Privacy Policy

Privacy Information

If you use our services or simply visit our website, this information applies to you.

This privacy policy is provided in sections in the hope that it will make it easier for you to access the information you need.

. Who we are The Bat Conservation Trust (“BCT”) is a registered charity in England and Wales (1012361) and in Scotland (SC040116). Company Limited by Guarantee, Registered in England No: 2712823.

BCT respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data in a way that respects your individual rights while enabling us to continue working to protect bats and the landscapes on which they rely.

This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

2. Your Rights The GDPR / DPA 2018 provides the following rights for individuals:

The right to be informed
The right of access
The right to rectification
The right to erasure
The right to restrict processing
The right to data portability
The right to object
Rights related to automated decision making including profiling

Summaries of these rights are explained below but further information and details on limitations can be found at https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulationgdpr/?template=pdf&patch=208#link21

You can exercise your rights by emailing us at [email protected]

Your rights in summary:

a) Right of to be informed (about our processing) You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data. We will provide additional information at the time we collect your personal data from you including our purposes for processing your personal data, our retention periods for that personal data, and who it will be shared with. Where proportionate we will subsequently provide you with additional information about the categories of data and the source if we obtain your data from a third party.

b) Right of access (what data do we hold about you and how do we process it?) You have the right to access information we hold about you and ask us supplementary information about:

The categories of data we are processing
The purposes of the data processing
Under what lawful basis we are processing those data
The third parties to whom the data may be disclosed
How long we will store your data (or the criteria used to determine that period)
Your other rights regarding our use of your data

c) Right to rectification (correcting your data) You have the right to request we correct any inaccurate personal data we hold about you.

d) Right to erasure (right to be forgotten) You can ask us to erase any personal data we hold about you, which we will do without undue delay where it is no longer necessary for us to hold the data for the purposes for which they were processed or where the processing was based on your consent and there is no further legitimate interest in continuing to process the data. There are certain circumstances where we are unable to erase data such as if we need to comply with a legal obligation but we will explain this to you in our response.

e) Right to restrict processing (limiting use of your data) You can ask us to restrict or suppress your personal data if you have accuracy concerns while we verify the accuracy of the data, where we no longer require the data but you need it retained for certain legal claims or you have raised certain concerns over the lawful basis for the processing.

f) Right to data portability (to take your data elsewhere) You have the right to data portability depending on our purposes and lawful basis for processing your data.

g) Right to object (object to some processing) You have the right to object to processing of your personal data depending on our purposes and lawful basis for processing that data. You have an absolute right to stop your data being used for direct marketing.

h) Right to withdraw consent (if applicable) Where your personal data is processed using consent as the lawful basis, you have the right to withdraw consent at any time. You will be informed about the ways you can withdraw your consent at the point of data collection. If we do not have another legal basis we will stop processing your data. If we do have another legal basis we may continue processing your data subject to your legal rights.

3. Existence of automated decision-making

We don’t do any automated decision-making or automated profiling, but if we did, you would have the right to ask us to explain the logic behind any such decisions and for the decision to be reviewed by a human being, if the decision had an effect on your rights or freedoms.

4. Security of personal data We have technical and organisational procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect. Although we will do everything we can to keep your data secure, please remember that no transmission of information over the internet is 100% secure, and we cannot guarantee the security of such data. You are responsible for keeping the passwords you use for accessing our websites or blog confidential.

5. The right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority Initially please contact BCT so we have a chance to address your concerns: please contact BCT’s Data Protection Lead: Peter Crome If BCT has not resolved your concern within a reasonable amount of time or if you are not happy with the decision, you can raise the matter with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office via live chat or by phoning 0303 123 1113.

Your choices

You can choose not to provide us with personal data – you can use our website but we will not be able to process transactions without personal data. You can turn off cookies in your browser settings – you can block and delete cookies through your browser settings. You can still use our website but some areas will not work effectively.

You can ask us not to use your data for marketing – we will inform you if we intend to use your data for marketing and ask your consent. You can remove your consent by emailing us at [email protected]

7. Data collection through our website

We are collecting data and/or you are providing it whenever you browse our website; communicate with us via telephone, email or web forms; use our services; register for our events, enter into contracts with us; or when you opt into marketing messages.

For most data collection, such as our E-Bulletin, donations, membership, online enquiry form and our blogposts, we will provide you with additional privacy information at the point of collection.

The use of the sales pages is possible without any providing personal data; however, if you want to learn more or enroll on a course, processing of your personal data will become necessary. If the processing of personal data is necessary and there is no other statutory basis for such processing that we have communicated to you, we generally obtain consent from you at the point of collection. At the point of collection we will inform you of the type and purpose of data processing and how long we will retain your data.

8. Cookies

We use cookies. A cookie is a very small text file placed on your computer's hard drive (by the website server) when you visit certain web pages. It is associated with the computer that you are using and it cannot deliver viruses.

The BCT website uses some cookies - for example, cookies are used to save you from entering your data on multiple occasions when downloading more than one publication. If you disable the use of cookies in your browser, we cannot guarantee that all parts of the site will work. These may be ‘session’ cookies which delete themselves after you leave our website, or ‘persistent’ cookies which help us to recognise you when you return. We use no third-party cookies.

Through the use of cookies, BCT can provide the users of this website with more user-friendly services that would not be possible without the cookie setting. You can typically block or delete cookies through browser settings on your computer. First party cookies include:

Google: _utmb, _utmc, _utmt, _utmz and _utma cookies allow us to count the page visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site.
PHPSESSID – a session cookie We also have third-party requests which is a request to a website that is not bats.org.uk These include requests to:
Twitter for content from our twitter feed
Google for fonts
Our website host

9. Routine erasure and blocking of personal data

We will process and store your personal data only as long as is necessary to achieve the purpose of processing or as is necessary to comply with other laws. Retention periods will be explained at the point of data collection.

10. Policy review

We will review our privacy information annually and update as necessary. If we plan to use personal data for a new purpose, we will update our privacy information and communicate the changes with you before we start any new processing.