1. Who are we?
“Staffordshire Wildlife Trust protects and enhances the wildlife and wild places of Staffordshire and promotes understanding, enjoyment and involvement in the natural world.”
A registered charity established in 1969, we are one of 46 Wildlife Trusts throughout the UK and are supported by over 19,000 members.
The Trust owns or manages 46 nature reserves covering an area of over 5,000 acres. Our 130 staff are based in six locations around the county including our Headquarters at Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, with our work divided up into five departments:
Resources; People Engagement; Conservation Delivery; Fundraising, Communication and Membership; Commercial.
The Trust has a diverse workforce including site wardens, wildlife surveyors, community and education officers, catering, retail and administration.
In addition, we have the trading company which looks after the trading side of our business. This includes a café at The Wolseley Centre, charity shops, an online shop and a shop in the Wolseley Centre.
2. Our commitment to your privacy
We are committed to keeping the personal details of our members and supporters safe. This policy explains how and why we use your personal data, to ensure that you remain informed and in control of your information.
Any references to Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, the Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ refer to:
- Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. We are a registered charity in England and Wales, and our registered charity number is 259558.
- Staffordshire Wildlife Trading Limited, our charitable trading company; (registered company number 03387233. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, which trades only 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, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. We determine why and how your personal data is used (as outlined in this policy).
- ‘Data processor’: this is a person, or organisation, who processes your data on our behalf, or at our discretion. Staffordshire Wildlife Trust takes full responsibility for what they do.
When we work with other organisations or individuals in this way, we always set up a written contract with them to protect your data. The third parties we work with at no point ‘own’ your data, so you will never hear from them independently and they will always delete your data from their systems when they have completed the task in hand. 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.
Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:
Chief Executive
Telephone: 01889 880100
Email: info@staffs-wildlife.org.uk
The Wolseley Centre, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, ST17 0WT
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.
3. Why do we collect your personal data?
We use your personal data to keep in touch with you.
We will only ever collect, store and use your personal data when we have an identified purpose and reason to do so. The ICO refers to this as a ‘lawful basis’. Further information about why we collect your personal data is outlined below.
a) To administer your Staffordshire Wildlife Trust membership
We collect your personal data to administer your membership, which may involve:
- sending you your membership welcome pack, welcome letter and membership card when you first join us
- processing your Direct Debit subscription payments, if you have set this donation process up with us
- sending you your membership renewal letter or email
- getting in touch should there ever be any issues processing your subscription payment
- sending you information about any changes to your Direct Debit subscription payments, if you have set this donation process up with us
The ICO define the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes as ‘contractual’.
b) To send you items purchased from our online shop, details about your event bookings and/or fundraising activities
We collect your personal data to send you:
- items you have purchased from our online shop
- information about events you have booked onto
- fundraising activities you may be taking part in
The ICO define the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes as ‘contractual’.
c) To send you information about our work and ask for your opinion
We also collect your personal data so that we can send you information about our work that we feel will be of interest to you. This includes membership magazines, fundraising, appeals, events, campaigning opportunities, membership services, products, newsletter requests, feedback, competitions and other activities, as well as information about other carefully selected organisations that we work in partnership with. From time-to-time, we may also use your personal data to ask for your opinion about our work.
This information is in addition to that outlined in sections a) and b) and is defined as ‘direct marketing’ by the ICO.
- Joint and family membership
If you are a ‘joint’ or a ‘family’ member of our Wildlife Trust, we will address communications to all those listed on your membership. If you wish to update this at any point, please let us know.
- Gift membership
If your Wildlife Trust membership was purchased as a gift, we will use the address provided by the purchaser by to send you information about our work in the post. This will include a ‘renewal letter’, which we will send you when your membership is due to expire, to see if you would like to continue supporting our charity.
- When your membership has ended
Unless we hear from you directly, we will continue to send you information about our work after your membership has ended. This is just in case your support was cancelled accidentally, by for example changing your bank account details, and you wish to update your details with us.
Your personal data also helps us to get to know you better and to develop a ‘profile’ of you on our secure supporter database. This ‘profile’ enables us to send you the information listed above in a timely and relevant way, to suit you. For example, keeping track of the donations you make to our organisation helps us to send you information about fundraising appeals that we believe you would like to hear about.
We also use your data to analyse and refine our campaigning, advertising and other operations to increase our effectiveness, and allow us to refine our audiences to make sure the adverts you’re seeing are relevant to you. This process could include uploading data to various advertising platforms that the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust uses.
We may use your data when using social media advertising platform advertising tools, to further ensure that our advertising campaigns are as effective as possible, making sure our budget is used effectively and that the ads that you see are relevant to you. This means we can target based on specific characteristics and interests. We collect the data from campaigns, adverts, posts and interactions with our website and social platforms.
Processing this information may also help us to evaluate how we are performing in terms of our charitable objectives. Doing this enables us to track and keep you updated about how we are caring for wildlife and wild places, and inspiring and empowering people to take action for nature.
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 contacting you, which crucially does not override your rights or interests
We use legitimate interest to send you the information listed above by email, post or telephone (if you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service, and you have given us your telephone number).
- Opt-in consent
This is where you have given us express permission to contact you by particular communication channels.
We use opt-in consent to send you the information listed above by email, text message (SMS) 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.
d) To enable you to volunteer with us
If you are a Staffordshire Wildlife Trust volunteer, we collect your personal data so that we can keep in touch with you about:
- changes to planned volunteer work programmes that you may be taking part in
- the positive impact you have on our work, by sharing our internal newsletter
- dedicated volunteer thank-you events
- Staffordshire Wildlife Trust news, activities and appeals.
As defined by the ICO, the lawful basis for processing your data for these purposes is ‘contractual’ (where administering your volunteer record) and ‘legitimate interest’ (when sending you information about our work).
4. What kind of personal data do we collect? How do we collect it?
a) Basic information
We will collect basic information about you, including your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and your bank details if you are supporting us financially
Most of the time, we collect this data from you directly. This will be either in person, over the telephone, in writing or through an email. Occasionally we obtain information, such as your telephone number or other contact details, from external sources (only where you have given permission for such information to be shared).
b) Getting to know you better
We also collect information about you that helps us to get to know you better. This may include:
- information about your wildlife interests, which you tell us through our Membership Surveys
- records of donations you’ve made towards fundraising appeals
- your preferences of how you would like us to contact you
- ways you’ve helped us through volunteering your time
- records of events you’ve attended, or campaigns or activities that you’ve been involved in
Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth, gender and ethnicity. When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission. We may use this anonymised data to better understand our audience and help with our EDI monitoring.
Another way in which we collect personal data to get to know you better is through our website. Our website uses ‘cookies’ to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you'd expect
- Remember your settings during and between visits
- Improve the speed/security of the site
- Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
- Continuously improve our website for you
For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Cookies Policy
We may also collect demographic and consumption data generated through geodemographic tools (such as CACI Acorn), as well as information related to your wealth. This may include information from public registers and other publicly available sources such as Companies House, newspapers, magazines and social media platforms. This helps us to identify individuals who may be able and willing to support us with a significant gift, and to make informed decisions about who we approach and ensures we use our resources effectively.
We may use third-party tools and services to help us with this research and to update or enrich the data we hold. We always ensure that any data we use is publicly available or has been provided to us with appropriate consent.
If you do not wish your data to be collected in any of these ways, or have questions about them, please contact us.
Chief Executive
Telephone: 01889 880100
Email: info@staffs-wildlife.org.uk
The Wolseley Centre, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, ST17 0WT
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.
c) 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 members. However, there are some situations where this will occur.
When we do so, we will be very clear as to why we are collecting such information, and we will only do so with your specific consent and permission. In these situations, we collect the data from you directly. There are limited cases where permission is not required for processing special category data.
If you are a volunteer then we may collect extra information about you, for example:
- references
- criminal records checks
- details of emergency contacts
- medical conditions.
We may also collect sensitive personal data if you have an accident on one of our reserves. 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.
d) Children and young people
In line with data protection law, if we receive any information through any data collection channel that indicates an individual is under 13 years old age, we will not store or process that individual’s personal details, unless we have the express permission from your parent or guardian to do so.
If we have the permission of your parent or guardian, and you are a Wildlife Watch member, 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 suitable to your age.
For further information, please see our Safeguarding and Young People policy.
5. How do we store your data?
a) 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). This will be done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Electronic data and databases are stored on secure computer systems, and we control who has access to information (using both physical and electronic means). Our staff receive data protection training, and we have a set of detailed data protection procedures which personnel are required to follow when handling personal data.
b) Payment security
All electronic Staffordshire Wildlife Trust forms that request financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers.
If you use a credit card to donate, purchase a membership or purchase something online we will pass your credit card details securely to our payment provider (Stripe; PayPal). Other payment methods (e.g. ApplePay) are handled in a similar manner.
Staffordshire Wildlife Trust complies with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council, and will never store card details.
Of course, 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.
c) Data retention policy
We will only use and store information for as long as it is required for the purposes it was collected for. We continually review what information we hold, and delete what is no longer required.
We would also like to state that only those who have authorisation within Staffordshire Wildlife Trust have access to your personal data and all staff are trained in data protection and are compliant in making sure that this is used in the correct manner. Those who have access to personal data will do so only for the necessary tasks and will handle this data in the safest way possible. We will never use your data for anything other than what is stated within our privacy policy.
d) CCTV
Some of our premises have CCTV and you may be recorded when you visit them. CCTV is there to help provide security and to protect both you and Staffordshire Wildlife Trust. CCTV will only be viewed when necessary (e.g. to detect or prevent crime) and footage is only stored temporarily. Unless it is flagged for review CCTV will be recorded over.
Staffordshire Wildlife Trust complies with the Information Commissioner’s Office CCTV Code of Practice, and we put up notices, so you know when CCTV is in use.
6. Your rights
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.
7. Making a complaint
Staffordshire Wildlife Trust want to exceed your expectation in everything we do. However, we know that there may be times when we do not meet our own high standards. When this happens, we want to hear about it, in order to deal with the situation as quickly as possible and put measures in place to stop it happening again.
We manage this through our Customer Voice Policy. This is Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s approach to listening to the people we connect with. We consider compliments, consultations, surveys, communication, meetings, stories, concerns and complaints to all form a part of Customer Voice. These may be communicated in any form, including verbally in person or by telephone and in writing by letter or email and may be concerning any area of our work. We are committed to fostering open communication with our community to enhance our services, address concerns, and celebrate successes.
We recognise that responding, recording and reflecting on our Customer Voice can help us to deliver our mission and achieve our vision. It is an important way to get to know the people we connect with, to understand their needs and how we can improve our services and support them. It can also help us to diversify the people we connect with, inspire new work and support funding applications and contracted work.
This is why we are always very grateful to hear from people who are willing to take the time to help us improve. Complaints should ideally be made in writing via info@staffs-wildlife.org.uk or to a member of management directly.
Our policy is:
- To provide a fair complaints procedure that is clear and easy to use for anyone wishing to make a complaint.
- To publicise the existence of our complaints procedure so that people know how to contact us to make a complaint.
- To make sure everyone in our organisation knows what to do if a complaint is received.
- To make sure all complaints are investigated fairly and in a timely way.
- To make sure that complaints are, wherever possible, resolved and that relationships are repaired.
- To learn from complaints and feedback to help us to improve what we do.
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 Julian Woolford, Chief Executive.
Information Commissioner’s Office
For further assistance with complaints regarding your data, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, whose remit covers the UK.
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk
8. Sharing data
We will never sell your personal data. When sharing your data with us, if you have opted-in to receive further contact, we may get in touch with information about our partners, or third-party products and services, but these communications will always come from Staffordshire Wildlife Trust.
In some circumstances where we are using subcontractors or suppliers, we may share your personal data so that they can carry out their contractual services. For example, if you order something from a Wildlife Trust shop that uses a third-party delivery company, your name and address will be shared with them.
Occasionally, where we partner with other organisations, we may also share information with them (for example our Wild About Gardens campaign which is a partnership campaign with The RHS).
The Wildlife Trusts federation
We are one of 46 individual charities that work closely together in a federated structure through our membership of The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a memorandum of co-operation and a collective strategic direction. The Wildlife Trust federation also includes a range of subsidiaries, wholly owned by either an individual or group of Wildlife Trusts. Whilst operating collectively within a federated structure, it is recognised that each party is an independent organisation. To aide our collaboration as a federation, we sometimes share data with each other for the purposes listed below. At all times we follow the principle of data minimisation as set out in UK GDPR and where possible or appropriate will anonymise or pseudonymise data before it is shared.
The following broad purposes have been identified for data sharing and processing:
- to support education, training, community building, health & wellbeing, and the supporter experience.
- to facilitate shared business services, measure benchmarking & KPIs that demonstrate our impact, facilitate safeguarding and ensure compliance with shared policies.
- to support local, national and international campaigns and conservation research.
Data sharing across The Wildlife Trusts federation is governed by a comprehensive collective Data Sharing, Processing and Joint Controllership Agreement.
9. Leaving our website
We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites linked to our website. If you have followed a link from this website to another website, you may be supplying information to a third party.
10. Get in touch
Should you wish to find out more about the information we hold about you, or about our privacy policy, please contact us:
Chief Executive
Telephone: 01889 880100
Email: info@staffs-wildlife.org.uk
The Wolseley Centre, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, ST17 0WT
Our office hours are Monday – Friday, 9am – 5pm.
We update this policy periodically. Last updated: Sep 2025