Privacy & Data Protection Policy

Updated October 2024

We want everyone who supports us, or who comes to us for support, to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after or used.

This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal data (this means any information that identifies or could identify you). Please read the following information carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website.

Who we are

The Bristol Bike Project is a Community Interest Company limited by guarantee (07578755). We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“Data Protection Law”). This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

For further information about our privacy practices, please contact us by:

Writing to us at The Bristol Bike Project, 198-200 Stapleton Road, Bristol, BS5 0NY
Emailing us at hello@thebristolbikeproject.org
Calling us on 0117 951 9692

Why we collect information about you

Everything we do, we do to meet our aim of getting more people out on two wheels, and to ensure it is an inclusive and empowering experience.

We want to make sure you receive the communications that are most relevant to you, be it through visiting our website or receiving emails, post or phone calls.

We want to make sure you receive the best attention when you register for services that we provide, buy a product, book on a course, donate a bike, volunteer for us, become a member of our Co-op, or make a financial donation.

How we collect information about you

When you interact with us directly: This could be if you make an enquiry to us, register for our community programmes, make a purchase in our shop, book a place on our maintenance courses, make a donation to us, apply for a job or volunteering opportunity, apply to be a member of our Co-op, or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you phone us, visit our website, or get in touch through our Social Networking Sites, through the post or in person.
When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as Local Giving, are referred for one of our community programmes, or interact with us via any other other third parties that we work with and only if you consent for your personal information to be shared with us.
When you visit our website: We gather general information that might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use ‘cookies’ to help our site run effectively. See our Cookie Policy for more details.
When you sign up to our newsletter: This could be through our website, Social Networking Sites, or any other sign up button.
From other information that is available to the public: In order to tailor our communications we may collect information from publicly available sources.
Phone numbers and email addresses are taken when booking in bikes for repair. This information is collected but not stored on a permanent basis.
Special orders that are placed through the trading arm require a contact number/email to contact the customer when there order is ready to collect. This information is collected but not stored on a permanent basis.

Personal information we collect, and why we use it

This includes details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making a purchase or donation), as well as information you provide in any communications between us. You will have given us this information while registering for a service that we provide, making a donation, booking on a course, applying to be a volunteer or member, or any of the other ways you can interact with us.

If you provide us with information about other people or organisations (for example if you are referring someone to one of our community programmes), it is your responsibility to obtain their consent regarding us storing and processing their information in accordance with this policy. We will mainly use this information:

To process your donations or other payments, and to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
To provide the services or goods that you have requested.
To update you with important administrative messages about your donation or services or goods you have requested.
To keep a record of your relationship with us.
If you volunteer with us, to administer the volunteering arrangement.
If you are a member of our Co-op, to administer the membership arrangement.

If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your donation, sign you up as a volunteer or member, or provide the goods and services you have requested. We may also use your personal information to contact you about our work and how you can support The Bristol Bike Project (see the Marketing section below for further information on this), but only if you have opted-in to receive these communications.

Anonymous Data

We may create anonymous data from the personal data we receive about you and other individuals whose personal data we collect. Anonymous data might include analytics information about our social impact. We make personal data into anonymous data by excluding information (such as your name) that makes the data personally identifiable to you.

User-Generated Content

You may share personal data with us when you submit user-generated content to our website or Social Networking Sites, such as comment on a news article or a post or review on our Facebook page. Please note that any information you post or disclose in this way will become public information, and will be available to other users of our sites and to the general public. We urge you to be very careful when deciding to disclose your personal data, or any other information, in this way. Such personal data and other information will not be private or confidential once it is published.

Sensitive information we collect, and why we use it

Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive than others. These include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

Where we collect sensitive personal information, we will only use it for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, service delivery, or monitoring and evaluating the services we provide.

Providing sensitive personal data is never a requirement and if you do provide us with any sensitive personal information by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We will only pass on sensitive personal information when you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us that you are happy for us to do so. This might happen if you would like us to share your story with the media, other parties or on our blog, in which instance we would advise remaining anonymous.

Legal basis for using your information

In most cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent or because we need to use it in order to fulfill a contract with you (for example, because you have placed an order on our website).

However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for The Bristol Bike Project to process your information to help us to achieve our goal of getting more people out on two wheels.

Whenever we process your personal information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that it is not justified.

Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, use your personal information for data analytics, conduct research to better understand who our supporters are, for improving our services, or for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims).

Children

We do not hold personal information from persons under 18 years of age longer than necessary to process their application for a bike (which is only permitted with permission of their parent/guardian). No part of the website is directed to persons under 18 years of age. If a parent or guardian becomes aware that their child has provided us with information without their consent, they should contact us and we will delete any information from our files as soon as is reasonably practicable.

Marketing

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support The Bristol Bike Project by phone, email or text message if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.

You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by clicking the opt out link at the bottom of the relevant communication.

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff and volunteers at The Bristol Bike Project so that they can support you.

We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.

We may share your personal data as follows:

We may share your personal data with third parties where you have provided your consent for us to do so;
We may share your personal data with our third party service providers who provide services such as payment processing, information technology and related infrastructure provision. These third parties are Google (who provide our email and office systems), Mailchimp (who provide our newsletter services), Stripe, Paypal, Bookwhen, GiveWP, Local Giving, eBay (privacy policies can be found by clicking the links).
. They are only permitted to use your personal data to the extent necessary to enable them to provide their services to us and are required to follow our express instructions and to comply with appropriate security measures to protect your personal data;
When we are required to share your data with third parties on the basis that we are jointly undertaking or being commissioned to fulfill a contract with them. In many cases this information is anonymised, however when individuals are identifiable we will tell them prior to providing us with their data or we will seek their explicit permission before sharing with third parties;
If and when we sell or transfer of all or a part of our business or assets. These deals can include any merger, financing, acquisition, or bankruptcy transaction or proceeding;
We may share personal data as we believe necessary or appropriate to comply with applicable laws; to comply with lawful requests and legal process, including to respond to requests from public and government authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements; to enforce our Policy; and to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of you or others.

Legal disclosure

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority) or in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.

Keeping your information safe

We take looking after your information very seriously. We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on- and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

Unfortunately, although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.

Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that other websites may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites.

Any debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are processed directly by our payment processing partners, currently Stripe, Paypal and Local Giving (click links for Privacy Policies).

How long we hold your information for

We only keep information as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid). This will never exceed 7 years.

We regularly and securely delete information that goes out of date or if it is no longer needed.

The Bristol Bike Project periodically reviews this data retention schedule, including the purposes for which we hold the information and how long we retain it.

Your rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below.

Contacting The Bristol Bike Project or making a complaint: If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting our team at The Bristol Bike Project, 198-200 Stapleton Road, Bristol, BS5 0NY email hello@thebristolbikeproject.org, or call 0117 951 9692. You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office. Read more about your rights on the ICO website.

Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge. Please make all requests for access in writing, and provide us with evidence of your identity.
Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on these grounds. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.
Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.
No automated decision making: Automated decision making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, or when it is necessary for a contract between you and us, or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision making.

Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.

More information