Volunteer Privacy Policy

Who are we?

PADs UK or PADs Foundation are working names of Psychiatric Assistance Dogs, a UK charity registered number 1173512.

Registered office: 4 Trenowth Terrace, Grampound Road, Cornwall, TR24EB

Tel: 07852212320 Email: zoe@pads.foundation Website: pads.foundation

This privacy policy describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your volunteering relationship with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It applies to all current and former volunteers.

PADs Foundation is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

It is important that you read this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information.

Our Data Protection Officer is Zoe Norquoy.

If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy, please email her zoe@pads.foundation

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.

Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained toyou and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.

Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.

Accurate and kept up to date.

Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.

Kept securely.

  • The kind of information we hold about you

    • Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified, whether directly or indirectly. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

    There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

    We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

    Data Collected

    What we use it for

    Legal basis

    Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses

    To contact the volunteer

    Legitimate Interests

    Name,
    Email address Mobile number

    To send e-newsletter and marketing communications

    Consent

    Name
    Postal address

    Telephone

    To send marketing communications

    Legitimate Interests

    Date of birth

    To check volunteer not under 16. To review the effectiveness of marketing and campaign materials

    Legitimate interest

    Emergency contact information

    To contact someone in case of emergency

    Legitimate Interests

    Recruitment information (references and other information collected as part of the application process)

    Making a decision about your recruitment as a volunteer

    Legitimate Interests

    Information about any criminal convictions and offences as part of the recruitment process (collected on application form)

    Making a decision about your recruitment as a volunteer for the role you have applied for

    Legitimate Interests

    Performance information

    To provide a reference if requested. As supplementary evidence if a complaint is received

    Legitimate Interests

    Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs

    To monitor our diversity and inclusion processes

    Consent

    Information about your health, including any medical condition

    To comply with our health & safety obligations and enable any reasonable adjustments to be made

    Consent

    How is your personal information collected?

    We collect personal information about volunteers through the application and recruitment process, directly from candidates. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties, including former employers, or when we need to carry out a DBS check if your role is a regulated activity.

    We will collect additional personal information in the course of activities throughout the period of you volunteering for us.

    How we will use information about you

    We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

    • Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
    • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
    • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of athird party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
      The legitimate interest we rely on is to fulfil the charitable purpose of PADs Foundation.

    We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

    • Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
    • Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

    If you fail to provide personal information

    If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workers and volunteers).

    Change of purpose

    We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

    Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

    How we use particularly sensitive personal information

    “Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

    • In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
    • Where we need to comply with our legal obligations.
    • Where it is needed to assess your volunteering capacity on healthgrounds, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards.

    Information about criminal convictions

    We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our volunteer data protection policy.

    Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary to protect your vital interests and you are not capable of giving your consent.

    We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so. We will use information about criminal convictions and offences as part of the recruitment process to assess whether you can work in any of our workplaces that have vulnerable people.

    We are allowed to use your personal information in this way to carry out our obligations.

    Automated decision making

    We do not envisage that any decisions will be taken about you using automated means, however we will notify you in writing if this position changes.

    Data security

    We have put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request.

    We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those volunteers, employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

    We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

    Data retention

    How long will you use my information for?

    We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

    In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer a volunteer for the Charity we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.

    Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

    Your duty to inform us of changes

    It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.

    Your rights in connection with personal information

    Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

    • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
    • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
    • Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
    • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
    • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
    • Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

    If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact our Data Protection Officer by email zoe@pads.foundation 

    No fee usually required

    You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

    What we may need from you

    We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

    Right to withdraw consent

    In the limited circumstances where you may 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. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Data Protection Officer in writing at by email at zoe@pads.foundation

    Right to withdraw consent

    In the limited circumstances where you may 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. To withdraw your consent, please contact the Data Protection Officer by email at zoe@pads.foundation  Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

    Data protection officer

    The Data Protection Officer oversees compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) You also have the right to contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if you have any concerns about Data Protection using their help line 0303 123 1113 or at https://ico.org.uk, the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

    Notification of changes to this Privacy Policy 

    This privacy policy may change from time to time, for example, to reflect new legal requirements. If the privacy policy changes we will place an updated version on this page. Please review this page regularly to keep up to date with any changes to the Privacy Policy. 

    If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Policy, please write to our Data Protection Officer at: 

    07852212320 or this email address zoe@pads.foundation

    Page last updated 8 June 2023