Privacy Policy

Sight for Surrey is committed to protecting the privacy and security of personal information.

This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information. We retain and use that information only in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It applies to all the people we support, other people we hold information about in the course of our work, employees, volunteers and contractors.

We process information as a strategic partner of Surrey County Council, in relation to work with other NHS and social care providers, and as a charity serving the interests of people with sensory impairments.

Data protection principles

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

1. Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
2. Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
3. Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
4. Accurate and kept up to date.
5. Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
6. Kept securely.

Before processing your information we will determine that doing so is lawful and necessary.

The kind of information we hold

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

How we will use information about you

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to, and we may pass on your personal information if we have a legal obligation to do so. Sight for Surrey, as partners of Surrey County Council, is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We will only use your personal information to provide you with services you request from us. We will never share or sell your information to other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don’t pass on your details to other websites. If we have your permission to do so we will also send you occasional information, including email alerts, that may be of interest to you including new services, events, fundraising and our charity magazine, Signpost.

Security and data retention

Sending information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we can’t guarantee the security of your data while it’s in transit. Any data you send is at your own risk.

Once we have received data we use a range of industry standard security measures and encryption to ensure that we are able to keep your information safe, and to protect your information from access by unauthorised persons and against unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction and damage.

Your data is backed up on secure remote servers which are based in the United Kingdom.

We will retain your information for a reasonable period or as long as the law requires.

Links to other websites

This privacy policy only applies to sightforsurrey.org.uk and doesn’t cover other website services or transactions that we link to. If you link to another website from the Sight for Surrey site, read the privacy policy on that website to find out what it does with your information.

Your rights over your data

You are entitled to see the information we hold about you and you may ask us to make any necessary changes to ensure that it is accurate and kept up to date. If you wish to do this, please contact the Information Governance Lead. You also have the ”right to be forgotten”. You can request that we delete all the data we hold about you.

Contact

All comments, queries and requests relating to our use of your information are welcomed and should be addressed to the Information Governance Lead, Lynda Ellis, lellis@sightforsurrey.org.uk.

More information about the regulation and about your rights can be found on the website of the Information Commissioner at: www.ico.org.uk.