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We want everyone who supports us to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information they share with us will be looked after or used. This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you), and how we use Cookies on our website.

Our Privacy Policy may change so please remember to check back from time to time, this is version 1 (24 May 2018). Where we have made any changes to this Privacy Policy, we will make this clear on our website.

1. Who we are

We are the British Paralympic Association and we are committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.

We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016679 (“Data Protection Law”). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

For further information about our privacy practices, please contact our Data Protection Representative by:

  • Writing to 101 New Cavendish Street, London, W1W 6XH
  • Calling us on +44 (0)20 7842 5789
  • Emailing to info@paralympics.org.uk

2. How we collect information about you

When you interact with us directly : This could be if you ask us about our activities, register with us for an event, make a donation to us, ask a question, apply for a job or volunteering 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.

When you interact with us through third parties : This could be if you interact with a third party such as Just Giving, a commercial Partner, or one of the other third parties that we work with and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.

When you visit our website : We gather general information which might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use “cookies” to help our site run effectively. There are more details below – see ‘Cookies’.

Wherever possible we use anonymous information which does not identify individual visitors to our website.

3. Information we collect and why we use it

Personal information we collect may include details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making a donation), as well as information you provide in any communications between us. You will have given us this information in one of the ways set out in section 2 above.

We will mainly use this information:

  • For the purpose of administrating the service or event that you have provided your personal information in relation to, including updating you with important administrative messages.

  • To process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.

  • To comply with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and follow the recommendations of the official regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, which require us to identify and verify the identity of supporters who make major gifts so we can assess any risks associated with accepting their donations.

  • To keep a record of your relationship with us.

  • Where you volunteer or work with us, to administer the contract or volunteering arrangement.

  • To personalise the way our website is presented when you visit to make improvements and to ensure we provide the best service and experience for you.

  • To contact you about our work and how you can support us

  • To invite you to participate in surveys or research, or to carry out analytical research to help us improve the services we offer

We will always ensure that we have a legal basis for using your personal information (see section 3 below for more information on this). If you do not provide certain information, we may not be able to process your donation, or sign you up for a particular event or service.

4. Legal basis for using your information

We will only use your personal information where we have a legal basis for doing so.

In some instances this will be where we have your consent, or because we need to use your personal information to fulfil a contract with you. In this case, we will only contact you about our work and how you can support us by phone, email or text message, if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.

You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting info@paralympics.org.uk or clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication.

However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for us to process your information to help us to achieve our vision to through sport, inspire a better world for disabled people. As well as important business administration, this might include us getting in touch with information about our work and how to support us, where we judge that there is a relevant and legitimate interest in you receiving this information.

Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that it is not appropriate.

5. Sharing your Information

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) so that they can support you.

We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.

We may however share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers 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. Our policy is to make sure that they store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. Some examples of where we may share your information are with our fulfilment partners who help to create and send information to you to reduce our costs, with our partners who help us to process donations and claim Gift Aid.

We will enter into contracts with these service providers that require them to comply with Data Protection Laws and ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to secure your information.

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 of sale and other agreements.

6. Keeping your information safe

We take looking after your information very seriously. We have implemented appropriate measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, 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 debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are passed securely to our payment processing partner, according to the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.

7. How long we hold your information for

We only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid). As a safeguard against holding data for too long, if your personal data is not used for 24 months we will review the legal basis for holding it and if we no longer have either your consent, or a legitimate interest for processing your data, it will be deleted.

8. Your rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below. If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting us:

  • Writing to 101 New Cavendish Street, London W1W 6XH
  • Calling us on +44 (0)20 3965 4124
  • Emailing to info@paralympics.org.uk

You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/:

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, however, we do reserve the right to charge a fee of £10 per request for repeated requests in order to cover our administrative expenses. Please make all requests for access in writing, and provide us with evidence of your identity.

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. All marketing communications will include a simple way to let us know that you would like to unsubscribe from future communication.

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.

Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.

9. Cookies on our website

Cookie is a name for a small file, usually made up of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or table when you visit a website.

They let websites recognise your device, so that the sites can work more effectively, and gather information about how you use the site. A cookie, by itself, can’t be used to identify you.

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you come to our website and allows us to improve the user experience.

The cookies we use

We use the categorisation set out by the International Chamber of Commerce in their UK Cookie Guide.

We use three categories of cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies are essential for you to move around our website and to use its features.
  • Performance cookies collect anonymous information about how you use our site, like which pages are visited most.
  • Functionality cookies collect anonymous information that remember choices you make to improve your experience, like your text size or location. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog.

No cookies, please

You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones). Find out how to control and delete cookies in your browser.

But, if you choose to refuse all cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to.

If you have any questions about how we use cookies, please contact us.

10. Monitoring

Your communications with us (including by telephone or email) may be monitored and/or recorded for training, quality control and compliance purposes to ensure that we continuously improve our customer service standards.