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A tapestry showing a roundel of a flesher at work surrounded by botanicals used in the tanning process.

The Leathersellers' Privacy Notice

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This privacy notice (Notice) explains how the Leathersellers’ Company (a Royal Charter company with registration number RC000908) (Company) and the Leathersellers’ Foundation (Foundation, together the Leathersellers, also referred to herein as we, our, us) collects, uses and shares your personal data, and your rights in relation to the personal data we process.

Updating the Notice

We may modify this Notice at any time. We will endeavour to update you when we make any significant changes to this Notice. This Notice was last updated in March 2024.

Data controller and contact details

Both the Company and Foundation are data controllers of your personal data. Member, tenant and event attendee personal data is generally processed by the Company whilst the Foundation is generally a data controller of personal data processed in connection to its charitable work (including the personal data of the Foundation’s grantees). However, from time to time the Company may process data connected to the Foundation and vice versa. In such instances the entity undertaking the processing activity (and determining the purpose and means of the processing) will be the data controller. However, we have a single point of contact for dealing with all enquires regardless of which entity is the data controller.

If you have any questions about this Notice, or if you would like to exercise any of your legal rights in respect of your personal data processed by either the Company or the Foundation, please contact our Data Protection Representative using the following details:

How we collect your information

We may collect your personal information:

  • from the information you provide to us when you when you:
    • apply to join the Company as a member;
    • book and attend events at St. Helen’s Place;
    • subscribe to our newsletter and other mailings;
    • become a tenant at one of our properties;
  • when you correspond with us by phone, email or other means;
  • when you apply to the Foundation for a grant;
  • when you complete surveys to provide feedback;
  • when you use the members’ section of our website at leathersellers.co.uk (Website);
  • from the information provided to us through cookies when you browse our website (please also see our Cookies section below).

We may also collect your personal data if you are a service provider, partner or other professional contact of the Company or Foundation in the course of our professional interactions.

The types of information we collect

We may collect and process the following personal information about you:

  • your name, pronouns, gender, age and date of birth;
  • your membership number;
  • your job title, company name, experience and qualifications;
  • your address, email address and phone number;
  • your login and password information in connection to your use of the members’ area of the Website;
  • your billing details, including VAT number where you are a supplier or contractor;
  • identity documents to verify your application for membership;
  • your marketing preferences (where you have provided this information);
  • information provided in any application form you submit to us as part of a grant application to the Foundation;
  • where you are a tenant, information about your tenancy including rent, maintenance records, and records of our interactions and correspondence;
  • technical information gained from your use of our website, including your internet protocol (IP) address, cookie identifier, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
  • information about your website visit (such as which pages you visited, how you navigated to our website, and how long you spent browsing our website); and
  • personal information provided by you in your correspondence with us.

Special category data (e.g. data concerning health and race/ethnicity). Whilst we do not collect special category data as a matter of course, our surveys, application forms and questionnaires may provide you with an option to declare your race, ethnicity and/or health conditions. We use this information to better understand the diversity of our members and grant applicants. We will only process this information for the purposes of identifying or keeping under review the existence of equality of opportunity or treatment with a view to promoting equality, or with your explicit consent. We also process data concerning health and allergies where this is provided to us in connection to a tenancy or event to comply with our legal duty of care.

How we use your information, our legal basis for using your information and who we share your information with

Where we have a contractual relationship with you

We will process your personal data because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract. In this respect, we use your personal data for the following:

  • to carry out our obligations arising from any terms or policies entered into between you and us (including the member codes, tenancy agreement and grant terms), and to provide you with the membership benefits, grants, and services that you request from us (including fulfilling subscriptions to the members-only newsletter);
  • to interact with you before you enter into a contract with us, such as when you express your interest in our membership, grants, or services (for example, to send you information about our grant process and events or answer enquiries about them).

In this respect we will provide your data to our subcontractors as necessary whom we engage to assist us in conducting our operations, such as our IT providers, caterers, event organisers, payment providers and delivery companies.

Legitimate interests

We also process your personal data because it is necessary for our or a third party’s legitimate interests. Our legitimate interests include operating the Company and Foundation in accordance with our aims and charitable objectives as set out on our Website. In this respect, we may use your personal data for the following:

  • to enable you to receive information about our activities including to advertise and market upcoming events (unless it is required or appropriate to gain your consent);
  • to publish members’ contact details on their individual member profile on the Leathersellers’ members’ site to allow members to make contact with each other;
  • to monitor the impact of our marketing and social media communications;
  • to produce films or take photographs of events. Where possible we will seek your consent beforehand; however, in some instances this may not be possible (for example if you appear in a background shot). We will endeavour to alert individuals to the fact that filming/photography may be taking place where it is practicable to do so;
  • capturing images on our CCTV system for the purposes of security and detecting criminal activities; and
  • to analyse and improve the services we provide, including improving our Website, processing feedback and conducting market research.

In this respect, we will provide your data to third parties who assist us in conducting our operations such as our caterers, event organisers, payment providers, IT providers and security providers. In addition, for the purposes outlined above, the organisations who we use for our marketing operations, visitor surveys and analysis may need to process your personal data on our behalf.

Legal obligations

We process your personal data for our compliance with our legal obligations including for tax and reporting requirements, charity regulations, to report crimes and serious incidents, and to comply with our legal duty of care towards visitors. In this respect and if required, we will share your data with competent authorities and regulators such as the Charity Commission.

Consent

We also process your Personal Data where we have your specific consent to do so (for example, where it is necessary to seek and obtain your consent to send you direct marketing by email [or to set cookies via our website for advertising purposes]). We also ask members for their consent to publish their details in the Livery Contact Book (the Annual).

If you have given your consent and you wish to withdraw it, please contact us using the contact details set out above or click the “unsubscribe” link in the emails we send. Please note that where our processing of your personal data relies on your consent and where you then withdraw that consent, we may not be able to provide all or some aspects of our services to you and/or it may affect the provision of our services.

International transfers of data outside of the United Kingdom

We transfer personal data to countries in the EEA and USA, depending on where our service providers have their data centres. Transfers of personal data to the EEA are based on the adequacy decision made by the UK Government in respect of data protection safeguards in the EEA, where you will enjoy similar rights under data protection law.

For transfers to the USA we have entered into a contract with the relevant provider that contains the data protection clauses approved by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) that safeguard how your data is processed.

How long your information is kept

We will retain your personal data in accordance with our Data Retention Policy (further details available on request). In particular:

  • in relation to personal data relating to your membership, tenancy or any products or services we have provided, we will retain that data for a period of at least six years after your membership has expired (or the relevant transaction has concluded) in case any legal claims arise out of the provision of those products or services;
  • we will retain your details on our marketing database until you inform us that you no longer wish to receive our marketing communications. However, where you do unsubscribe from our marketing communications, we will keep your details on a suppression list to ensure that we do not send you information you have asked not to receive.

Your rights

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation you have the following rights in relation to our processing of your personal data:

  • to obtain access to, and copies of, the personal data that we hold about you;
  • to require us to correct the personal data we hold about you if it is incorrect;
  • to require us to erase your personal data in certain circumstances;
  • to require us to restrict our data processing activities in certain circumstances (and, where our processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent, without affecting the lawfulness of our processing based on consent before its withdrawal);
  • to receive from us the personal data we hold about you which you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you, including for transmitting that personal data to another data controller;
  • to object, on grounds relating to your situation, to any of our processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on your rights;
  • to complain about the processing of your data to the ICO, although the ICO recommends that you first try and resolve the complaint with us.

Please note that the above rights are not absolute, and we may be entitled to refuse your requests where exceptions apply.

Cookies

What are Cookies?

A cookie is a small file which is placed on your computer’s hard drive to help store your user preferences, login and session states, analyse web traffic or let you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Cookies used on this site

The following cookies may be set.

csrf_cookie_name: This cookie protects against Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF). A CSRF attack forces a logged-on victim’s browser to send a forged HTTP request, including the victim’s session cookie and any other automatically included authentication information, to a vulnerable web application. This allows the attacker to force the victim’s browser to generate requests the vulnerable application thinks are legitimate requests from the victim.

PHPSESSID: This cookie stores temporary information to enable site functionality.

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Google Analytics: __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz: We use Google Analytics to monitor and report on our website usage such as the number of visitors to the site, search phrases used to find us, pages visited on the site and time spent on the site. The statistics gathered are a necessary requirement in order for us to provide and improve our value added products and services and to stay competitive. The cookies do not identify users nor associate your IP address with any personally identifiable information. These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Google’s privacy policy is found here https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/

How to disable cookies

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.