Introduction
Your privacy is important to COPS. This privacy statement sets out how we’ll protect your data, in line with the current legislation, through appropriate organisation and technical security measures/processes. It also describes your rights in relation to that data.
COPS reserves the right to make changes to this statement as necessary. When we do so we’ll make previous versions available on request so you can see what these changes are. If any such changes alter key aspects of the notice or its meaning we’ll notify you of those changes in advance. We encourage you to occasionally review this page for information on our latest practices.
This privacy notice specifically covers eligibility and communications. Should you access services, we’ll seek any additional necessary explicit consent and provide an appropriate privacy notice.
1. How COPS collects personal data
You can give us your personal data in a number of ways. For example, when your register yourself or eligible family members with COPS through our website, by phone or by post, sign up to attend an event or when enquiring about our work.
When we collect data from you we’ll ensure it’s adequate for the purpose and never excessive. We’d like to send you marketing communications, including the COPS Newsletter, to keep you up to date with the wide range of support available to you, but we’ll only do so if you provide us with the appropriate consent.
For us to be able to send you marketing communications electronically, we must have your active consent to do so – you must opt in to this type of communication. For us to be able to send you marketing communications by post, we must have your passive consent – you must not have opted out of this type of communication.
You can change your mind and opt out of either type of communication at any time, by following the directions included in those communications.
Consent provided for electronic communication will expire when you opt out, or after 5 years from the date it has been provided. You can renew your consent at any time.
Consent provided for postal communication will expire only when you opt out.
2. How COPS uses your personal data
Eligibility verification – as a charity supporting the partners and families of police officers and police staff who have lost their lives in relation to the police duty, COPS has a legitimate interest in retaining your personal data in order to verify eligibility for our services (this does not affect your right to object to this type of processing)
Marketing – we send electronic and physical communications. We record your mailing preferences and use profiling techniques. When profiling – information such as your registered contact address is matched to a profile. This will indicate for example, whether you live in a remote rural area or a city centre location. We will use this information to reduce the quantity of communications that we send and to make sure they are as relevant as possible. In order to make our online advertising more relevant and maximise visibility to only those eligible for COPS services, we’ll display advertisements on 3rd party sites such as Facebook using emails registered with us to highlight user accounts.
Research and surveys – in order to continually improve the services we provide, we may contact you directly or through selected research companies in order to conduct voluntary surveys, recording and analysing this information to improve the quality and effectiveness of what we do
Gift Aid declarations – in the event you make a donation to COPS and authorise Gift Aid, we’ll process necessary data in line with guidance set out by the Financial Conduct Authority and other UK legislation
Management reporting and business planning – we produce internal documents in order to monitor our own activities
Data validation – COPS strives for the highest level of accuracy in the data we hold. This includes contacting you directly to check the data we hold is accurate. We also use appropriate 3rd parties to ensure that the data we retain about you is accurate. An example of this is where we validate the address we have for you with Royal Mail’s change of address database to ensure we have up-to-date contact details. This minimises the possibility of sending information to you at an incorrect address
Disclosures required by law – the law can require the disclosure of information for various reasons, in such circumstances COPS must comply with those requests
3. Sharing
In the course of business COPS may share information with carefully selected organisations we engage with to provide certain services. These include:
• Research organisations
• Marketing organisations
• Data validation services
• Data storage services, including cloud storage and data management
• Event organisers/training facilitators
• Financial organisations such as banks and building societies
Please note that outside of the EU member states, privacy laws may not be equivalent to those provided by the GDPR. In such countries, COPS will still handle data as described in this document, ensuring appropriate security measures in line with legislation.
4. Protecting your data
COPS ensures the highest levels of security, both technical and organisational when collecting and processing data, and when your data is in transit. This is regularly reviewed to ensure those measures remain effective and up-to-date with current technologies.
5. Retention of data
To ensure we’re able to confirm eligibility for our services, we retain basic data provided to us. It’s in the legitimate interests of COPS to be able to do so and to ensure that we can provide lifelong support. For this reason, we’ll retain these records indefinitely/for life unless you object or request to engage your right to be forgotten.
6. Cookies and other forms of online tracking
When visiting COPS website, we may use features which collect your IP address and data on which pages you are visiting on our site. We may also issue cookies to enable certain features to function properly, track traffic on our website or improve user experience in other ways. Cookies place certain information on your device to allow this to happen. This allows us to tailor your experience and electronic marketing to what we think you want to see.
7. Social media
Social media features and widgets are either hosted by a 3rd party or hosted directly on our site. Your interactions with these features are governed by the privacy policy of the company providing that service.
Depending on your own settings or the policies of social media and messaging services such as Facebook or Twitter, you may be providing COPS and other organisations access to certain information. You should check with those services to ensure you’re happy with that information being shared.
8. Children
If and when we collect information from children, we’ll process that information in an age appropriate manner and seek consent from a parent and guardian. A child is a person aged under 18.
9. Categories of data we collect
• Personal data from Survivors: title, name, date of birth, gender, signature, name of fallen police officer, relationship to fallen police officer, date of police officer’s death, police officer’s police force
• Personal data from other individuals: title, name, date of birth, gender, signature, job title, employer
• Contact data: postal address, email address, telephone number, communications preferences
10. Rights
Current legislation provides the following rights for individuals in relation to their personal data:
1. The right to be informed
2. The right of access
3. The right to rectification
4. The right to erasure
5. The right to restrict processing
6. The right to data portability
7. The right to object
8. Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
To find out more about what these rights mean for you, refer to the Information Commissioner’s website: https://ico.org.uk/
11. Contact
If you have any questions regarding this statement or you wish to discuss your data, you can contact COPS Data Protection Representative at admin@ukcops.org or by writing to:
Care Of Police Survivors, Victoria House, Cygnet Drive, Tamworth, Staffordshire B79 7RU.
Version 1.0a (reviewed)
17 February 2020