve helped us by volunteering or being involved with our campaigns and activities, as well as when you engage in our social media.
If you decide to donate to us, then we will keep records of when and how much you give to a particular campaign.
We sometimes receive personal data about individuals from third parties (more information can be found under Section 7 Research and Profiling below), for example, when working with Partners and you provide your information to another organisation we’re collaborating with on a conservation project.
Also, as explained in Section 12 (Cookies and links to other sites), we may use third parties to help us conduct research and analysis on personal data and this can result in new personal data being created.
Occasionally, we may collect information about certain supporters (e.g. particularly well known or influential people) from public sources. This could include public databases such as Companies House, news or other media. (see Section 7).
We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation about supporters or members. However, there are some situations where this may occur, for example if you volunteer with us, attend an event where we need health or disability information to ensure your enjoyment and safety, indicate that you wish to leave us a legacy or through collecting potential and existing supporter information from public sources about political parties or religious causes. If this does occur, we’ll take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.
If you apply for a job at Plantlife, in support of our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy Statement, we may collect special category data such as ethnicity or data concerning disabilities. This information will be used for monitoring the diversity of applicants to ensure our processes are fairly applied.
We may ask you to participate in surveys which include questions about special category data such as ethnic diversity of our supporters. This data will only be used and kept for the stated purpose a and where possible will be collected on an anonymous basis so you cannot be identified.
If an accident or incident occurs on our property, at one of our events or involving one of our staff or volunteers then we will keep a record of this which may include personal data and sensitive personal data (as defined above).
If you are a volunteer, whether specifically for Plantlife or if you are helping us for other reasons – for example you work for another organisation which is running an event with us, then we may collect extra information about you, such as, but not limited to references, criminal records checks, details of emergency contacts and medical conditions. This information will be retained for legal reasons, to protect us in the event of an insurance or legal claim and for safeguarding purposes. You may also receive communications from us providing you with information about your duties as a volunteer.
We don’t want to exclude under 18s from opportunities to support our work by volunteering. We may therefore need to collect and store their personal information.
We only ever use your personal data where we have a valid legal basis to do so as defined by UK GDPR and other data protection legislation in the ways below
We will only use your information for the purpose and any closely related purposes it was collected for.
We use personal data to communicate with you, to promote Plantlife and to help with fundraising. This includes keeping you up to date with our news, updates, campaigns, events appeals and fundraising information. EG This could be sending you the Plantlife magazine if you are a member or inviting you to one of our events. For further information please see Section 6- Marketing. At Plantlife we carry out marketing activities under legitimate interest, consent or for contractural purposes .
We use personal data for administrative purposes to carry on our charity and conservation work. This includes:• receiving donations such as direct debits or gift-aid instructions or administering legacy gifts;• maintaining databases of our volunteers, members and supporters including those who have indicated they wish to leave us a legacy;• performing our obligations under membership contracts or in accordance with the law;• fulfilling orders for goods or services placed online, over the phone via the post or in person.• helping us respect your choices and preferences (e.g. if you ask not to receive marketing material, we’ll keep a record of this).• Recruiting and processing job applications
These uses are either contractual or under legitimate interest
We carry out research and analysis on our supporters, donors and volunteers, to determine the success of campaigns and appeals, better understand behaviour and responses and identify patterns and trends. This helps inform our approach towards campaigning and make Plantlife a stronger and more effective organisation. Understanding our supporters, their interests and what they care about also helps us provide more relevant communications and supports legitimate business interests.
We evaluate, categorise and profile personal data in order to tailor materials, services and communications including targeted advertising to minimise unwanted communications. This also helps us understand our supporters, improve our organisation and carry out research. Further information on profiling can be found in Section 7 (Research and profiling). We may process personal data on the grounds of legitimate interest, which include but are not limited:
Whenever we process data for these purposes, we will ensure that we adhere to your personal data rights. The legal basis for this is legitimate interest. You have the right to object to this processing and if you wish to do so please contact enquiries@plantlife.org.uk. Please consider that any objection may affect our ability to carry out beneficial tasks and activities or send important communications.
If you work for us, or apply for a job with us, we will process your personal data, including sensitive personal data, to comply with our contractual, statutory and management obligations and responsibilities. This data includes, but is not limited to, information relating to your health, racial or ethnic origin, and criminal convictions. In certain circumstances, we may process personal data or sensitive personal data without explicit consent.
Our contractual responsibilities include those arising from a contract of employment. This includes, but is not limited to, data relating to: payroll, bank account, postal address, sick pay, leave, maternity pay, pension and emergency contacts.
Our statutory responsibilities are those imposed by law on us as an employer. This includes, but is not limited to, data relating to: tax, national insurance, statutory sick pay, statutory maternity pay, family leave, work permits and equal opportunities monitoring.
Our management responsibilities are those necessary for the way the organisation functions. This includes, but is not limited to, data relating to: recruitment and employment, training and development, absence, disciplinary matters and contact details.
We use two legal basis for direct marketing activities including membership and fundraising.
Legitimate Interest We have identified a legitimate reason to use your information in supporting Plantlife’s mission which does not over-ride your personal rights and interests. For example, if you have made a donation to Plantlife, it would be reasonable to assume you would be happy to receive further information through the post or by telephone about our work. You can change your preferences at any time by contacting us.
Consent We will only contact you with marketing content by email, SMS or by telephone (if you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service), if you have consented to receiving marketing communications through these channels.
Marketing does not just mean offering things for sale, but also includes news and information about:
When you receive a communication, we may collect information about how you respond to or interact with that communication, and this may affect how we communicate with you in future.
Membership magazines are provided as a benefit to our members. We send these out to all our members, unless you specifically ask us not to. You can choose to unsubscribe from general marketing communications without giving up your subscription to the magazine. However, please be aware that member magazines do include advertisements, competitions and fundraising information. If you are a volunteer we will still communicate with you about your duties even if you choose not to receive general marketing from us.
As a charity we rely on donations and support from others to continue our conservation work. From time to time we will contact members and supporters with fundraising material and communications. This might be about an appeal, a competition we’re running, or to suggest ways you can raise funds (e.g. a sponsored event or activity, or even buying a product if Plantlife will receive some of the proceeds).
We may use third parties, known as Professional Fundraising agencies, to carry out fundraising on our behalf. For example, we may use an agency called QTS Fundraising to call and welcome new members to Plantlife, or Working for Wildlife who help us recruit new members at events across the country.
This section explains how and why we use personal data to undertake research and build profiles which enable us to understand our supporters, improve our relationship with them, and provide a better supporter experience. Our work is only possible through the generosity of Supporters and so having a better understanding about the people that support our work through research helps us to ensure that our fundraising is as effective as possible and that we are sending information that is relevant
Profiling is gathering information about individuals or groups of individuals and understanding their characteristics or behaviours to learn more about their interests or likely behaviour. We profile supporters in terms of financial, political and practical support to assess and individual’s potential to be a significant donor to Plantlife or to further the charitable objectives of the organisation through their involvement. We undertake in-house research and at times engage other organisations such as Prospecting for Gold, Milestone Research or Factory to help us identify people who may be able to support us with a larger gift.
We combine information about supporters with external information. The information is from a variety of sources including publicly available data such as the UK Census, the Land Registry, Companies House, media, social media such as Linkedin or derived from surveys and questionnaires held on private databases. We only use reputable sources where someone can expect their information may be read by the public.
We may collect additional details relating to their employment and any philanthropic activity as well as estimate their gift capacity, based on their visible assets, history of charitable giving and how connected they are to Plantlife. The fundraising team also try to make sure that there isn’t anything they should be aware of that may harm the reputation of Plantlife by association.
This information helps us to ensure communications are relevant and timely and improve the experience our supporters receive. It also ensures that we are more efficient and cost-effective with our resources. You have the right to object to this processing and if you wish to do so please contact Plantlife by emailing enquiries@plantlife.org.uk or writing to Plantlife International, Brewery House, 36 Milford Street, Salisbury, SP1 2AP, or telephoning 01722 342730 (Lines open 9am – 5pm, Mon – Fri).
We may aggregate and anonymise personal data so that it can no longer be linked to any particular person. This information can be used for a variety of purposes, such as recruiting new supporters, or to identify trends or patterns within our existing supporter base. This information helps inform our actions and improve our campaigns, products, services and communications.
We employ a variety of physical and technical measures to keep your data safe and to prevent unauthorised access, use or disclosure of your personal information.
Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information using both physical and electronic means.
Only staff with authorisation have access to data and receive training in data protection and how to handle data appropriately and securely. Data is only accessed for the duration of a task or purpose and we do not use data for anything not covered in this privacy notice.
All electronic Plantlife forms that request financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.
If you use a credit card to donate, purchase a membership or purchase something on-line we will pass your credit card details securely to our payment provider Worldpay, Paypal or Stripe. Plantlife complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council, and will never store card details. If you sign up to a direct debit on our website then we collect details securely through our payment provider Go Cardless.
We cannot guarantee the security of your own computer, mobile device or the internet and any online communications are at the user’s own risk.
Plantlife’s operations are based in the UK, and we store our data within the European Union. Some organisations which provide services to us may transfer personal data outside of the EEA, but we’ll only allow them to do so if your data is adequately protected.
For example, some of our systems use Microsoft products. As a US company, it may be that using their products result in personal data being transferred to or accessible from the US. However, we allow this as we are certain personal data will still be adequately protected according to the Information Commissioners Office requirements under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
We will only use and store information for so long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. How long information will be stored depends on the information in question and its use. For example, if you ask us not to send you marketing emails we keep a record of your preference not to be contacted.
We may share personal data with subcontractors, suppliers or Professional Fundraising Agencies who provide us with services. For example, if you order something from the Plantlife Shop, your name and address will be shared with the delivery company or we will provide address files to our mailing house for posting the members magazines. However, these activities will be carried out under a contract which imposes strict requirements on our supplier to keep your information confidential and secure.
Where we partner with other organisations, we may also share information with them, for example, if you register to attend an event being jointly organised by us and another charity. We will only share information when necessary.
We may contact you with information about our partners, or third-party products and services, but these communications will always come from Plantlife and are usually incorporated into our own marketing materials (e.g. advertisements in magazines or newsletters).
In order to carry out our contractual and management responsibilities, we may, from time to time, need to share an employee’s personal data with one or more third party supplier. To meet an employment contract, we are required to transfer an employee’s personal data to third parties, for example, to pension providers and HM Revenue & Customs.
In order to fulfil our statutory responsibilities, we’re required to provide certain aspects of an employee’s personal data to government departments or agencies in order to provide salary and tax data to HM Revenue & Customs
You have the following legal rights to aid the control of your personal data:
There are legislative exceptions to the rights above, but we will endeavour to satisfy any reasonable personal data request. We will respond to a Subject Access Request within one month.
If you would like further information on your rights or wish to exercise them, please write to The Data Protection Officer, Plantlife International, Brewery House, 36 Milford Street, Salisbury, SP1 2AP.
We hope that you never have a reason to make a complaint to Plantlife about how we have used your personal data and work to maintain high standards. However if you have a concern then we want to hear about it so we can take the necessary action to resolve the situation.
You can make a complaint to Plantlife directly by emailing enquiries@plantlife.org.uk or by contacting our Data Protection Officer using the details set out above. We have a complaints policy and procedure which we publish on our website.
If you are not satisfied with our response, or you believe that your data protection or privacy rights have been infringed, you can make a complaint to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office which regulates and enforces data protection law in the UK. Details of how to do this can be found at www.ico.org.uk.
A cookie is a piece of data about a website that is stored in your web browser. Cookies are often used to store choices about how you use the site to improve your user experience. The Plantlife website makes use of cookies in this way, and to help us get a feel for what it is you are looking at. They’re anonymous, they only give us information about the number of visitors to our site, so we don’t know what you personally are looking at, just that someone has looked at what you’ve looked at.
Read more about how we use Cookies in our Cookie Policy here https://www.plantlife.org.uk/cookie-policy/
Some parts of our site rely on cookies, but we will tell you where and when. Most browsers will allow you to control how cookies are handled, whether they are accepted and how long they are stored for. All browsers do this differently, but if you’re concerned about privacy and security then please have a look in the ‘help’ documentation for your particular browser.
Our website may contain hyperlinks to other websites. We are not responsible for the content or functionality of any of those external websites.
If an external website requests personal information the information you provide will not be covered by Plantlife’s Privacy Notice. We suggest you read the privacy policy of any other organisation before providing your personal information.
When purchasing goods or services from any of the businesses that our site links to, you will be entering into a contract with a different organisation and therefore their terms and conditions will prevail and not those of Plantlife.
We will review this Privacy Policy from time to time to ensure it remains up-to-date and accurate.
This Privacy Policy was last updated in October 2023.
We will keep you updated by email about our work, news, campaigning, appeals and ways to get involved. We will never share your details and you can opt out at any time. Read our Privacy Notice.
