Privacy statement

The Tree Council is strongly committed to protecting the privacy of users. As you browse our website and whenever you communicate with us, we collect information. It deepens our understanding of what works and what doesn’t, which helps make our communications more effective. The more information we have, the more efficiently we are able to operate. We take protecting your privacy very seriously and will always take all reasonable steps within our power to make sure your information is safe.

This Privacy Statement outlines how we use and store information about you, and also how we meet the requirements of the latest data protection regulations, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (2018). By using the The Tree Council site, you consent to the data practices described in this statement. Please read this policy carefully, and any other documents referred to in this policy, to understand how we collect, use and store your personal information.

By providing us with your personal information, you consent to the collection and use of any information you provide in accordance with this privacy policy. We may update this policy from time to time without notice to you, so please check it regularly, particularly if you are sending personal information to us. If you have any questions please write to us at info@treecouncil.org.uk.

• The Tree Council (“We”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
• If you are asked to provide information when using this Website, it will only be used in the ways described in this privacy statement.
• This statement is updated from time to time. The latest version is published on this page.
• This Website privacy policy was updated on: 26/10/2023.
• If you have any questions about this statement, please email info@treecouncil.org.uk or write to us at: The Tree Council, 14 Dock Offices, Surrey Quays Road, London, SE16 2XU.
• For the purpose of the GDPR, the data controller is The Tree Council of 14 Dock Offices, Surrey Quays Road, London, SE16 2XU.

The type of the information we may collect about you falls into two categories:

1. Information about your visits and behaviour on our Website, which is used to ensure that the Website is meeting the needs of our visitors and help us improve our service to visitors; and
2. Personal information which you provide and give us explicit permission to collect and process in order to keep you informed about our work and services.

When you access our Website, we may process certain information you provide automatically. This may include your IP address, browser type, where you visited on the site, how long you stayed there, when you left and where you visited the site from. This data is processed to understand how users use our site, to improve the experience on the Website and, in the event of breach of security, may be used to aid detection.

We encourage you to review the privacy statements of Web sites you choose to link to from The Tree Council so that you can understand how those Web sites collect, use and share your information. The Tree Council is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on Web sites outside of the The Tree Council and The Tree Council family of Web sites.

The information we request for this sign-up form will only be used to send you a monthly newsletter.

The legal basis for processing this information is data subject (your) consent (as described in this Privacy Statement) and the data we collect falls under what is called in GDPR legislation the ‘legitimate interest’ of marketing communications.

If you contact us directly, for example to enquire about becoming a Tree Warden, or about our Membership Scheme, we may keep a record of that correspondence to demonstrate our compliance with the GDPR. For example, if you get in touch and ask us to update your details, we will make a note of your request and the date on which your data was updated. If you get in touch and request to be ‘forgotten’, (deleted), we will deactivate you as a contact, and make note of the date this was requested and completed.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access, such as using secure online programmes. These systems are MailChimp, Donorfy for data management, CAF Donate for donations, and WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

We will never lease or sell your personal information to third parties. We will never distribute personal information to third parties unless we have your consent or the law requires us to or in order to enforce or apply our terms and conditions (see below).

An example of an instance where we might seek your consent might be if you want to sign up as a Tree Warden volunteer, and you give us permission to pass your details to your local Tree Warden Co-ordinator, who will be an employee of the local council or may be an independent volunteer like yourself.

Any personal information we hold about you is stored and processed under our data protection policy, in line with the GDPR (2018).

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by Websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make Websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Our Website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our Website, recognise and count the total number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our site when are using it. This information helps us to improve our services generally and to provide visitors with a good experience when browsing our site. For example, by understanding which areas are of particular interest and ensuring that visitors are always able to find what they are looking for.

The cookies we use do not allow us to identify you personally.

If you do not wish to accept cookies you are able to decline them by altering the settings in your browser. All browsers are different but the ‘Help’ section of your browser should explain what you need to do. You can access your browser’s help section by pressing the ‘F1’ key while browsing.

If you do choose to block all cookies (including essential cookies) using your browser’s settings, you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all Websites, visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.