The privacy and security of your personal information is very important to us.
Your personal data is in safe hands with Forestry England. This privacy policy explains how and why we use your personal data.
We:
- use your personal data to help us provide a great experience for you. This includes tailoring the information we share to ensure you find it relevant, useful and timely.
- respect your privacy and work hard to ensure we meet strict regulatory requirements.
We don’t:
- sell your personal data to third parties.
This privacy policy explains what data we collect as well as how and why we use your personal data.
The policy applies to you if you’re a member, donor, volunteer, tenant, customer or employee or use any of our services, visit our website, use our mobile apps, email, call or write to us. In certain circumstances we may also provide an extra privacy notice, which will always refer to this page.
Changes to the privacy policy statement
We’ll always protect your personal data and as part of this, we periodically review and update our privacy notice so that you can see how we use your data and what your options are.
The most up to date statement will always be published on our website, with the date it was published. This statement was published 5 November 2024.
Index
1. Who are 'we'?
In this policy, whenever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ or ‘Forestry England', it refers to Forestry England which is part of the Forestry Commission, a non-ministerial government department, and we share a personal information charter which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/forestry-commission/about/personal-information-charter.
If you have any questions relating to this privacy policy or how we use your personal data, please send them to informationrights@forestrycommission.gov.uk or post them to the Data Protection Officer, Forestry Commission, 620 Bristol Business Park, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1EJ.
2. What personal data do we collect?
We will only collect and use the personal data we need. If possible, we’ll make it clear at the point of collection why we are collecting it. If it is not possible to give full details, we would refer people to this Policy on our website. The personal data may include your name, title, address, date of birth, age, gender, employment status, demographic information, email address, telephone number/s, photographs, video images, usernames, car index number and passwords.
We may automatically collect information as you use our digital services such as the apps and website. This may include the pages you have visited, information about the device or browser you are using, any errors you encountered and data relating to any online transactions such as the order number for memberships, donations, renewals, ticket sales, car parking and permissions.
In whatever way you interact with us, such interaction may create other items of personal data. This could include details of how you’ve helped us by volunteering or by supporting our campaigns and other activities including permissions to use or run events in the forests. If you decide to donate to us, we’ll also keep records of when and how much you give to support our cause.
2.1 Special Category Data
We sometimes must collect and use ‘special category data’. This is defined as information about racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or other similar beliefs, trade union membership, physical or mental health, sexual life and criminal allegations, proceedings or convictions. At times we’ll collect sensitive personal data to help us monitor equal opportunities and to research whether we deliver great experiences for everyone, regardless of their background or beliefs, but this is only ever analysed at an aggregate rather than individual level.
2.2 Volunteer
If you’re a Forestry England directed volunteer, we may collect extra information about you such as, emergency contact and relevant medical details, training and pre-engagement checks such as Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) and references. For our partnership and third-party volunteer groups, we will also collect relevant details for the group or individual to support safe and enjoyable volunteer activity; this may also include insurance details, training and qualification certificates.
We will keep this information with your consent or for legal or contractual reasons, including in the event of a legal claim, and for safeguarding purposes.
2.3 CCTV and video surveillance
Some of our locations, properties and vehicles have Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), dashcams, bodycams, ANPR technology and wildlife cameras which you or your car may be recorded on when you visit.
These devices are used to provide security and protect both our members and visitors and Forestry England, to enable parking fees to be paid and to watch wildlife. Recordings will only be viewed when necessary (for example, to detect or prevent crime) and footage is stored for a set period, after which it is recorded over.
Forestry England complies with the the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner’s Surveillance Camera Code of Practice and the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on CCTV and video surveillance, and we put up notices so you know when CCTV is used.
2.4 Incidents and accidents
If you are involved in any form of incident or accident which causes injury or damage (or is a near miss), if this has involved our equipment or is on land or in premises under our control, we will record details of you and the incident. If you witness any such event, we will also ask for your details. This is so that we can investigate how it happened and take steps to prevent any re-occurrence. In serious cases we may also have a legal duty to report the event to the Health and Safety Executive or the police.
3. Children’s personal data
3.1 Employment and volunteering opportunities for under18s
We don’t want to exclude under-18s from exciting opportunities to support our work through employment opportunities such as work experience or apprenticeships or by volunteering. We may therefore need to collect and store their personal information as set out in the volunteering and employment sections of this document and in line with our Safeguarding Policy and procedures. For individuals participating in work experience or volunteering under the age of 18, we will also hold parental consent/registration forms, work experience application forms and photograph consent forms as required.
4. What else do we generate from your personal data?
We conduct research and analysis on the information we hold which can in turn create further personal data. For example, by analysing your interests and involvement with our work we may be able to build a profile which helps us decide which of our communications are likely to interest you. The sections on Research and Profiling give more detail about how we use information for targeted advertising, including giving you more relevant digital content. We use this information to identify ways in which you could support Forestry England and invite you to do so if appropriate.
We may also host encrypted personal data on Facebook to ensure you only see relevant, personalised and interesting content from those organisations.
5. How we use your personal data
We’ll only use your personal data on relevant lawful grounds as permitted by the Data Protection Act 2018, UK General Data Protection Regulations and Privacy of Electronic Communication Regulations. We will use your personal data for the purpose or purposes outlined at the time you gave it to us. This may have been during a sale, when signing up for membership or when simply visiting our website.
We use this information:
- to provide the service, product/s or essential information you expect from us;
- where you have given us your consent to do so, to keep you informed about visiting our forests and woodlands; volunteering with us; membership; events; conservation work; fundraising; competitions and our work;
- to better understand how we can improve our services for you.
We may need to provide your personal data if we’re asked by the police, or any other regulatory or government authority investigating suspected illegal activities or for safeguarding purposes.
Below are the main ways we will use your data. These all depend on the nature of our relationship with you and how you interact with and use our various services, websites and activities.
5.1 Providing our services to you
Membership
We use the personal data you provide as a member to fulfill your membership, sending renewal information to annual members by mail or email. It’s also used to check who you are when you contact us or sign up for an online account. We post a welcome pack to members including your membership card (and where applicable car parking pass).
Ticket Sales
We process customer data to fulfil event, activity and admission bookings. Your data will be used to communicate with you throughout the process, including confirming we’ve received your order and payment, to confirm dispatch, to clarify where we might need more detail to fulfil an order or booking, or to resolve issues that might arise with your order or booking. For some events we may hold dietary requirements. We may collect additional personal information for running or sporting participation events.
Tenants
If you are a tenant or partner of Forestry England and/or hold a licence for some form of land use activity, we will use your personal information to fulfil our contract with you. This may include, but is not limited to, sending you rental invoices, tenant and landlord and other correspondence, and contacting you with information about issues or activities relating to your lease or license. We will not pass your details to third parties except where you have provided explicit consent or where we need to do so to fulfill our landlord responsibilities, for example if we need to send your address to a maintenance contractor so they can carry out repairs.
5.2 Our digital services
Location data
We collect location data in the form of postcodes on our web forms/database, which we use to send more locally relevant communications. The type of things we may use your location for include:
- sorting search results for forests, activities, or events by your location.
- making our homepage relevant to you and your location.
You can change your location settings at any time in your device or computer settings.
YouTube API services
We use YouTube API services to display video across our website. If you choose to watch the content you will be bound by the YouTube Terms of Service. Find out more information on Google Privacy policy.
5.3 How we share your data
We will not sell your personal information to a third party. We may share your information with partners to allow them to perform services on our behalf. Where applicable we have contracts in place with our suppliers, which require them to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (or PECR) and to have robust systems and processes to protect the security of your information.
We may provide your email address to digital advertising or social media companies who work on our behalf, such as Facebook and Instagram. This is so we can reach you and others like you with information about how you can support our cause. This data is always provided in an encrypted format and is deleted immediately after use. If you don’t want to see targeted advertising from us on social media, please refer to the instructions provided by the social media site, for example on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Google.
Below are some examples of the types of organisations with which we may share your data:
- advertising partners – to enable us to ensure our advertising is relevant to the recipients.
- analytics partners – to enable us to track the effectiveness of our website or mobile apps.
- social media partners – so that we can effectively communicate with our supporters on social media platforms.
- website and app partners – to help us develop websites and apps that give our customers the best possible online experience.
For further detail on the processes used to share your information please refer to our cookie policy.
5.4 Cookies and links to third party websites
Cookies
Cookies are small text files stored on your computer when you visit certain websites. We use first-party cookies (cookies that we have set, that can only be read by our website) to personalise your online experience. We also use third-party cookies (cookies that are set by an organisation other than the owner of the website, in this case Forestry England) to help us measure and analyse the use of our website and to provide targeted advertising. You can control the use of cookies via your browser.
How do I change my cookie settings?
Cookies can be controlled by your web browser settings. Whether our cookies are used will depend on your browser settings, so you are in control. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, please use the following links:
- Microsoft Edge cookies information
- Chrome cookies information
- Firefox cookies information
- Safari cookies information
Further information on cookies and how to manage your cookies can be found in Forestry England’s cookie policy.
Links to other websites
Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks and advertisers. If you follow a link to any of these websites, they will have their own privacy policies for which we do not accept any responsibility or liability.
5.5 Marketing communications
If you agree to receive marketing information from us you can always change your mind later. For more on withdrawing your consent, please see the information in section 9 under your data protection rights. We’ll never share your information with companies outside Forestry England who want to use it for marketing (unless you have explicitly consented to this via a specific opt-in).
5.6 Fundraising, donations and legacy giving
Please contact: giving@forestryengland.uk
5.7 Managing volunteers
For our Forestry England directed volunteers we need to use your personal data to manage your volunteering, from the moment you enquire to the time you decide to stop volunteering with us.
This could include:
- contacting you about a role you’ve applied for or which we think you might be interested in.
- recording tasks / shifts you have completed.
- recognising your contribution.
- asking for your opinions on your volunteering experience.
- your emergency contact details.
- relevant medical details so that we can support you in completing your volunteer role.
- training and qualifications relevant to your volunteer role.
- inclusion and diversity data.
- relevant correspondence to support the management of your volunteer activity.
- pre engagement checks including Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) and personal references.
- processing expense claims you’ve made.
For those who support the nations forests volunteering through partners and third-party agreements, we will also need to use personal data to support the volunteering activity.
- key contact details.
- training and qualifications for individual members of the group relevant to the tasks completed on the nation’s forests.
- insurance details.
- if this is an individual, we would hold personal details.
- if a community group we will hold key individuals’ personal details.
- if an organisation leading volunteers we will hold business details.
5.8 Research
We carry out research with our supporters, customers, staff and volunteers to get feedback on their experience with us. We use this feedback to improve the experiences we offer and ensure we know what you find relevant and interesting.
If you choose to take part in research, we’ll tell you when you start what data we will collect, why and how we’ll use it. All the research we conduct is optional and you can choose not to take part. For some of our research we may ask you to provide sensitive personal data (for example, ethnicity). You don’t have to provide this data, and we also provide a ‘prefer not to say’ option. We only use it at an aggregate rather than individual level (for example, for reporting on equal opportunities).
We may give some of your personal data (for example, contact information) only with your consent, to a research agency so that they can carry out research on our behalf.
5.9 Profiling
We know it’s important to our supporters that we use our resources in a responsible and cost-effective way. Therefore, we use targeting to help us understand our supporters and make sure that:
- our communications (for example, emails) and services (for example, our website) are relevant, personalised and interesting to you.
- our services meet the needs of our supporters.
To do this we’ll analyse how you interact with us (for example, on our website or at the places where you use your membership card) and use both geographic and demographic information to let you know what’s happening in your local area and understand your interests.
The personal information we collect includes transactional information (for example, order number) for memberships, donations, renewals and event tickets.
Much of the information we collect is aggregated, which means we look at it as a whole rather than at an individual level. However, we may also collect some personal data to personalise your experience, tailor our marketing campaigns to your interests, and ensure the website is functioning as we want it to.
We may also use personal data to create profiles which help us target our communications, to you and to other people. For example, we may use your membership data to ensure you don’t see adverts about membership online. Or we may use your personal data to find online users with a similar profile to you who may also be interested in our products or services.
We may sometimes use third parties to capture some of our data on our behalf, but only where we are confident that the third party will treat your data securely, in accordance with our terms and in line with the requirements set out in the UK GDPR.
We won’t profile anyone under the age of 18.
5.10 Use of special category data
As explained in Section 2, in certain limited circumstances, we may legally collect and process sensitive personal data without requiring the explicit consent of a volunteer.
(a) We will process data about health where it is necessary, for example, to make any necessary arrangements or adjustments to the workplace in the case of disability. This processing will not normally happen without the volunteer’s knowledge and, where necessary, consent.
(b) We will process data about, but not limited to, volunteers racial and ethnic origin, their sexual orientation and their religious beliefs, but only where they have volunteered such data and only for the purpose of monitoring and upholding our equal opportunities policies.
(c) We will hold data about a volunteer's Disclosure Barring Service (DBS) Check as necessary.
6. How we secure your data
We want to keep our customers, members, volunteers and contractors safe, so the security of your data and of our information systems is incredibly important to us.
External threats to our data security are changing all the time, so we have a robust process for assessing, managing and protecting all of our new and existing systems to ensure they are up to date and secure. What’s more, we follow a ‘defence in depth’ security model, which means that your data is protected by multiple layers of security. Our staff and relevant volunteers complete mandatory information security and data protection training to reinforce their responsibilities and requirements.
When you trust us with your information, we will keep it secure to maintain your confidentiality. Whenever your information is stored or transferred, we use strong encryption to minimise the risk of unauthorised access or disclosure. You can check this when you enter information on our website by right clicking on the padlock icon in the address bar.
6.1 Storing information
Forestry England operations are based in the UK, and we store most of your data within the European Union (EU). Some organisations which provide services to us may transfer your data outside the European Economic Area, but we’ll only allow this if your data is adequately protected. Some of our systems are provided by US companies and while it is our policy that we prefer data hosting and processing to remain in the EU, it may be that using their products results in your data being transferred to the USA. However, we only allow this when we are certain your data will be adequately protected.
6.2 Payment card security
Forestry England is compliant with PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), we ensure that our IT systems do not directly collect or store your payment card information, such as the full 16-digit number on the front of the card or the security code on the back.
Our online payment solutions are carried out using a ‘payment gateway’ (such as Capita) which is a direct connection to a payment service provided by a bank. This means that when you input card data into the payment page, you are communicating directly with the bank and the bank passes your payment to us. This means that your payment card information is handled by the bank and not processed or held by us.
7. Disclosing and sharing information
We do not sell or share your personal information for other organisations to use.
When we allow third parties acting on behalf of Forestry England to access your information, we will always have complete control of what they see, how long they see it for and what they are allowed to do with it. We will only provide what is appropriate and proportionate.
Where necessary, we may share the personal data we collect and process with:
- third party research organisations.
- third party IT providers, for example who host the website or provide IT support.
Also, under strictly controlled conditions, we will share personal data with:
- contractors.
- service providers.
- advisors.
- agents.
We may also disclose your personal information to third parties in order to comply with a legal obligation, or to enforce other agreement. It may also be used to protect the rights, property or safety of Forestry England and our members, supporters and visitors. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations to protect against fraud.
8. Keeping your information
We will only use and store your information for as long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. How long it will be stored for depends on the information in question, what it is being used for and, sometimes, statutory legal requirements.
9. Your data protection rights
Individuals have certain rights over their personal data and data controllers are responsible for fulfilling these rights. Where we decide how and why personal data is processed, we are a data controller and have provided further information about the rights that individuals have and how to exercise them below.
9.1 Access to personal data
You have a right of access to personal data held by us as a data controller. This right may be exercised by emailing us at informationrights@forestryengland.uk, or write to us at: Forestry England. 620 Bristol Business Park, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1EJ.
You may be asked to provide the following details:
- The personal information you want to access.
- Where it is likely to be held.
- The date range of the information you wish to access.
We will need you to confirm your identity by providing additional documentation. If we hold personal information about you, we will give you a copy of the information in an understandable format together with an explanation of why we hold and use it. We will aim to respond to any requests for information promptly, and in any event within the legally required time limit of one month. This time frame may be extended by up to two months if your request is particularly complex.
9.2 Withdrawal of consent
Where you have given consent for Forestry England to use your personal data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. You also have the right to ask Forestry England to stop using your personal data for direct marketing purposes. To stop receiving an email from a Forestry England marketing list, please click on the unsubscribe link www.forestryengland.uk/unsubscribe. To withdraw marketing consent please contact customerrelations@forestryengland.uk.
9.3 Amendment of personal data
We want you to remain in control of your personal data. Members or ticket sales can update or amend personal data by logging onto your online account.
When practically possible, once we are informed that any personal data processed by us is no longer accurate, we will make corrections based on your updated information.
Alternatively, you may email us at informationrights@forestryengland.uk, or write to us at Forestry England. 620 Bristol Business Park Coldharbour Lane Bristol BS16 1EJ.
The verification, update or amendment of your personal data will take place within one calendar month of receipt of your request.
9.4 Other data subject rights
This privacy policy is intended to provide information about what personal data we collect about you and how it is used. As well as rights of access and amendment, referred to above, individuals may have other rights in relation to the personal data we hold, such as a right to erasure/deletion (‘right to be forgotten’), to restrict or object to our processing of personal data and the right to data portability. There may be other legal reasons why we need to process your personal data, but please tell us if you don’t think we should be using it. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please send an email to informationrights@forestryengland.uk, or write to us at Forestry England 620 Bristol Business Park, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol, BS16 1EJ
10. Access to Information
As a public authority Forestry England is subject to the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations.
11. What to do if you're not happy
In the first instance, please talk directly to us, so we can learn from and resolve any problem or query. You can send an email with the details of any data protection complaint to informationrights@forestryengland.uk. We will respond to any complaints we receive. You have the right to contact the Information Commissioner's Office (“ICO”) (the UK data protection regulator). For further information on your rights and how to complain to the ICO, please refer to the ICO website.
About this privacy policy
This privacy policy applies solely to the personal data collected by Forestry England. We’ll amend this privacy policy from time to time to ensure it remains up to date, shows how and why we use your personal data, and reflects any new legal requirements. Please visit our website to keep up to date with any changes. The current version will always be posted on our website.
This privacy policy was last updated 5 November 2024.