Privacy and Cookies Policy

At Relate Avon we are committed to keeping your personal information safe and being clear about how we collect your data, how we store it and what we do with it. This privacy policy applies to this website.

Relate is registered under the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 as a data controller with the number Z2578080. Full details of this listing can be seen on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. Our company number is 05320576 (registered in England and Wales) and our registered charity number is 1107679.

This Privacy Notice relates specifically to personal data that you provide to us through this website. There are hyperlinks contained within our website which link to other websites owned and operated by third parties. These third parties have their own privacy policies and we recommend that you consider those when using their websites. We do not accept any liability or responsibility in terms of the privacy and security practices of these third party organisations and their websites.

If you have any queries about our Privacy Policy, please get in touch with our data team:

By email: enquiries@relate-avon.org.uk

By post: Data Protection Officer, Relate Avon, 133 Cheltenham Road, Bristol BS6 5RR

What information do we collect about you?

Information you give to us directly

We will collect and store information that you give us when you do make an enquiry or support our work through a donation on our website. Depending on what you do on our website, we may collect and store the following types of personal information: name, email address, telephone number, details of your enquiry and any organisation you may be contacting us from.

Information you give to us indirectly

• We store data about your visits to our website, for example, your location data or IP address.

• We store information about how you navigate our website, although this cannot be used to personally identify you.

• We may also collect and store your personal information if you interact with us on our social media channels. This will depend on your own privacy settings on these individual channels, so make sure you check these first.

Certain types of personal information are recognised by data protection law as being more sensitive. Information such as sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origin, religious or political opinion, data concerning your health (mental or physical) or your sex life fall into this category.

Where special category information is provided by you to enquire about our services or submit feedback, we will only process this information with your explicit consent.

Relate Avon will only collect special category information like this where it informs the provision of the service to you. Whenever we do this, we will be clear why this information is required. We may also gather sensitive personal information if you choose to share your experiences with us for a case study, but we will only do this with your consent.

If you’re a young person aged 13 or under

You must get the permission of your parent/guardian before providing Relate Avon with any personal information.

How do we use your personal information?

We will use your personal information to do the following:

• Respond to direct requests where you contact us with a query.

• Provide you with information or services you’ve requested or that we feel might be of interest to you.

• Process one-off or regular donations and to claim Gift Aid.

• Carry out general administrative tasks like dealing with complaints and feedback, essential record-keeping.

• Keep you safe: in the event that we reasonably think you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse.

• Monitoring and evaluation: we use your personal information to inform and develop our service delivery.

• Make our marketing campaigns more targeted and relevant to potential clients and donors; we will only send you marketing information if you have given us specific consent to do.

• Conduct polls, surveys and market research: we may invite you to take part so that we can improve our website, services and/or strategic development.

• Improve your experience of our website, so that we may offer you a more user-friendly navigation of our website.

• Process applications to work at Relate Avon: for example, if you fill in an application form or send us your CV or send us information speculatively in respect of possible contract opportunities.

For how long will we keep your personal information?

At Relate Avon, we are committed to retaining your personal information for no longer than necessary in relation to the purpose for which it was first collected. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office. Relate Avon may hold some types of data for up to seven years.

For example, in the case of financial transactions like donations and purchases, we will keep your personal information for as long as legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes, which could be anything up to six years after a transaction has taken place.

Do you share my information with anyone else?

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was obtained in the first place. We won’t share it with any third parties and you won’t receive any communications from other organisations.

However, we will share information where we are legally bound to, for example, to further criminal investigation or to keep you safe if we believe you (or someone else) is at risk of serious harm or abuse.

Keeping your personal information safe

We have both digital and operational safeguards to make sure your data is secure at Relate Avon. Access to information is reviewed on a regular basis and limited to those people who actually need to access it, and are assigned the permission to do so.

Relate Avon’s online webforms are protected by secure end-to-end encryption. Where we pass highly sensitive data over the internet such as credit or debit card details, Relate uses TLS to encrypt data between the client and our partners.

Relate Avon is PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant and uses PCI compliant providers to collect this data on our behalf; we don’t store this data on our own systems.

There are, however, inherent risks to passing information over public networks and Relate Avon cannot 100% guarantee the security of data handled in this way.

Your rights and managing your own data

You have the right to request access to the personal information that Relate Avon stores and processes about you. You can ask for corrections to be made to the information we hold or for your personal information to be deleted. You can also ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information or to object to the processing of it altogether.

We will not charge you for either considering or complying with a request unless it is deemed to be excessive in nature. We will ask you for proof of identity and upon this being successfully verified, you are entitled to obtain information about your personal information held.

If you’d like to make a request relating to any of the rights above, please send a request by email  to enquiries@relate-avon.org.uk or by writing to: The Data Protection Officer, Relate Avon, 133 Cheltenham Road, Bristol BS6 5RR.

How to make a complaint

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or the way in which Relate Avon handles your personal information then you can contact us using the contact details above.

If you wish to complain about our use of your data then please follow our Complaints Procedure.

You may also raise your concern directly with the Information Commissioner’s Office: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. Alternatively you can visit the ICO website.

Cookies policy

Cookies are little text files downloaded by and stored on your device (phone, laptop, tablet, etc.) when you visit a website. Cookies are used to help the website owner (in this case, Relate Avon) to provide you with a smooth experience while you browse.

Relate uses cookies to:

• Make our website work

• Collect anonymous data to gain insight into how visitors use our website

• Help us show advertisements about our services to those people who might be interested in them

• Allow you to share content with social networks like Instagram, X and Facebook.

Relate Avon does not use cookies to collect any information that could personally identify you. Neither do we use cookies to pass on any personally identifiable information to third parties.