Privacy Policy

Herne Hill Forum takes your privacy very seriously. Our privacy policy below explains what information we collect and how we use it and protect it. We hate spam as much as you do and will never sell, distribute or make public your personal information.

Like most websites, this site uses Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction. We use this data to determine the number of people using our site, to better understand how they find and use our web pages and to see their journey through the website.

Although GA records data such as your geographical location, device, internet browser and operating system, none of this information personally identifies you to us. GA also records your computer’s IP address, which could be used to personally identify you, but Google does not grant us access to this. We consider Google to be a third party data processor (see below).

GA makes use of cookies, which are short text files stored on a user’s device (such as a computer, tablet or phone) by a website. Cookies are used for the technical functioning of a website or for gathering statistics. They are also typically used to provide a more personalised experience for a user – for example, when an online service remembers your user profile without you having to login.

Disabling cookies on your internet browser will stop GA from tracking any part of your visit to pages within this website.

Membership, Newsletter and volunteering

If you choose to become a member,  join our email newsletter or sign up as a volunteer, the email address that you submit to us will be forwarded to MailChimp, which provide us with email marketing services. We consider MailChimp to be a third party data processor (see below). The email address that you submit will not be stored within this website’s own database.

Your email address will remain within MailChimp’s database for as long as we continue to use MailChimp’s services for email marketing or until you specifically request removal from the list. You can do this by unsubscribing using the unsubscribe links contained in any email newsletters that we send you or by requesting removal via email. When requesting removal via email, please send your email to us using the email account that is subscribed to the mailing list.

If you are under 16 years of age you must obtain parental consent before joining our email newsletter.

While your email address remains within the MailChimp database, you will receive regular (usually monthly) newsletter-style emails from us.

Forms

If you send us a message using our contact form, or if you vote in one of our occasional polls, these forms collect personal data from you that we then use to reply to your message, or we use to cross-check that you’re not spamming the polls to get your own way! We save your form entry on our database, in case it doesn’t arrive in our inboxes. We will clear out this form data and delete it from our database at least once every 6 months. However, the data is also emailed to the relevant inbox and this inbox may retain the data for longer than this. Ip addresses are only ever kept on our database and are not sent to inboxes, therefore this data will not be held for longer than 6 months.

Third party processors

We use the following third parties to process personal data on our behalf. These third parties are based in the United States and are committed to complying with the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR) when it comes into force on 25 May 2018. They are already EU-U.S Privacy Shield compliant.

Accuracy and retention of data

We do our best to keep your data accurate and up to date, assuming you provide us with the information we need to do so. If your data changes (for example, if you have a new email address), then you are responsible for notifying us of those changes.

Upon request, we will provide you with information about whether we hold, or process on behalf of a third party, any of your personal information. We will retain your information for as long as your account is active or as long as needed to provide you with our services. Unless it is prohibited by law, we will remove any personal information about you from our records at your request.

Data breaches

We will report any unlawful data breach of this website’s database or the database(s) of any of our third party data processors to any and all relevant persons and authorities within 72 hours of the breach if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.

Data controller

The data controller of this website is: info@hernehillforum.org.uk.

Changes to our privacy policy

This privacy policy may change from time to time in line with legislation or industry developments. We will not explicitly inform our clients or website users of these changes. Instead, we recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes.