Privacy statement for website

Who are we?

Abbeyfield Living Society (a trading name of The Abbeyfield Society) is a registered charity (no. 200719) and company limited by guarantee (no. 574816). The registered address is Hampton House, 17-19 Hampton Lane, Solihull, West Midlands, B91 2QT.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you contact us about our homes and services, to make a donation or if you register to receive any content giveaway, such as a newsletter or brochure.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. If you make a donation online or purchase a product from us, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below. Information such as your name, email and/or postal address is only collected when you contact us using any of the email links to staff members provided on the site, or the information request form.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

• process a donation that you have made;
• process an enquiry that you have made;
• carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
• seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
• notify you of changes to our services;
• send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities, promotions of our associated companies goods and services; 
• process a grant or job application (full details of Privacy Statement for applicants);
• help us understand how our site is being used to inform site content and help reach our target audience; or 
• inform our market research, such as checking the effectiveness of our communications.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties and we will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf:

We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

Third Party Product Providers we work in association with:

When you are using our secure online donation pages, your donation is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you have any questions regarding secure transactions, please contact us.

We may transfer your personal information to a third party as part of a sale of some or all of our business and assets to any third party or as part of any business restructuring or reorganisation, or if we’re under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our supporters and customers. However, we will take steps with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the vital work we do for older people and our exciting products and services, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: post@abbeyfield.com or write to the Digital Marketing Team, Abbeyfield Living Society (a trading name of The Abbeyfield Society), Hampton House, 17-19 Hampton Lane, Solihull, West Midlands, B91 2QT.

How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. We’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at: post@abbeyfield.com or write to the Digital Marketing Team, Abbeyfield Living Society (a trading name of The Abbeyfield Society), Hampton House, 17-19 Hampton Lane, Solihull, West Midlands, B91 2QT.

You also have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you and the form to submit a Data Subject Request, can be found here. 

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely.

Our website is protected by SSL (secure sockets layer) which creates a secure connection between a user’s web browser and our server. This means Information such as names, phone numbers, addresses and any payment details stays private and secure.

Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected with the following software 128 Bit encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Profiling

We may analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you. We may make use of additional information about you when it is available from external sources to help us do this effectively. We may also use your personal information to detect and reduce fraud and credit risk.

Use of 'cookies'

Like many other websites, Abbeyfield Living Society’s website uses cookies. 'Cookies' are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.

Different types of cookies?

• Functional cookies These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. For example, these cookies are set when you submit a form, login or interact with the site by doing something that goes beyond clicking on simple links.
• Session cookies We use these to keep track of your movement from page to page, so you don’t get asked for the same information that you have already given to our site and are automatically deleted from your computer when you leave our website or shortly afterwards.
• Analytical/performance cookies They 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. These cookies do not personally identify any individual user. These are usually third-party cookies, which we use to deliver a better user experience.
• Other cookies Please note that any advertisers, logos or links to other websites may also use cookies, over which we have no control.

Do I have to consent to cookies?

No, you can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to restrict the use of cookies (including essential cookies), you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

By continuing to use this Website, you consent to the use of cookies. You can choose to manage the cookies we use on this Website through your browser settings at any time.

For information on how to do this, and about cookies in general, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy statement applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

Remarketing

Abbeyfield Living Society is also using Google Advertising Features to collect anonymous visitor demographic and interest data.

To opt out of Google Analytics Advertising Features, including through Ads Settings, Ad

Settings for mobile apps, or any other available means please see:

• Ad Settings http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
• Ad Settings for mobile Apps http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/html/mobile-about.html
• Network Advertising Initiative Opt-Out http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices/

For further information about Google Analytics see www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics visit tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout 

Disclosure of information to third parties

As previously mentioned Abbeyfield Living Society does not sell, trade or rent your information and will never disclose information about you to third parties, except to fulfil your specific requirements a service or request for information if third parties deliver the relevant service.

Other circumstances where we are operationally or contractually obliged to pass on your information may be where third parties administer part or all of the service and to maintain management information for business analysis.

We may, of course, be obliged by law to pass on your information to the Police or any other statutory authority.

16 or under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Statement.

If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.

Review of this Privacy Statement

Our Privacy Notice is regularly kept up to date and this version was updated on 12th June 2024.