RSPCA Assured privacy policy
What is RSPCA Assured?
RSPCA Assured is a not-for-profit farm animal welfare assurance scheme. We are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the RSPCA (company number 219099) and a charity in our own right, in both England and Wales (1059879) and Scotland (SCO38199). As a registered company (number 2723670), we are governed by eight trustees, a chairperson, a vice-chairperson and four non-executives. The RSPCA is legally a separate entity and has its own privacy policy.
RSPCA Assured is a data controller and is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Our ICO registration is Z5096842.
What personal data do we collect on our website?
We collect different types of personal data depending on how you interact with us.
If you submit an enquiry, we will collect the following information to help us respond to you:
- Full name
- Email address.
When you use our website, we collect the following to help us improve our website:
- A device's IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified format)
- Device screen size and device type
- Browser information
- Geographic location (country only)
- The preferred language used to display our website.
Our website may contain links to other websites. They will have their own privacy policies, and RSPCA Assured cannot accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. We advise you to read the policies of these third-party websites before you submit any personal data to them.
How we gather your personal data
We primarily collect your personal data from you directly when you interact with us on our website. This includes when you:
- Contact one of our departments via email or fill out our contact form
- Engage with our social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube or Instagram (depending on your settings or the privacy policies of these social media services)
- Visit our website. Cookies allow us to measure and improve our website's functionality. You can read our cookie policy for more information about our use of cookies.
Lawful basis for processing
Our lawful basis for processing your personal data is consent. This is given when you accept cookies via the banner on the website, when you send us an email or complete the web form. This is because you require us to process your personal data to respond to your enquiry.
Data sharing
We share your data with our third-party suppliers such as Google, and specifically the following:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics collects information about how visitors use our website, how they found our website, and which pages they visit.
Hotjar
Hotjar allows us to analyse user behaviour on specific pages, such as how much time they spend on which pages and which links they click. Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymised user profile and is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf. Pseudonymised data is data where identifiers have been removed, but could be added back in due to other data held by the organisation. Further details can be found on Hotjar’s support site.
We ensure that any third-party we use complies with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Sharing with a third-party (known as a Data Processor) will always be carried out under contract, as part of which we will specify that your data must be kept safely, used only under our instructions, and not be used for the third party’s own purposes without prior agreement.
Data security
The security of your data is of the greatest importance to us. We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational security measures to prevent your personal data from accidental or unlawful unauthorised use, access, and disclosure – or being altered or destroyed in an accidental or unlawful manner. Personal data within RSPCA Assured is only shared with those who need to access it to carry out their role.
Data retention
If you submit an enquiry to us, we will keep your data for a period of two years after your issue has been resolved. We may keep anonymised data for future analysis so we can better provide our website visitors with what they need.
Your rights regarding your personal data
You have various rights regarding the personal data we collect. These are:
- The right to be informed — this notice provides information in relation to how your data is processed
- The right of access — you can request a copy of any personal data we hold.
- This is also known as a Subject Access Request
- The right to rectification — you can ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate or to complete information you think is incomplete
- The right to restrict processing — you can limit how your data is used. For example, if the data is inaccurate
- The right to erasure or 'right to be forgotten' — you can ask us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances
- The right to object — in some circumstances, you can object to RSPCA Assured processing your information
- The right to data portability — you can request to move your data from us to another organisation
- Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling — we do not use automated decision making or profiling.
Not all of these rights are absolute and so may not apply.
Contact us
For further information regarding your personal data, to submit a data subject access request, or to submit a data protection complaint, please get in touch with our data protection team via email. If you would prefer to write to us, please use this address:
The data protection adviser
RSPCA Assured, Fourth floor Parkside, Chart Way, Horsham, West Sussex, RH12 1GY
If you aren’t satisfied with the way we are processing your personal data after contacting us, you can make a complaint to the ICO. Further information on how to do this can be found on their website.