Privacy Policy

Your personal information and what we do with it

The Victorian Society is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. The Society is ‘data controller’ of the personal information which you submit to us, and is subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force on 25 May 2018.

The purpose of this Privacy Notice is to fulfil the Society’s obligations under the GDPR with regard to providing you with information on how we process your personal information, how we use it and what your rights are in relation to it.

Non-members

We hold personal information on non-members who interact with the Society in various ways.

The Society sends out a free e-newsletter to any member of the public who signs up for it. This involves holding email addresses and names. The e-newsletter is sent out approximately monthly. Any recipient of the e-newsletter may opt-out of it at any time, and their details will then be deleted from the e-newsletter database, which is run by Campaign Monitor.

We hold details of non-members who purchase publications or attend Society events. These are held on our membership database. They include names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers. They are automatically deleted from our database a year after the most recent transaction that a non-member has had with the Society. The financial information about the purchases is still retained, as it is needed for accounting purposes, but it is anonymised so that it cannot be linked to an individual.

Members

What personal information we have

We hold some or all of the following personal information about you:

  • Name
  • Contact details (including email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses)
  • Some financial information but we do not retain card details, where these are provided.
  • Date of birth where given
Where we get your personal information from

We collect your information in a few limited ways:

  • Directly from you, where you have filled out an online or paper membership form
Our legal basis for using your personal information

We have a legitimate interest in properly administering the Society and in fulfilling our contractual obligations to you as a member of the Society. Accordingly, personal information collected by us may be used for the following purposes:

  • Administration of membership
  • Claiming Gift Aid
  • Communicating with you via membership-related mailings such as your renewal reminder, e-newsletters, the magazine, the Journal, and very occasional appeal letters.

Sharing your personal information with others

We do not sell your personal information to other organisations. Where applicable, we share your information with the following organisations set out below:

  • HMRC, to collect Gift Aid
  • Hall-McCartney, the printer of our magazine, in order to post the magazine to you
  • Bottomline, in order to collect subscriptions by Direct Debit
  • Centigen Soft, which hosts and provides support services for our website and membership portal database. The database and website are hosted in the UK, but support staff are based in the Republic of Georgia, and work on the database and website is usually carried out there.

How long we keep your personal information for

We hold your information for as long as necessary for each purpose we use it for. For membership data, we retain it for as long as you are a member of the Society and for a period of six years after your last interaction with us (for accounting, Gift Aid claims and record-keeping purposes).

Your rights in relation to your personal information

You have rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. You have the right to:

  • Request access to your information and to obtain information about how we process it
  • Make a request to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate, and completed if it is incomplete
  • Request that we erase your personal information
  • Request that we restrict the processing of your information
  • Receive from us the personal information we hold about you which you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you
  • Object to us processing your personal information

You can exercise all these rights free of charge. Please note that the rights above are not absolute, and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply, for example, if we can show that our processing is necessary for a lawful purpose set out in this Privacy Notice.

Contact and further information

If you have any queries about this Privacy Notice or how we process this personal information, or if you wish to exercise any of your rights under applicable law, you may contact our Administrator:

  • By email: [email protected]
  • By post: The Victorian Society, 1 Priory Gardens, London W4 1TT.

If you have concerns about the way we handle your personal information, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office or raise a complaint at ico.org.uk/concerns or call its helpline on 0303 123 1113.

You can find out more about your rights under applicable data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner’s Office website: ico.org.uk.