We are committed to collecting information about people only when we need to, and to being honest and open about what information we collect, how we use it and who we might share it with. If you have any questions or worries about what information we are collecting or storing, please contact us. You have the right to ask us to review and tell you about what personal information we have recorded about you, and you can make a request for it to be deleted at any time. In certain circumstances we might not be able to fully delete personal information about you, but if this is the case we will always tell you why.

Information about who uses our website

We collect a certain amount of data about the people visiting our website. This is anonymous, and is used only to make sure that we are providing content that people are using and finding useful.

Our webserver and Statcounter may collect certain information such as: IP addresses, host names, domain name, the time and date information is requested, the browser version and platform when information is requested.

We use this information to produce aggregate visitor statistics in relation to which pages are being accessed. We may also use it to monitor usage patterns on this website in order to improve navigation and design features to help you get information more easily. This information is collated and provided to us as daily log files. These statistics will not include information that can be used to identify any individual.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on a user’s hard drive while they are visiting a particular website and it contains simple information about the user’s identity but no personal information. We may use cookies on our website to store passwords, so that it is not necessary to provide a password for every visit to our website. We may also use cookies to track the interests of our users so that we can subsequently enhance their experience on our website.

IP Addresses

We use IP addresses to analyze trends, administer the website, track users’ movements, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information.

Information about people who contact us

We have a legitimate interest in monitoring our contact with members of the public, professionals and potential leads in related businesses and other potential contacts. We may use these contacts to inform interested parties about our campaigns, events, research or other work where we believe that the person or organization being contacted has a clear and valid connection or interest to what we are doing.

If you contact us by email or online form, we may keep a record. This will tell us your name, what you contacted us about, what action we took (if needed) and your contact details in case we need to get in touch with you in future. Extra information might be recorded if it is relevant.

Information about our members

We have a legitimate interest in gathering, processing and storing personal information about our members. We do this so that we can: understand and predict the needs and wants of the people who have chosen to join our website; keep members informed about the products, services, support, events and campaigns available to them via regular email and online communications; carry out our core function of promoting our services and products; carry out our core function of representing the interests of our members.

What this means: when you join our website we will ask you to complete a member profile. There are some mandatory fields, which is the bare minimum we need to support you and provide you with the membership benefits you have signed up for. The other bits of information we ask about are not essential, but we really appreciate it if our members do fill them in. They help us understand and support you even more, and mean that we are able to develop and promote the profession with far more accuracy. It is your responsibility to regularly check that your information is up to date so that you don’t miss out on important information and membership benefits. We cannot be held responsible for anything that you do miss if you haven’t updated your details, or for any inaccuracies in the information that you have provided to us.

We use the information we hold about our members to design our services, products, and communications to best suit you. Core member communications will be sent to all relevant members. Other, optional communications can be opted into via our website and will only be sent to you if you have given clear consent. If you choose to join one or more Group/s you will also receive regular updates from that group, and some information about you will be shared with the Group to make sure that you can access all the benefits of the Group.

Who has access to the information we store about you?

All personal data held by us is stored in secure systems that are only accessible by us and our contracted service providers, such as accountancy, IT support, web hosting company, and so on. We make every effort to ensure that your information is safe and private, and third party providers will only have access to data where it is vital to the service they provide to us.

We will only share personal information about our members in rare cases where there is a clear need in doing so, like legal issues.

We do not sell the names or contact information of members to anyone.

We will, on occasion, send communications to members on behalf of our partners or sister organizations for research purposes; these will always be optional, and it will be made clear where the information from surveys or other responses will be going.