Privacy Policy

The Countryside Regeneration Trust (CRT) protects, promotes, and regenerates our land and all life on it.

Our farms and properties use a mix of traditional and innovative new methods, so that wildlife is welcomed, encouraged, and given a new home. Our hard-working tenant farmers and a growing number of eager and committed volunteers, restore tired and forgotten parts of land into a thriving landscape filled with nature in a variety of habitats. We are also breathing new life into old and disused farming properties to form vibrant community centres of sustainable business and education, and will continue to teach current and future generations about the importance of conserving our natural world.

The CRT is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner for the United Kingdom.

We are committed to protecting your privacy and keeping your personal details safe. Our privacy policy explains how and why we use your personal data and is intended to help guarantee that you remain in control of your information.
All personal information provided, will be treated in accordance with this policy, current UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), UK Data Protection legislation and Internet Best Practice.

Any references to The Countryside Regeneration Trust (CRT), or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to:

The Countryside Regeneration Trust (CRT), a registered charity in England and Wales 1142122.
The Countryside Regeneration Trust Ltd (CRT) is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales. Company number 7320026. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Countryside Regeneration Trust, which trades to raise funds for our charitable organisation.

We use three key definitions to describe people mentioned in this policy. These are definitions used by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights (www.ico.org.uk)

‘Data subject’: this is you. As the data subject, we respect your right to control your data.

‘Data controller’: this is us, The Countryside Regeneration Trust. With your permission, we determine why and how your personal data is used (in accordance with this policy).

‘Data processor’: this is a person, or organisation, who processes your data on our behalf, with your permission. For example, this might be the mailing house who sends out The Lark magazine (it is more efficient to send the magazine considering the amount of CRT Friends and supporters, along with other ad-hoc, large scale projects).

We will never sell your data to 3rd parties but may share with trusted service providers in order to fulfil the required services to you. We set up a written contract with all external Data processors (organisations or individuals), with them to protect your data. The third parties we work with do not ‘own’ your data. You will never be contacted by these external companies as they will always delete your data from their systems. We always send your data to partner organisations securely, to minimise the risk of it being intercepted by unknown individuals and/or organisations. We will never sell your personal data.

If you have any questions about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:

Marketing Manager
Telephone: 01223 651215
Email: [email protected]
Post: The Countryside Regeneration Trust, 12 Bennell Court, West Street, Comberton, Cambridgeshire, CB23 7EN

We use your personal data to keep in touch with you. You can use the majority of this site without disclosing any personal information. We will only ever collect, store and use your personal data that is necessary for an identified purpose and reason to do so. The ICO refers to this as a ‘lawful basis’. More information about why we collect your personal data is outlined below:

To process Friend Subscriptions

We collect your personal data to administer your Friend Subscription, which may involve:

Sending you a Friendship Welcome pack when you first join us.
Processing your Direct Debit subscription payments, if you have set this process up with us.
Sending you a subscription renewal letter.
Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your subscription payment.

Joint and Family Friendship
If you are a ‘joint’ or a ‘family’ Friend of the CRT, we will address communications to all those listed on your membership. If you wish to update this at any point, please contact us.

Gift Friendship
If your CRT Friendship was purchased as a gift, we will use the address provided by the purchaser to send information about our work in the post. This will include a ‘renewal letter’, which we will send you when your Friendship is due to expire, to see if you would like to continue supporting our charity.

When your Friendship has ended
Unless we hear from you directly, we will continue to send you information about our work for up to 6 months after your Friendship has ended. This is in case your support was cancelled accidentally, for example changing your bank account details, and you wish to update your details with us.

To process Animal Sponsorships

We collect your personal data and (if a gift subscription), the personal data of the person(s) you are adopting for to process the adoption, which may involve:

Sending you an Adoption Pack when you first join.
Sending you letters informing you of the ‘Jersey Calf Adopters Day’ that is included in your subscription.
Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your subscription payment.

To process your donations

We collect your personal data to process your donations, which may involve:

Sending you a thank you letter.
Getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your donation.

Sending information about the work the CRT are doing

We also collect your personal data so that we can send you information about our charitable work that may be of interest to you, this includes The Lark magazine and fundraising appeals.

We use your personal data to develop a better understanding of you and ‘profile’ of you on our secure Friendship subscription and supporter database. We use this ‘profile’ to send you the relevant information listed above in an effective way. For example, knowing the donations you have made to the CRT helps inform us of the fundraising appeals that we feel are most relevant.

We collect this information in addition to that outlined in sections Friendships, Animal Sponsorships and Donations (above) which is defined as ‘direct marketing’ by the ICO. As defined by the ICO, we use two different lawful bases for processing your data for ‘direct marketing’ purposes:

Legitimate interest

This is where we have identified a genuine and legitimate reason (for example, a problem with a Friendship payment) for contacting you, which crucially does not override your rights or interests.

We use legitimate interest to send you the information listed above by post or telephone (if you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and you have given us your telephone number). When you opt for joint or family friendship, we may process the data of the third parties in our legitimate interest. Wherever we process your personal data in this way, you may object to the processing.

Opt-in consent

This is where you have given express permission to contact you by particular communication channels.

We use opt-in consent to send you the information listed above by email or telephone (if you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service)

We respect your right to update the way we get in touch with you about our work at any time – please contact us at Head Office on 01223 651215 or email [email protected]

For your consent to be valid, you must be informed as you what you are consenting to, and it must be freely given. If you have any concerns about this, please contact us.

To make sure you are safe when volunteering

If you volunteer for the CRT, we collect your personal data so that we can keep in touch with you, for example:

about changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in because of the positive impact you have on our work.

Sensitive personal data

We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data (such as information relating to health, beliefs or political affiliation) about supporters and Friends. If we believe it is in the data subject’s best interest to collect sensitive personal data, we will only do so with your specific consent and permission.

If you are a volunteer then we may collect extra information about you (this will be clear as to why we are collecting such information in the volunteer handbook you will receive), for example:

Criminal records checks
Details of emergency contacts
Medical conditions

If you have an accident on one of our properties, we may also collect sensitive personal data. This information will be retained for legal reasons, for safeguarding purposes and to protect us (including in the event of an insurance or legal claim). If this does occur, we’ll take extra care to ensure your privacy rights are protected.

To send you items purchased from our online shop

We collect your personal data to send you:

Items you have purchased from our online shop.

If you have made an enquiry about a specific matter that you requested

(For example, volunteering or visiting one of our properties) which we think is better handled by the volunteer, we will pass this enquiry on. You can withdraw your request at any stage.

To meet our legal obligations

We collect personal data in order to comply with legal obligations such as providing information to bodies such as HMRC, Charity Commission, Companies House and the HSE.

To enable the effective function of our organisation

We collect personal data to enable the CRT to operate effectively in a variety of ways such as:

Responding to complaints,
Complying with regulators e.g. Fundraising Regulator
Safeguarding, health and safety, security
Maintaining records to comply with donor requirements
Liaising with landowners and tenants about conservation activities
Running engagement activities such as events and competitions
Evaluating events, campaigns and website activity
Research and statistical analysis

Children and young people

In line with data protection law, we will not collect, store or process your personal details if you are under 13 years of age; unless we have the express permission from your parent or guardian to do so.

If we have the permission of your parent or guardian, we will capture your date of birth at the point of joining. This is so that we can send you information that we feel is age appropriate.

If you have already supplied us with personal information, you can change your contact preferences at any time by contacting us:

Telephone: 01223 651215
Email: [email protected]
Post: Countryside Restoration Trust, 12 Bennell Court, West Street, Comberton, Cambridgeshire, CB23 7EN

The Privacy Policy will apply whenever you provide personal information, except as required by law, where the CRT can pass on personal data without consent for example for the purpose to prevent and detect crime.

Security

All of the personal data we process is processed by our staff in the UK. However, for the purposes of IT hosting and maintenance your information may be situated outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). Where this is the case, we are required to assess the risk by undertaking a Transfer Risk Assessment. We are also required to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place which may include the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). We have data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.

Payment security

The CRT processes online payments through the website via Stripe for single donation or GoCardless for regular direct debit donation - we do not hold any financial information on our site. Both these sites use Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption.

If you use a card payment to donate, purchase a Friendship or make a purchase over the phone, input card details securely via a payment provider Worldpay. Worldpay uses an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol for encryption.

If you use a card payment to donate, purchase a Friendship or make a purchase via post, we input card details securely to our payment provider (Worldpay) and destroy the paper form immediately afterwards.

We cannot guarantee the security of your home computer or the internet, and any online communications (e.g. information provided by email or our website) are at the user’s own risk.

Your Rights

We will only use and store information for as long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review all held information, and delete what’s no longer required.

We respect your right to control your data. Your rights include:

The right to be informed
This privacy notice outlines how we capture, store and use your data. If you have any questions about any elements of this policy, please contact us.
The right of access
If you wish to obtain a record of the personal data we hold about you, through a Subject Access Request, we will respond within one month.
The right to rectification
If we have captured information about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will update it.
The right to erase
You can ask us to remove or randomise your personal details from our records.
The right to restrict processing
You can ask us to stop using your personal data.
The right to data portability
You can ask to obtain your personal data from us for your own purposes.
The right to object
You can ask to be excluded from marketing activity.
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
We respect your right not to be subject to a decision that is based on automated processing.

For more information on your individual rights, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The Countryside Restoration Trust aims to maintain high standards in all of its work however recognises that sometimes we can get things wrong, despite our best intentions. We take all concerns and complaints seriously and use to inform improved ways of working.

Our policy is:

To provide a fair complaints procedure that is clear and easy to use for anyone wishing to make a complaint
To make sure everyone at The Countryside Restoration Trust understands what to do if a complaint is received
To make sure all complaints are investigated fairly and promptly
To make sure that complaints are, wherever possible, resolved and that relationships are repaired
To learn from complaints and use them to improve our services and activities

Confidentiality

All complaint information will be handled sensitively, in line with relevant data protection requirements.

Responsibility

Overall responsibility for this policy and its implementation lies with the General Manager.

For further information on how to make a complaint, please click here.

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer to oversee our processing activities. Hope and May can be contact at [email protected] or by calling 0330 111 0013

You may complain to the regulator of information rights in the UK, The Information Commissioner’s Office. For further details please go here https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

Find out more about our Cookies Policy

We update this policy in line with legislation. This policy may be updated from time to time Last updated: November 2023

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The CRT promotes nature-friendly farming to help reverse biodiversity decline and combat climate change. We believe nature is integral to good farming and we protect, promote and regenerate our land and all life on it. We put our philosophy into practice on over 2,000 acres of working farms, small-holdings and woodland across England.
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Since our inception we have been working tirelessly to achieve our vision of a living, working countryside, and that is not changing, but in a world that’s in its sixth mass extinction we must evolve to fight this threat.