Chamber data privacy policy

  1. PURPOSE OF THIS NOTICE

This notice describes how we collect and use personal data about you, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and any other applicable laws, regulations and secondary legislation, as amended or updated from time to time, in the UK (‘Data Protection Legislation’).

Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

  1. ABOUT US

North East Chamber of Commerce (“the Chamber”, “we”, “us”, “our” and “ours”) is the Chamber of Commerce representing businesses and providing business support services across the North East. We are registered in England and Wales as a company under number: 02938084 and our registered office is at Aykley Heads Business Centre, Durham, DH1 5TS.

In line with the Data Protection Legislation and this notice, we are the ‘data controller’. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal data about you. We are required under the Data Protection Legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

  1. THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU

Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

  • Identity Data includes first name, last name, username or similar identifier, photograph, job title, details of your employer, and signature.
  • Contact Data includes billing address, residential address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial Data includes bank account details and payment card details.
  • Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us (such as membership subscriptions and event tickets).
  • Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.
  • Usage Data includes information about how you interact with and use our website, products and services.
  • Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences, our correspondence and communications with you.

We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data which is not personal data as it does not directly (or indirectly) reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate individuals' Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature in order to analyse general trends in how users are interacting with our website to help improve the website and our service offering.

  1. HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

  • Your interactions with us. You may give us your personal data by filling in online forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
    • apply for membership or for our other products or services;
    • create an account on our website;
    • subscribe to our service or publications;
    • request marketing to be sent to you;
    • enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
    • give us feedback or contact us.
  • Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive Technical Data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies. Please see our cookie policy below for further details.
  • Third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below:
  • Technical Data is collected from the following parties:
    • analytics providers such as Google Analytics based inside the UK];
    • advertising networks such as LinkedIn based outside the UK;
  • Contact, Financial and Transaction Data is collected from providers of technical, payment and delivery services such as Stripe based outside the UK.
  • Identity and Contact Data is collected from data brokers or aggregators such as FAME based inside the UK.
  • Identity and Contact Data is collected from publicly available sources such as Companies House and the Electoral Register based inside the UK.
  • Identity and Contact Data is collected if your employer becomes a member of the Chamber and you contact us during the duration of such membership.
  1. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Legal basis

The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

  • Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you, your employer or where you are an employee, subcontractor, supplier or customer of our member or customer
  • Legitimate interests: We may use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and enable us to give you the best and most secure customer experience. This includes processing of your membership, or that of your employer (including the terms contained within our Memorandum and Articles of Association, marketing, business development, statistical and management purposes.  We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
  • Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
  • Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.

Please note that we may process your personal data for more than one lawful basis depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.

Situations in which we will use your personal data

We may use your personal data to:

  • In some circumstances we may anonymise or pseudonymise the personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use it without further notice to you.
  • If you refuse to provide us with certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered with you. Alternatively, we may be unable to comply with our legal or regulatory obligations.
  • We may also process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in accordance with this notice, where we are legally required or permitted to do so.
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered between you or your employer or our members or customers and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) and to provide you with information, publications, surveys, event details, benefits, assistance, and services that you request from us
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any agreements entered between our members or customers and us (which will most usually be for the provision of our services) where you may be a subcontractor, supplier, or customer of our member or customer.
  • To display it in our members’ publications, including our searchable on-line directory which is available to our members only.
  • To provide you with information related to our services and our events and activities that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, provided you have either consented to be contacted for such purposes or we are contacting you about similar services, events and activities to those you have previously engaged us to provide and you have not opted-out from receiving that type of  marketing.
  • To provide you, or permit selected third parties to provide you, with information about services we (or any selected third party) feel may interest you. If you are an existing customer, we (or any selected third party) will only contact you by electronic means (e-mail, telephone, SMS) with information about opportunities, goods and services similar to those which were the subject of a previous sale, enquiry or negotiations of a sale to you, or with information about opportunities, goods and services we (or they) feel may be of interest to you, such as but not limited to information relating to events, publications, newsletters trade missions, membership benefits or services or information about offers we have negotiated with third parties. If you are a new customer, and where we permit selected third parties to use your data, we (or they) will contact you by electronic means only if you have consented to this. We will only use your data in this way and pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes, if you have consented by ticking the relevant “third party marketing” box situated on the form on which we collect your data (for example, on the Join form);
  • To administer, improve, and secure the operation of the Chamber website, and other online resources
  • To deliver relevant marketing information to you.
  • To seek your thoughts and opinions on the services we provide; and
  • To notify you about any changes to our services.

Direct marketing

As set out above, you will receive marketing communications from us if you have requested information from us or purchased goods or services from us and you have not opted out of receiving the marketing.

We may also analyse your Identity, Contact, Technical, Usage and Profile Data to form a view which products, services and offers may be of interest to you so that we can then send you relevant marketing communications.

Third-party marketing

As detailed above, we will get your express consent before we share your personal data with any third party for their own direct marketing purposes.

Opting out of marketing

You can ask to stop sending you marketing communications at any time by following the opt-out links within any marketing communication sent to you or by contacting us your-[email protected]

If you opt out of receiving marketing communications, you will still receive service-related communications that are essential for administrative or customer service purposes for example relating to appointment reminders, updates to our Terms and Conditions, checking that your contact details are correct.

Information we receive from other sources.

We may combine this information with information you give to us and information we collect about you. We may us this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).

  1. HOW WE STORE & PROTECT YOUR DATA

We securely store your information within our CRM system. We have put in place commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered, or disclosed.

In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

  1. DATA RETENTION

We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for seven years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see paragraph Error! Reference source not found. below for further information.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Change of purpose

Where we need to use your personal data for another reason, other than for the purpose for which we collected it, we will only use your personal data where that reason is compatible with the original purpose.

Should it be necessary to use your personal data for a new purpose, we will notify you and communicate the legal basis which allows us to do so before starting any new processing.

  1. MEDIA
  • If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
  • If you upload images to the website, you should avoid using copywritten images. You must not upload any images to our website unless you are confident that you are the owner of copyright in that image and have the permission of all individuals in the image to upload it to our website.
  1. EMBEDDED CONTENT FROM OTHER WEBSITES
  • Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g., videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website. We are not responsible for websites to which we link and you may be subject to terms and conditions and privacy policies on third party websites we link to.
  • These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
  1. DATA SHARING

Why might you share my personal data with third parties?

We will share your personal data with third parties where we are required by law, where it is necessary to administer the relationship between us or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

Which third-party service providers process my personal data?

“Third parties” includes third-party service providers and other entities within our group. The following activities are carried out by third-party service providers: Chamber legal helpline & legal expenses insurance, IT and cloud services, professional advisory services, administration services, marketing services, insurance services and banking services adapt as relevant.

All our third-party service providers are required to take commercially reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect your personal data. We only permit our third-party service providers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

The British Chambers of Commerce

The Chamber is part of a network of 53 Chambers of Commerce across the UK accredited by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). One purpose of the Chamber is to “influence the function of …any governmental body”. This objective is stated in the Chamber’s ‘Articles of Association’. We will provide BCC with your company’s email address for BCC to conduct research into the impact of policies on your business.

What does the BCC do with your data?

BCC will not contact your business for any other purpose other than to notify you of an opportunity to respond to a national policy survey. Each year, BCC conducts around five surveys which directly help us develop and shape Government policy across a range of areas, including business taxation, international trade, and employment conditions. The data from these surveys are completely anonymised and aggregated so that individual responses cannot be identified. The anonymised data are then presented in closed briefings with stakeholders across UK Government and shared publicly through BCC’s press team.

The purpose of carrying out the surveys is to produce reports, which BCC, and the Chambers can then use in their activities in promoting and protecting the interests of UK businesses; in other words, they are part of the function and purpose of BCC and the Chamber.

You can contact us if you do not wish to be contacted by BCC, and you will have the opportunity to unsubscribe from BCC’s research mailing list at any point. If your or your parent company’s membership of a local Chamber has lapsed, the BCC may continue to contact you about opportunities to respond to business surveys. You can choose to opt in or out of further contact with the BCC.

What about other third parties?

We may share your personal data with other third parties, for example in the context of changes to our business. We may also need to share your personal data with the British Chambers of Commerce for accreditation purposes, with a regulator or to otherwise comply with the law.

  1. INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS

From time to time we may transfer your data to third party providers to provide some of the relevant services and marketing we offer. These third parties include:

  • Mailchimp (Atlanta, Georgia) Certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US data privacy framework.

 

  1. YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data.

You have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data. This enables you to receive details of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are processing it lawfully.
  • Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
  • Request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
  • Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) as the legal basis for that particular use of your data (including carrying out profiling based on our legitimate interests). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
  • You also have the absolute right to object any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes (see OPTING OUT OF MARKETING in paragraph 5 for details of how to object to receiving direct marketing communications).
  • Where relevant, request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
  • Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
  • Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in one of the following scenarios:
    • If you want us to establish the data's accuracy;
    • Where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;
    • Where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
    • You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us. See below for our  contact details .

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Should your personal information change, please notify us of any changes of which we need to be made aware by contacting us, using the contact details below.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email our data protection point of contact [email protected]

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated. 

  1. HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions regarding this notice or if you would like to speak to us about the way we process your personal data, please email [email protected] or telephone +44 (0)300 303 6322

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues, at any time. The ICO’s contact details are as follows:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Telephone – 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745

Website –  https://ico.org.uk/concerns

  1. PRIVACY POLICY OF OTHER WEBSITES

Our website contains links to other websites. Our privacy policy only applies to our website, you should check the privacy policy and terms of use of other websites when leaving our website.

  1. COOKIES

What are cookies?

Cookies are small encrypted text files that are stored on your computer or other device when visiting this website. We use cookies to monitor and improve the user experience. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies and the text file is added to help analyse web traffic.

How do we use cookies?

Cookies allow us to know if your computer or device has visited our website before. We use Cookies to help understand how you are using our website, help you navigate between pages efficiently, remember your preferences, and generally improve your browsing experience.

What types of cookies do we use?

Below is a detailed list of the cookies we use on our website. Our website is scanned with our cookie scanning tool regularly to maintain a list as accurate as possible. We classify cookies in the following categories:

  • Strictly Necessary Cookies - These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. These essential cookies are always enabled because our website won’t work properly without them. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services. You can switch off these cookies in your browser settings but you may then not be able to access all or parts of our website.
  • Analytical or Performance Cookies - These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functional Cookies - These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
  • Targeting Cookies - These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose so that they can serve you with relevant advertising on their websites.

How to manage cookies?

You can manage your cookie preferences by clicking the relevant button on the cookie banner when you first land on our website.

Third Parties

Please note that the following third parties may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These named third parties may include, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services. These third party cookies are likely to be analytical cookies or performance cookies or targeting cookies:

  • Google Analytics

To deactivate the use of third party advertising cookies, you may visit the relevant consumer page to manage the use of these types of cookies.

 

  1. Changes to this notice

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, you will be notified by email. Please check back this page to see any further updates or changes to our privacy policy.