Privacy Policy

We are Highworth & District Lions Club — a local charity based in Highworth, Wiltshire, and part of Lions International worldwide. We are registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

This policy covers this website, highworthlions.co.uk, and what we do with the details you send us through it. In data protection terms the club is the "data controller", which means we are the ones responsible for looking after your information.

If you have a question about anything on this page, or about information we hold about you, please write to us at «POSTAL ADDRESS TO CONFIRM» or email «PRIVACY EMAIL TO CONFIRM».

In two situations, and both are your choice.

When you fill in one of our forms. There are three: the contact form, the minibus booking form, and the membership application form.

When you say yes to analytics. The first time you visit, we ask "Can we count your visit?". If you choose Accept analytics, Google Analytics records how the site is used, as described below. If you choose Reject analytics, or don't answer, nothing is recorded.

Otherwise, if you are simply reading the site, we do not ask you for anything and we do not build up a picture of you. There is no sign-up, no account, and no newsletter.

It depends which form you use.

Contact form

Your name, email address, phone number if you give one, and your message.

Minibus booking form

Your name, email address, what you need the minibus for, the dates you want it, and driver details.

Membership application form

Your name, email address, phone number if you give one, the part of the area you live in, and whatever you tell us about yourself.

We do not ask for your date of birth, and none of our forms are aimed at children.

If you accept analytics

Which pages you look at, whether you scroll to the bottom of a page, which links and buttons you click, the news sections and sort order you choose, and the words you type into the news search, so please don’t type personal details into it. We also record when you start filling in a form and whether it was sent, but never what you typed into it.

Google Analytics also sees the type of device and browser you are using and your rough location (town or region, worked out from your internet connection), and gives your browser a random ID so it can tell one visit from the next.

That ID is not your name, and Google Analytics does not tell us who you are. We can see that "someone in Swindon on a phone read the minibus page", not who that someone was.

We use your details to reply to you — about a concern you have raised, support you have asked for, a minibus booking, an application to join, or anything else you have written to us about. That is the only thing we use them for.

The law calls our reason for this "legitimate interests". Ours is straightforward: running a small charity means answering the people who get in touch with us, arranging the minibus bookings people ask for, and considering the applications of people who want to join. We cannot do any of that without holding your details for as long as it takes to deal with what you wrote to us about.

We think that is what you would expect when you fill in a form asking us to get back to you. If you disagree, you can object — see below.

Analytics is different. We only use it if you say yes, so the legal basis is your consent. We use it for one thing: to see which pages are useful, so a small group of volunteers spends its time on the right things. You can change your mind at any time with the Analytics button at the bottom of every page.

We are a small club, so a few suppliers help us run the website. We do not sell or share your details with anyone else, ever.

• Our website host, which runs the site and keeps a short-lived record of visits.
• Our email provider, which delivers the message from the form to our inbox.
• Our content system, which stores the words and pictures that make up these pages.
• The map service, but only if you choose to load the map — see "The map" below.
• Google Analytics, run by Google, but only if you choose Accept analytics. We have switched off Google’s advertising features, and we don’t let Google use the information to improve its own products. Google may include it in industry benchmarks, combined with other websites’ figures so that no one can be identified.

Each of them, Google included, is bound by a contract that only lets them handle your information on our instructions.

When you send a form, it is handled by servers in London and sent on from Dublin. Our email provider keeps a copy for 30 days and then deletes it. Those servers are in the United States, under safeguards approved for transferring UK data abroad.

Our website host keeps a record of each visit — including the IP address your internet connection is using — for about a day, and then deletes it.

After that, the only copy of your message is the one sitting in the club inbox that received it. We keep those for «RETENTION PERIOD TO CONFIRM», and then we delete them.

Nothing you send is stored in a database on this website. There is no archive of past enquiries here.

If you accept analytics, the information described above goes to Google, whose servers include ones in the United States, under the same kind of approved safeguards. Google keeps the detailed records for 2 months, and the random ID linked to your browser for up to 14 months, and then deletes them. We see it as totals and charts, not as a list of people.

You can ask us to:

• tell you what information we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct it, if something is wrong
• delete it
• stop using it for a while, if you have questioned something and we are looking into it

None of this costs anything and you do not have to give a reason. Write to us at the address above and we will reply within one month.

For analytics, you can withdraw your consent at any time with the Analytics button at the bottom of every page. When you do, the analytics cookies are deleted from your browser straight away and nothing more is recorded. Because analytics can’t tell us who you are, we usually can’t pick out your past visits to delete them, but Google deletes the detailed records after 2 months, and the ID after 14 months, anyway.

For the forms, there is no consent to withdraw (we rely on legitimate interests, above), and there is no data portability right. We would rather say so than pad this list out.

You have the right to object to us using your information at all. This is separate from everything above, and we want to make sure you have seen it.

If you object, tell us and we will stop, unless we have a compelling reason to carry on that outweighs your objection — which, for a club replying to its own enquiries, is unlikely. In practice, objecting means we delete your message and do not contact you again.

We only set analytics cookies if you say yes. When you first visit, a banner asks "Can we count your visit?". Until you choose Accept analytics, no analytics cookies are set and nothing is sent to Google.

If you accept, Google Analytics sets two cookies:

• _ga, a random ID so it can tell one visit from the next. It lasts 2 years.
• _ga_NEWTQ62J56, which remembers the state of your current visit. It lasts 2 years.

Remembering your answer. So we don’t ask on every page, your browser stores a small note of whether you said yes or no. It is not a cookie, nothing is sent to us, and it only exists to respect your choice.

Changing your mind. Use the Analytics button at the bottom of any page. If you switch analytics off, we delete the two cookies straight away.

The only other cookie in the whole system belongs to club members who sign in to edit the website, and it only exists once someone has logged in.

Some pages show a map. It does not load until you click to load it, and that is deliberate.

Map images come from OpenStreetMap, which is run by a separate organisation. When you load the map, your IP address and the page you are on reach their servers. Until you click, nothing about you is sent to them at all — so the choice stays with you.

It is worth being plain about the things this website does not do:

• no analytics unless you say yes, and nothing that follows you to other websites
• no advertising, and no advertising networks
• no profiling, and no automated decisions about you
• no selling, renting or sharing your details with anyone
• no accounts, no logins and no newsletter sign-ups for visitors

If any of that changes, we will change this page and say so, as we did when we added analytics.

The honest answer is that we keep very little. This website stores nothing you send it — your message becomes an email to a person at the club, and that is where it lives.

Those inboxes are read by «WHO HAS ACCESS TO CONFIRM». Everything travels over an encrypted connection, and our suppliers are bound by contract to protect it.

If you accept analytics, that information is held by Google rather than by us, and we only ever see it as totals and charts.

Please come to us first, at the address at the top of this page. We would much rather hear about it and put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK regulator for data protection. You can do that without speaking to us first.

You can complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or call their helpline on 0303 123 1113, or write to Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and change the date shown at the top.

That date is the last time the policy itself meaningfully changed — not the last time somebody fixed a typo. If you are relying on what this page says, that date is the one that matters.