This Privacy notice covers the specific personal data Gwent Wildlife Trust (GWT) collects and processes relating to its volunteers to manage the relationship with them. GWT is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This privacy policy describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your volunteering relationship with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (2016/679) (GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 and other applicable UK and EU laws that regulate the collection, processing and privacy of your personal information. This privacy policy applies to all prospective, current and former volunteers.
For the purposes of Data Protection Law, GWT acts as a “data controller” of the personal information we hold about you. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.
It is important that you read this privacy notice, together with any other privacy policy or notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.
What information does Gwent Wildlife Trust collect?
GWT collects and processes a range of information about you. This includes as applicable:
- Information provided by you such as your name, address and contact details, including email address, telephone number, date of birth and gender
- Details of your qualifications, skill, experience and employment history
- Details of your bank account
- Information about your emergency contacts
- Information about your nationality and entitlement to work in the UK
- Information from references
- Performance information to provide a reference if requested
- Photos and case studies if consent is given
- Information on DBS checks including the outcome of the checks
- Details of your volunteering pattern (i.e the days and hours you generally volunteer)
- Information about medical or health conditions or disabilities for which the organisations needs to make reasonable adjustments
- Equal opportunities monitoring information
GWT collects this information in a variety of ways such as; application forms, CV’s, passport or identity documents, correspondence with you, through interviews, meetings or other assessments.
In some cases, GWT collects information about you from third parties, such as references supplied by former employees and information from criminal records checks permitted by law.
Data is stored in a range of places such as; personal files, in the HR management systems, IT systems and locked filing cabinets,
Why does Gwent Wildlife Trust process personal data?
The organisation needs to process the data described above to enter into a volunteering relationship with you and to meet its obligations to you. For example, it needs to process your data to pay expenses incurred for travel and to contact you in an emergency.
In some cases, the organisation needs to process data to ensure that it is complying with its legal obligations. For example, it is required to check a volunteers’ entitlement to work in the UK, notification of an accident to our insurance company and to comply with health and safety laws. For certain volunteering roles at GWT, it is necessary to carry out criminal records checks to ensure that individuals are permitted to undertake their chosen role.
In other cases, the organisation has a legitimate interest in processing your personal data before, during and after the end of the volunteering relationship. Processing volunteer information allows the organisation to:
- Run volunteer recruitment processes
- Maintain accurate and up-to-date records and contact details (including details of who to contact in the event of an emergency)
- Ensure effective administration
- Provide references on request for current or former volunteers
- Respond to and defend against legal claims
- Get in contact to inform you of changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in
- The positive impact you have on our work by sending you our volunteer newsletter
- Dedicated volunteer thank-you events
Where GWT relies on legitimate interests as a reason for processing data, it has considered whether or not those interests are overridden by the rights and freedoms of volunteers and has concluded that they do not.
Some of our premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV is there to help provide security and to protect both you and Gwent Wildlife Trust. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (e.g. to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over. Gwent Wildlife Trust aims to comply with the Information Commissioner’s Office CCTV Code of Practice, and we put up notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.
Some special categories of personal data such as information about health or medical conditions, are processed to make appropriate adjustments for people with disabilities and to ensure we are compliant with health and safety legislation. We may also collect special category personal data if you have an accident on one of our reserves, this information will be retained for legal reasons, safeguarding purposes and to protect us in the event of an insurance or legal claim. If this does occur, GWT will take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.
Where we collect special category information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religion or beliefs this is done for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring. This data is collected with the express consent of yourself and volunteers are entirely free to decide whether or not to provide such data and there are no consequences of failing to do so.
Who has access to your data?
Your information will be shared internally, including with the volunteer recruitment personnel, your supervisor, managers in the living landscape in which you volunteer if access to the data is necessary for performance of their roles.
The organisation shares your data with third parties in order to obtain references and to obtain necessary criminal records checks from the Disclosure and Barring Service where applicable.
Your data (e.g. mobile number) may also be shared for the purposes of the organisation’s risk assessment procedures.
How does GWT protect your data?
GWT takes the security of your data seriously, GWT has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused, disclosed and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties. All of the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK. However, for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance your information may be situated outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). This will be done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff receive data protection training and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.
How long do we retain your data?
We will only use and store information for as long as it required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review what information we hold, and delete what is no longer required.
What if you do not provide personal data?
Certain information, such as contact details and your right to work in the UK have to be provided to enable the organisation to set up a volunteering arrangement with you.
Your rights
As a data subject, you have a number of rights. You can:
- access and obtain a copy of your data through a subject access request
- require the organisation to change incorrect or incomplete data
- require the organisation to delete or stop processing your data, for example where the data is no longer necessary for the purposes of processing
- object to the processing of your data where the organisation is relying on its legitimate interests as the legal ground for processing
- ask the organisation to stop processing data for a period if data is inaccurate or there is a dispute about whether or not your interests override the organisation's legitimate grounds for processing data.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact the organisation’s Data Protection Officer either directly at 01600 740600 or by emailing acook@gwentwildlife.org
If you believe that GWT has not complied with your data protection rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for more details see https://ico.org.uk/
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk
We review this policy periodically.
Last Updated: November 2019
Next Review date: November 2021