Privacy Policy

Website privacy policy

This website is operated by The Birmingham Botanical and Horticultural Society Ltd, a charity registered in England and Wales (Charity no. 528981 and Company no. 248827). We take your privacy very seriously therefore we urge you to read this policy very carefully because 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.
• How to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event that you have a complaint.

Who we are

The Birmingham Botanical and Horticultural Society Ltd, a charity registered in England and Wales (no 528981) (‘we’ or ‘us’) (trading as The Birmingham Botanical Gardens) collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) which apply across the European Union (including the United Kingdom), and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

How we collect your data

We may collect personal data from you when you buy a ticket in person, over the phone or online via birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk. We may collect data when you join or renew a membership with BBG, ask us to send you information, make a donation, pledge a legacy, attend an event, visit our premises, or participate in a project or activity.

The personal information we collect and use:

We collect the following personal information that you provide to us:

Ticket buyers, online users, members and donors

• Name.
• Address and postcode.
• Email address.
• Telephone numbers.
• Bank and/or credit card details.
• Date of birth.
• Communication preferences and interests.
• Any other information you provide to us by email, letter, telephone, social media, via our website or in person.

All visitors to the Gardens:

• CCTV.

Some examples of when we collect this information include:

• Registering for an account.
• Purchasing products, services, memberships and event tickets.
• Making donations.
• Gift Aiding.
• Entering competitions.
• Signing up for newsletters.
• Entering the Garden’s carpark and premises.

Online information

We may receive information about you from other sources, such as social media, if you have given us permission to do so or if you interact with us on one of our social media pages.

We will add this information to the information we hold about you for the following purposes:

• To improve and personalise our service.
• To inform competition winners.
• To respond to queries or complaints.

Monitoring and recording communications

We may monitor communications such as emails and telephone calls for the following purposes:

• Quality assurance.
• Training.
• Fraud prevention.
• Compliance.

How we use your personal information

We collect information about our users for the following purposes:

• Identify you and manage any accounts you hold with us.
• Process your orders and manage your bookings.
• Marketing.
• Analysis.
• Identifying interests and supporters.
• Collection of Gift Aid.
• Security.

Fundraising and donors

As a charity, BBG relies on donations from individuals to support its charitable purposes. To do this, we look to identify individuals who, in addition to being purchasers of tickets, may be interested in supporting our charitable objectives through other means, including charitable donations. We also review whether existing donors may wish to provide further financial support.

To enable us to do this in an efficient, effective and focused way, and to ensure the requests we make are appropriate, proportionate and tailored, we may use publicly available information (collected either in-house or by third parties) to identify whether or not you are likely to wish to provide donations to BBG. We do not allow third parties to use the data we provide them about you for other purposes.

The information that we may process includes publicly available information relating to your wealth (including house price values), whether you are a trustee of a charity or have previously donated to similar charities.

We understand that not all of our audience members or donors will want us to carry out such processing and you are free at any time to ask us to stop doing this in respect of your data. You can do this by contacting admin@birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk or development@birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk and we will delete the information that we have collected about you for these purposes.

Volunteering

As a charity, BBG relies on the support and dedication of our volunteers.

To enable us to manage our volunteer database in an efficient, effective and focused way, if you sign up to volunteer with us then we may collect extra information about you (for example, references, details of emergency contacts, medical conditions etc.). This information will be retained for legal and safeguarding reasons and will not be shared with third party organisations.

Who your information may be shared with

The personal information that you give us will only be shared with third parties where we are obliged or permitted by law to disclose it, we need to use the services of ‘data processors’ to fulfil your requirements, or to support analysis and research.

Your personal data is never sold to any agencies or companies. We will only share data with third party providers on the legal bases as listed below:

Fulfilment of contract

Services such as our ticketing system (Spektrix) and email service. We have agreements in place with each provider to ensure your data is secure and cannot be accessed or used for any other purpose.

Legitimate business interests

We may make data available to approved suppliers for analysis and research purposes only, for example identifying sales trends, assessing campaign effectiveness, or postcode mapping etc. These assist reporting and planning and with funding commentary.

We may share your data with third party organisations as listed below:

• To use third party processors providing services to BBG.
• With agreement about data management protocols, we may make anonymised data available to other agencies for analysis and research purposes (for instance, comparison sales trends over time and geographical comparisons). This assists with reporting to funders and strategic planning, helping us to make better business decisions.
• We may take photographic or video recordings and share these with media and social media outlets. We always make clear when photography or recordings are taking place.
• We may publish lists of supporters and donors, but you can request us not to include your information should you wish.
• We may share data with fundraising prospect companies to assess potential level of support and identify individuals who might be interested in receiving information about particular projects. It may also be used in aggregate to inform an overall strategy for securing donations.
• To maintain the security of property and individuals using CCTV footage.

Marketing

We would like to send you information about products, services, offers, competitions, funding appeals and our business which may be of interest to you. Such information could be sent by post, email, telephone, text message or telephone call.

We will ask whether you would like us to send you marketing messages on the first occasion that you provide any relevant contact information (i.e. on purchase, signing up to a newsletter, entering a competition etc). If you do opt in to receive such marketing from us, you can opt out at any time (see ‘Your Rights’ below for further information). If you have any queries about how to opt out, or if you are receiving messages you do not want, you can contact us using the details provided below.

Data retention

We will keep personal data for no longer than is strictly necessary, having regard to the original purpose for which the data was processed.

Your rights

You have rights, including the following:

• To be informed of the ways in which we use your information.
• To request us to stop processing your personal data for marketing purposes.
• To request that any inaccuracies in the data we hold about you are corrected.
• In certain circumstances to request that we limit, cease processing or erase your personal data.
• To lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office or through the Fundraising Regulator.

Where you have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We rely on the following as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal information:

• Consent.
• Contract.
• Legitimate interests.

The interests relied upon are as follows:

• When consent is required, we will always ask for your explicit consent to processing your personal data.
• When you make a purchase from us or become a member, you are entering a contract with us. We need to process and store your data in order to perform this contract.

In some situations, we collect and process your personal data for purposes that are in our legitimate organisational interests, such as marketing. In doing so we consider that there is no overriding prejudice to you and that you would reasonably expect us to use your data in this way.

Keeping your 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 will also use technological and organisation measures to keep your information secure.

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.

While we will use all reasonable efforts to secure your personal data, in using the site you acknowledge that the use of the internet is not entirely secure and for this reason we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal data that are transferred from you or to you via the internet. If you have any particular concerns about your information, please contact us using the details below.

Transfers of your information out of the EEA (European Economic Area)

We will not transfer your personal information outside of the EEA at any time.

What rights do you have?

Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have a number of important rights free of charge. 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.
• Claim compensation for damages caused by our breach of any data protection laws.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individual’s rights under the General Data Protection Regulations (ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/)

If you would like to exercise any of these rights please:

• Email, call or write to us.
• Let us have enough information to identify you.
• Let us have proof of your identity (a copy of your driving license, passport or a recent credit card/utility bill).
• Let us know the information to which your request relates.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.

The General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, in particular in the European Union (or European Economic Area) state where you work, normally live or where any alleged infringement of data protection laws occurred. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Changes to the privacy policy

This privacy policy was last updated on 18 July 2024.

We may change or update this privacy policy from time to time.

Any significant changes will be communicated on our website and/or by contacting you directly.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your computer or electronic device when you access our website. Similar technologies include web beacons, action tags, local shared objects (‘flash cookies’) and single-pixel gifs. Such technologies can be used to track users’ actions and activities, and to store information about them. We use these cookies and/or similar technologies on this website.

This information helps us to build a profile of our users. Some of this information may be aggregated or statistical, which means that we will not be able to identify you individually.

In addition, it should be noted that in some cases our cookies or similar technologies may be owned and controlled by third parties who will also collect personal information about you.

On the first occasion that you use our site we will ask whether you consent to our use of cookies. If you do not, cookies will not be used. Thereafter you can opt-out of using cookies at any time or you can set your browser not to accept cookies and the websites below tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, some of our website features may not function as a result.

For further information on cookies generally visit aboutcookies.org or allaboutcookies.org.

By browsing, you are accepting the cookies as mentioned above plus any others deemed essential for the best user experience. You can manage cookies in your browser; however, if you decline or delete cookies, areas of the site may not function properly or may behave unexpectedly.

How to contact us

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

E-mail: admin@birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk or marie@birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk

Post: Marie Purcell – Head of Finance, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Westbourne Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 3TR

or

Telephone: 0121 454 1860

Customer contact preferences can be changed at any time via your customer account on birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk.