Privacy Policy

This notice explains how the Campaign for Freedom of Information collects and uses personal information.

What personal data we collect and why

We collect personal information when:

You contact us for information or advice

You may provide us with personal information about yourself when you ask us for information or advice about an access to information matter.

We may ask you for additional details to help us understand the issue you are raising but we’ll only ask you for information that is relevant to that issue.

If we offer to look into the issue in more depth, we will ask for your contact details so we can keep in touch if we need to ask for further information and can send you the information that we’ve offered to provide.

If you prefer to remain anonymous, you don’t have to give us your name or contact details.

We keep a note of the issue you’ve asked us about, the background to it and the advice we have given you together with any associated correspondence and emails.  We use this to help us provide you with advice. We also use it to monitor how the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and other access rights are working or to document the effects of any lack of rights.

We provide anonymous details about our advice work (such as the issues we’ve advised people about and the outcomes) to the Campaign’s funders for reporting purposes. We may also publicise anonymous case studies to highlight the way that access rights are working or the problems caused by the lack of rights.

We will not disclose any personal information that you have given us unless

  • you give us your express permission, or
  • that information is already in the public domain  (e.g. in a newspaper report, or Tribunal or court judgment which refers to you by name).
  • In exceptional circumstances we may have to disclose information where this is required by law or is necessary to defend our legal rights or reputation.

You subscribe to our mailing list

If you subscribe to our mailing list we will use your contact details to send you information about our work and about how you can support it. We will not add you to the list unless you have explicitly asked us to. You can unsubscribe at any time.

We use Mailjet to contact our subscribers. We do not track whether subscribers open our emails or click links in them.

You make a donation to the Campaign

We collect information from you when you make a donation via our website. We use two secure payment processing companies to process donations on our behalf, PayPal and GoCardless. Any donations by cheque will be processed by The Co-operative Bank where our bank account is held.

We will only use the data you provide to process your donation, to maintain records of donations and to provide information about our income to our auditors.

Once we’ve thanked you for your donation we won’t contact you again unless you have asked to subscribe to our mailing list (see above).

You attend a Campaign event or training course

We collect information from you when you register to attend one of our training courses or other events.

If you attend an event we hold at the Free Word Centre (where we are based) you may have registered for it via the Free Word Centre’s website. If so, they will share your name and email address with us so that we can contact you about the event.

We will only use this information for the purpose of administering the event. If you register for an event we are jointly organising with another organisation we may share your name and that of your organisation (if any) with them.

We may invite people who attend a training course to provide feedback, which we use to improve future courses. We may also use it anonymously to report to funders or for marketing purposes. We do not identify the individual that provided it or their organisation without their express consent.

We also use anonymous statistics about an event (e.g. the number of attendees) to report to funders on our activities.

You apply for a job at the Campaign or to volunteer

We hold this information for recruitment or employment purposes or to supervise volunteers, as the case may be.

Information from publicly available sources

We may hold information about you if it has appeared in newspaper articles, the WhatDoTheyKnow.com website or in published decisions under the FOI Act or other laws. We use this for research purposes to document the way that the Act and related laws are working or the problems caused by the lack of rights or, on occasions, to offer assistance to individuals concerned.

You visit our website

We collect some information when you visit our website but this does not allow us to identify you. This includes the type of browser and operating system visitors use, the time and date of visits, the duration of visit, which pages are most viewed and which other websites and search engines direct visitors to our website. This enables us to evaluate and improve the website.

Social media

We use Twitter to help publicise our work and interact with followers. We post information about our work on a Facebook page. Those services are administered by the relevant companies in accordance with their own privacy policies.

We keep a record of our Twitter archive and use anonymous information from this to report on our activities to funders.

We do not export or share information on our followers from our Facebook page.

How long we retain your data

We retain personal data for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which we collect it.

Your rights and how to contact us

Individuals have a number of rights in relation to the processing of their personal data. These include:

  • The right to be informed
  • The right of access
  • The right to rectification
  • The right to erasure
  • The right to restrict processing
  • The right to data portability
  • The right to object
  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

You can find out more about your rights from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you by writing to us at the postal or email address below.

Campaign for Freedom of Information
Free Word Centre
60 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3GA

Email: admin@cfoi.org.uk

The Campaign for Freedom of Information is a not-for-profit limited company (company registration no. 1781526). We are registered with Information Commissioner (Data Protection registration no. Z477171X)

Complaints

If you are concerned about the way your personal information has been handled, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

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

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Changes to this policy

  • 11 June 2018 we updated the ‘You subscribe to our mailing list’ section of this policy because we ceased using Mailchimp as we were not happy with its privacy policy. We now use Mailjet to contact our subscribers.
Scroll to Top