At George Eliot Hospital Charity, we are committed to safeguarding your personal information. This General Privacy Notice outlines how we collect, use, and protect any personal data you provide, enabling us to continue our charitable mission of enhancing care and wellbeing for staff, patients, and their families.
The George Eliot Hospital Charity – Registered Charity No. 1057607
Data protection is governed by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Under UK GDPR, personal data can only be processed where there is a valid legal basis to do so. “Processing” includes activities such as collecting, storing, and using personal information.
The UK GDPR sets out six lawful bases for processing personal data. At least one of these must apply for processing to be lawful. The legal bases most relevant to George Eliot Hospital Charity are Consent, Legitimate Interests, Legal Obligation, and Contract.
George Eliot Hospital Charity will only process your personal information where:
In exceptional situations, such as an accident or medical emergency, we may share your personal information with emergency services where it is necessary to protect someone’s life. This is known as the “vital interests” legal basis. We will never place our interests above your rights and freedoms. Any use of your personal data will be carefully balanced, fair, and limited to purposes you would reasonably expect, in line with this Privacy Notice.
George Eliot Hospital Charity will always ask for your consent before communicating with you for certain purposes. For example, we will only contact you by email or telephone about our fundraising activities where we have a clear record of your recent and freely given consent to do so.
You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us by telephone on 024 7615 3476, using email [email protected] or in writing to George Eliot Hospital Charity, Lewes House, College Street, Nuneaton CV10 7DJ.
There may be occasions where it is not practical to obtain and record consent. In such cases, we will only process your personal information where another lawful basis applies, such as Legitimate Interests. Where this applies, we will ensure that our processing is carried out in line with the strict rules on legitimate interest processing.
Legitimate Interests is a lawful basis that allows organisations to process your personal information where they have a genuine and legitimate reason for doing so, provided that this use does not outweigh or harm your rights and interests as an individual.
When relying on Legitimate Interests, George Eliot Hospital Charity will carefully consider and balance our interests against your rights, ensuring that any use of your personal data is fair, reasonable, and in line with your expectations.
We believe that the best way to respect and protect the interests of our supporters is to consider their individual relationship with us, as well as their expectations and preferences.
To support this approach, we use the following categories to guide how we may use your personal information under the Legitimate Interests lawful basis:
This helps ensure that any communication or use of your personal information is relevant, appropriate, and aligned with what you would reasonably expect from us.
We believe that supporters of George Eliot Hospital Charity are connected to our mission and may wish to continue supporting our charitable aims. Unless you tell us otherwise, we may retain and use your personal information for a reasonable period of time under the Legitimate Interests lawful basis. This may include:
Unless you tell us otherwise, we may rely on our Legitimate Interests lawful basis to send you direct mail. From time to time, we may write to you with updates about our work, products, services, and ways you can support George Eliot Hospital Charity, including fundraising activities.
We aim to ensure that any direct mail we send is relevant and appropriate to your interests. Our communications may include marketing and fundraising requests that help support our charitable aims.
We regularly review our communications to avoid sending information that may no longer be of interest. For example, if you have not engaged with us for three years, we may reduce the frequency of our mailings.
You remain in control at all times. If you no longer wish to receive direct mail from us, you can ask us to stop at any time.
We aim to be clear about what information we collect so that you can make informed choices about how it is used.
Where necessary, we may contact you for administrative purposes, for example in relation to a payment or transaction.
We will also retain the minimum personal information required to ensure we can respect your communication preferences.
To help you understand when and why George Eliot Hospital Charity may rely on Legitimate Interests to process your personal information, examples include:
These activities will only be carried out where they do not override your rights and interests. We will always consider the impact on you, and you can ask us to stop using your personal information in this way at any time.
George Eliot Hospital Charity collects information from the public in a number of ways. For example, we may ask for your contact details when you meet us at events, sign up to one of our campaigns, or engage with our activities. This may include your name, address, email address, telephone number. We use this information to provide and improve our services and to keep a record of our communications with you.
If you support the charity financially, such as making a donation or purchasing items, we will collect the information needed to process and administer your payment. This will typically include your name, address, email address or telephone number, payment details, and Gift Aid status (where applicable).
Where you have given your consent, we will contact you with updates about our work, products, services, and ways you can support us. This may be by post, email, telephone, or text message, depending on your preferences. We will also periodically check your communication preferences to ensure you remain happy with how we contact you.
This list is not exhaustive but highlights the main ways in which you may provide information to George Eliot Hospital Charity:
Depending on how you interact with George Eliot Hospital Charity, we may collect and process the following personal information:
We will not share your data with any third parties for their marketing purposes.
We use a secure third-party system to record and manage donation information https://www.beaconcrm.org/. This provider acts as a data processor on our behalf and is required to keep your personal information secure and confidential in accordance with a formal data processing agreement.
Protecting the privacy and personal data of our visitors is extremely important to us. Safeguarding your information is central to how we design, organise, and deliver our activities, both online and offline.
This privacy statement applies specifically to the George Eliot Hospital Charity website. Please note that other organisations or entities linked from our website may have different privacy practices. While they share a commitment to protecting your privacy, we recommend reviewing their individual privacy statements when visiting their websites.
In general, you can browse the George Eliot Hospital Charity website without disclosing any information about yourself. If you visit the George Eliot Hospital Charity website to read or download information, we collect and store only the following information that is automatically recognised, the date and time, the originating IP address, the domain name, the type of browser and operating system used (if provided by the browser), the URL of the referring page (if provided by the browser), the object requested and the completion status of the request.
As outlined above, we may collect anonymous information about visits to our website to help us improve our services. For example, we track the domains from which visitors access our site and measure user activity across the George Eliot Hospital Charity website. This is done in a way that ensures individuals cannot be identified. We use this information to understand how many people visit different areas of the site and to make improvements based on user needs. This includes periodically analysing server logs to assess traffic levels, pages visited, and demand for specific content or topics. These logs may be stored indefinitely and used at any time to help prevent security breaches and maintain the integrity of our systems. Some of this anonymous data is collected using technologies such as “cookies.” A cookie is a small piece of data that a website sends to your browser, which may then be stored on your device. For example, on websites with login functionality, cookies can remember user details so that they do not need to be re-entered on each visit.
All information collected in this way is analysed only in aggregate form to identify trends and patterns. It is not used to identify individuals or reviewed on a personal level. If you prefer not to have your data collected in this way, you can disable cookies through your browser setting.
Registering on the George Eliot Hospital Charity website is optional. If you choose not to register or provide personal information, you may still access and use the website; however, certain features or services may be limited. George Eliot Hospital Charity considers the information it collects from users to be a valuable and confidential asset and takes appropriate measures to ensure its security and protection. If you choose to register, as outlined above under legitimate interests, you may receive promotional or marketing communications. You can indicate your preferences at the point of providing your personal data.
We use the information you provide for three main purposes: to fulfil your requests for specific services or areas of the website, to contact you where necessary, and to support the maintenance and improvement of our website systems.
Please note that if you register, your information will no longer be anonymous and may be accessed by authorised George Eliot Hospital Charity staff and relevant partners for marketing purposes. If you no longer wish to receive promotional or marketing communications, you can opt out at any time by emailing [email protected].
We will process your personal information in accordance with applicable data protection laws and regulations for the following purposes:
We will retain your personal data only for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected.
If you have any questions or concerns about this General Privacy Notice, or if you wish to change your communication preferences, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can reach us by telephone on 024 7615 3476 during office hours, by email at [email protected], or by writing to the Fundraising Manager, George Eliot Hospital Charity, Lewes House, College Street, Nuneaton, CV10 7DJ.
