Skip to the content
Join Login to EfC Digital Contact us

Privacy Notice

Employers for Carers is committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what we do with it, no matter how you interact with us. That’s whether you join as a member, buy our products and services, subscribe to our newsletter or want to learn more about what we do.

We are committed to using your personal information in accordance with our responsibilities. We are required to provide you with the information in this Privacy Notice under applicable law which includes:

  • the Data Protection Act 1998, which will be replaced by the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 from 25 May 2018
  • the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

We won’t do anything with your information you wouldn’t reasonably expect.

Processing of your personal information is carried out by or on behalf of Carers UK, registered as a charity in England and Wales (246329), Scotland (SC039307); and Carers UK Trading Ltd registered as a company in England and Wales (06034910) (collectively ‘Carers UK Group’).

This notice, together with our website terms and conditions and our cookies policy tells you about how we collect, use and protect your personal information.

If you have any queries about our Privacy Notice, please get in touch with our Information
Governance team:
Email [email protected]
Phone 020 7378 4945
Post Data Protection Advisor
Carers UK
20 Great Dover Street
London
SE1 4LX

How and when we collect information about you

When you directly give us information

We may collect and store information about you when you interact with us. For example, this could be when you:

  • submit an enquiry
  • subscribe to our newsletter
  • join as a member
  • create an account on our websites
  • purchase our products and services
  • register for an event
  • participate in our training
  • give us feedback
  • make a complaint
  • enter into a contract with us

When you indirectly give us information

When you interact with us on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn we may also obtain some personal information about you. The information we receive will depend on the privacy preferences you have set on each platform and the privacy policies of each platform. To change your settings on these platforms, please refer to their privacy notices.

We may obtain information about your visit to our site, for example the pages you visit and how you navigate the site, by using cookies. Please visit our cookies policy for information on this.

What information we might collect

When you engage with us by phone, mail, in person or online, we may collect information about you (referred to in this Privacy Notice as 'personal information'). This may include your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, job title, why you are interested in Employers for Carers, and other information relating to you personally which you may choose to provide to us.

Data protection law recognises that certain types of personal information are more sensitive. This is known as 'sensitive' or 'special category' personal information and covers information revealing racial or ethnic origin, religious or philosophical beliefs and political opinions, trade union membership, genetic or biometric data, information concerning health or data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation.

Sensitive information will only be collected where necessary and only with your explicit consent, for example we may collect sensitive personal information if you choose to tell us about your experiences relating to your caring experience for use in a case study. Clear notices will be provided at the time we collect this information, stating what information is needed, and why.

If you're 16 or under

If you're aged 16 or under, you must get your parent/guardian’s permission before you provide any personal information to us.

How and why we use your information

We will use your personal information for the following purposes:

  • Responding to a request: If you contact us with a query, we may use your personal information to provide you with a response.
  • Direct marketing: We will only send you marketing information by email, text, or phone if you have given us specific consent. If you withdraw your consent and then subsequently opt in to receive marketing information again, then your most recent preference may supersede.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation: We may use your information in order to improve current and future delivery of our work.
  • Transactional purposes: We will need to use your personal information in order to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us for products or services.
  • Providing and developing our website: We may use your personal information to help provide you with access to our website, personalise your experience, and improve and develop it further.
  • Administration: We may use your personal information to record and deal with a complaint, record a request not to receive further marketing information, record what our volunteers have done for us, and for other essential internal record keeping purposes.
  • Research and surveys: We may invite you to participate in surveys or research to help us investigate or specific issues, improve our strategic development, services or website. Participation is always voluntary and no individuals will be identified as a result of this research, unless you consent to us publishing your feedback.
  • Legal, regulatory and tax compliance: When we are subject to a legal obligation, we may process your personal information to fulfil that obligation.
  • Profiling and analysis: We may occasionally for the purposes of our legitimate interests use your personal information to conduct profiling of our members or potential members. This will help us target communications in a more focused, efficient and cost effective way, helping us reduce the chances of members and potential members receiving inappropriate or irrelevant communications. You can object to such use of your personal information for profiling at any time by contacting us at the details set out at the end of this Privacy Notice.

Our profiling and analysis activities can be broken into three categories:

1. Major donor analysis

We may carry out research to determine whether an individual could be a potential major donor. We may use publicly available information from third party sources such as Google; Companies House; published biographies and publicly available LinkedIn profiles.

The type of information we collect can include:

  • career overview
  • gift capacity
  • areas of interest
  • history of giving to us and others
  • how the individual is connected with us and others
  • public information on any philanthropic activities.

2. High value event planning

We may also use profiling to produce short biographies of people who are due to meet with our leadership or attend an event that we may be hosting.

This helps our people to understand more about those we engage with, and their interests or connection to us.

3. Ethical screening and minimising risk

Employers for Carers is owned and operated by Carers UK and as a registered charity, we are subject to a number of legal and regulatory obligations and standards. The public naturally expect charities to operate in an ethical manner and this is integral to developing high levels of trust and demonstrating our integrity.

This means that we may carry out appropriate due diligence and implement robust financial controls to help protect the charity from abuse, fraud and/or money laundering.

We may carry out background checks and due diligence on potential donors or anyone
We may also ethically screen members to minimise risk of creating an association with an individual or organisation that conflicts with our ethos.

Who do we share your information with?

We will only use your information for the purposes for which it was obtained. We will not, under any circumstances, sell or share your personal information with any third party for their own purposes, and you will not receive marketing from any other companies, charities or other organisations as a result of giving your details to us.

We will only share your data for the following purposes:

  1. Third party suppliers: We may need to share your information with data hosting providers or service providers who help us to deliver our products, services or projects. These providers will only act under our instruction and are subject to pre-contract scrutiny and contractual obligations containing strict data protection clauses.
  2. Where legally required: We will comply with requests where disclosure is required by law, for example, we may disclose your personal information to the government for tax investigation purposes, or to law enforcement agencies for the prevention and detection of crime. We may also share your information with the emergency services if we reasonably think there is a risk of serious harm or abuse to you or someone else.

We always aim to ensure that personal information is only used by those third parties for lawful purposes in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

How we protect your information

We use technical and corporate organisational safeguards to ensure that your personal information is secure. We limit access to information on a need-to-know basis and take appropriate measures to ensure that our people are aware that such information is only used in accordance with this Privacy Notice.

We undertake regular reviews of who has access to information that we hold to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors.

Our online forms are always encrypted and our network is protected and routinely monitored.

If you use your credit or debit card to make transaction or booking online, we pass your card details securely to our payment processing partners. We do this in accordance with industry standards and do not store the details on our website.

However, please be aware that there are always inherent risks in sending information by public networks or using public computers and we cannot 100% guarantee the security of data (including personal information) disclosed or transmitted over public networks.

How long will we keep your information?

We will keep your personal information in respect of financial transactions for as long as the law requires us to for tax or accounting purposes (which may be up to six years after a particular transaction).

If you request that we stop processing your personal information for the purpose of marketing we may in some instances need to add your details to a suppression file to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted.

In respect of other personal information, we will retain it for no longer than necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, taking into account guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

International transfers of information

We may, on occasion decide to use the services of a supplier outside the European Economic Area (EEA), which means that your personal information is transferred, processed and stored outside the EEA. You should be aware that, in general, legal protection for personal information in countries outside the EEA may not be equivalent to the level of protection provided in the EEA.

However we take steps to put in place suitable safeguards to protect your personal information when processed by the supplier such as entering into the European Commission approved standard contractual clauses. By submitting your personal information to us you agree to this transfer, storing or processing at a location outside the EEA.

Your rights to your personal information

Data protection legislation gives you the right to request access to personal information about you which is processed by Employers for Carers and to have any inaccuracies corrected.

You also have the right to ask us to erase your personal information, ask us to restrict our processing of your personal information or to object to our processing of your personal information.

If you wish to exercise these rights, please write to us and send it along with copies of two separate identification documents which provide photo identification and confirm your address, such as a passport, driving licence, or utility bill.

Please also provide any additional information that is relevant to the nature of your contact with us, as this will help us to locate your records.

You can send us the documents via post to:
Data Protection Advisor
Carers UK
20 Great Dover Street
London
SE1 4LX

Alternatively email a copy of the form along with scans or photos of your two forms of identification to: [email protected]

We will respond within 30 days, on receipt of your written request and copies of your identification documents.

How to make a complaint or raise a concern

If you would like more information, or have any questions about this policy, to make a formal complaint about our approach to data protection or raise privacy concerns please contact by:

Email [email protected]
Phone 020 7378 4945
Post Carers UK
20 Great Dover Street
London
SE1 4LX

If you would like to make a complaint in relation to how we have handled your personal information, please follow our complaints procedure. If you are not happy with the response you receive, then you can raise your concern with the relevant statutory body:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Alternatively you can visit their website.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller under number Z7307775.

Changes to our Privacy Notice
Our Privacy Notice may change from time to time, so please check this page occasionally to see if we have included any updates or changes, and that you are happy with them.
(Last updated: 15 May 2018)

Back to top