Join Now

Privacy Policy

We ask that you read this website privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how and why we collect, store, use and share personal information, your rights in relation to your personal information and on how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

This website privacy policy is divided into the following sections:

• Who we are

• Our website

• Our collection and use of your personal information

• Transfer of your information out of the EEA

• Cookies and similar technologies

• Marketing

• Your rights

• Keeping your personal information secure

• How to complain

• Changes to this website privacy policy

• How to contact us

• Do you need extra help?

Who we are

This website is operated by Highclere Castle Media Limited (also known as Friends of Highclere). We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under applicable data protection laws, including the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR and, where relevant the EU General Data Protection Regulation.  References in this privacy policy to the GDPR shall mean either the UK GDPR or the EU GDPR, as applicable to you.  We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

Our website

This privacy policy relates to your use of our website, www.friendsofhighclere.com, and the services that Highclere Castle Media Limited provides to you. Throughout our website we may link to other websites owned and operated by certain necessary third parties, such as for the purposes of taking payments for membership of the Friends of Highclere or other purchases, or from [trusted] third parties where we think you will be interested in the content of those third party sites. These other third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to these other third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.

Our collection and use of your personal information

We collect personal information about you when you access our website, register with us, contact us, purchase membership of, and in relation to the administration of your membership of, the Friends of Highclere or our other products or services via our website, and complete customer surveys or participate in competitions via our website. We collect this personal information from you either directly, such as when you register with us, contact us or purchase membership or our other products or services via our website or indirectly, such as your browsing activity while on our website (see ‘Cookies’ below). The personal information we collect about you depends on the particular activities carried out through our website and that you engage with us in respect of. This information includes :

• your name, address and contact details

• your date of birth

• details of any feedback you give us by phone, email, post or via social media

• information about the products or services we provide to you

• your account details, such as username and login details

• information about how you use the website, including location, operating system etc.

We use this personal information to:

• create and manage your account with us

• verify your identity

• provide goods and services to you

• customise our website and its content to your particular preferences

• notify you of any changes to our website or to our services that may affect you

• improve our services

• improve your experience whilst using our website

This website is not intended for use by children and membership or our other products and services are not intended to be purchased by children.  We do not knowingly collect or use personal information relating to children.

We will keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any services that we provide to you.  Normally, our retention period for personal data collected for this purpose is a minimum of [6 years] after the end of the period that we are providing services.   

Our legal basis for processing your personal information

When we use your personal information we are required to have a legal basis for doing so. There are various different legal bases on which we may rely, depending on what personal information we process and why.

The legal bases we may rely on include:

• consent: where you have given us clear consent for us to process your personal information for a specific purpose. We ask for your consent to send you marketing communications.

• contract: where our use of your personal information is necessary for a contract we have with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract. This applies when we need to process your personal information to process a transaction, such as purchase of membership or other of our products or services.

• legal obligation: where our use of your personal information is necessary for us to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).

• legitimate interests: where our use of your personal information is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party (unless there is a good reason to protect your personal information which overrides our legitimate interests). We rely on this condition, for example, when we have a legitimate interest to use your personal data to carry out analysis of how our website is used so that we can improve the website, or when we use personal information for fraud prevention purposes.

Who we share your personal information with

We share personal information with service providers who help up to deliver services to you. This includes our payment service provider(s) (currently Stripe), IT suppliers and service providers, mail delivery service providers and contractors. We may also share your personal information with our professional advisors where we need to do so to obtain professional advice. We may also share your information with selected affiliated parties to improve your experience of our services. Some of those third party recipients may be based outside the European Economic Area — for further information including on how we safeguard your personal data when this occurs, see ‘Transfer of your information out of the EEA ’. We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law. Whether information has to be provided by you, and if so why

We require you to provide your name, email address,  delivery and billing address when you purchase membership of the Friends of Highclere or other products or services through our website to enable us to deal with the necessary administration of membership and/or deliver the other products or services that you have ordered. We will inform you at the point of collecting information from you whether you are required to provide the information to us.

Transfer of your information out of the EEA

Some of our suppliers (as controllers or processors) may transfer your personal information to countries outside the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA).  Such countries do not have the same data protection laws as the United Kingdom and EEA. Where the UK and/or the European Commission has decided that a particular country or international organisation ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (an adequacy decision), we can allow the transfer of personal data to that country/organisation. 

For transfers to countries or organisations not considered adequate by the UK and/or EC, we will ensure that personal data is adequately protected as required by the GDPR.    This would include by use of legally approved standard contractual clauses in relation to transfers adopted to protect personal data.  If you would like further information, please contact us (see ‘How to contact us’ below).

Cookies and other tracking technologies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (eg computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use our website. We use cookies such as Google analytics, Hot Jar and Facebook Pixel on our website. These help us recognise you and your device and store some information about your preferences or past actions.

How Cookies are used by Friends of Highclere

We use cookies for the following purposes:

● to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task

● to recognise that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested

● to measure how many people are using services, so they can be made easier to use and there's enough capacity to ensure they are fast

● to analyse data to help us understand how you use our services so we can improve them

Our use of third party cookies

We use Google Analytics software to help us improve the usability of our website, the type of information gathered relates to the amount of time spent on the website and the pages visited. We use the following Google Analytics cookies: Google Analytics Cookie Name: _utma Typical content: randomly generated number Cookie Expires: 2 years Cookie Name: _utmb Typical content: randomly generated number 4 Cookie Expires: 30 minutes Cookie Name: _utmc Typical content: randomly generated number Expires: when user exits browser Cookie Name: _utmz Typical content: randomly generated number and information about how the page was reached (eg directly or via a link, organic search or paid search) Cookie Expires: 6 months Cookie Name: __utmmobile Typical content: randomly generated number Cookie Expires: 2 years For further details on the cookies set by Google Analytics, see the following link: Cookies set by Google Analytics.

How to opt out of cookies

Our website works better with cookies enabled. Our cookies don't give us or anyone else access to your personal data. We advise you to keep cookies enabled. However, you can choose to reject cookies. You can use your browser to delete and reject cookies. There are instructions on how to delete cookies and how to control cookies on the 'About Cookies' website.

Links from our website

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of third parties that we permit to make such links.  If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.  We recommend that you check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Marketing

Where we have your permission to do so we will send you emails about upcoming events or offers that we think will be of interest to you. You can unsubscribe at any time by: —contacting us at theoffice@highclerecastle.co.uk —using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails For more information on your rights in relation to marketing, see ‘Your rights’ below. 

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights. In summary, those include rights to:

• fair processing of information and transparency over how we use your use personal information

• access to your personal information and to certain other supplementary information that this Privacy Notice is already designed to address

• require us to correct any mistakes in your information which we hold

• require the erasure of personal information concerning you in certain situations

• receive the personal information concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit those data to a third party in certain situations

• object at any time to processing of personal information concerning you for direct marketing

• object to decisions being taken by automated means which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you

• object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information

• otherwise restrict our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please email us at theoffice@highclerecastle.co.uk

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information. If you are not happy about how we have used your personal information you can contact the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at www.ico.org.uk.

Changes to this website privacy policy

This website privacy policy was last updated on 15/02/2022. We may change this website privacy policy from time to time.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about this privacy notice or the information we hold about you. If you wish to contact us, please send an email to theoffice@highclerecastle.co.uk or write to Highclere Castle, Highclere Park, Newbury RG20 9RN.


Private Members Access to Highclere Castle