PRIVACY NOTICE

It is your right to be informed about how we collect and store your data.

How we use your information

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when The Organic Cookery School collects personal information. It applies to information we collect about:

visitors to our websites;

complainants and other individuals in relation to a data protection or freedom of information complaint or enquiry;

people who use our services, eg who subscribe to our newsletter buy from our webshop or members of our subscription service.

people who notify under the Data Protection Act

Visitors to our websites

When someone visits www.organiccookeryschool.org we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be upfront about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Use of cookies

A number of our pages use cookies to remember:

  • your display preferences, such as contrast colour settings or font size

  • if you have already replied to a survey pop-up that asks you if the content was helpful or not (so you won’t be asked again)

  • if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site

Also, some videos embedded in our pages use a cookie to anonymously gather statistics on how you got there and what videos you visited.

Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block these cookies, but if you do that some features of this site may not work as intended.

The cookie-related information is not used to identify you personally and the pattern data is fully under our control. These cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.

How to control cookies

You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.

E-newsletter

We use two third-party providers, Convertkit and Mailchimp, to deliver our newsletters. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. For more information, please see Convertkit’s privacy notice & GDPR-compliance, and Mailchimp’s privacy notice.

Squarespace

We use a third-party service, Squarespace, to publish our blog and webshop. Squarespace collects anonymous information about users’ activity on the site, for example, the number of users viewing pages on the site, to monitor and report on the effectiveness of the site and help us improve it. Squarespace requires visitors that want to post a comment to enter a name and email address. For more information about how Squarespace processes data, please see Squarespace’s privacy notice.

If you send us a private or direct message via social media the message will be stored within those relevant accounts. It will not be shared with any other organisations.

Thinkific

We use a third party service Thinkific to run our online teaching courses. On some pages, you can enrol in courses, make payments and send us messages. The types of personal information collected at these pages are:

Name

Address

E-mail address

Phone number

IP Address

Credit/Debit Card Information

The information you provide about yourself when placing an order is used only to complete that order. This information is not shared with outside parties except to the extent necessary to complete that order.

For more information about how Thinkific processes data, please see Thinkific’s privacy notice.

Payments

We use third party payment services Paypal and Stripe to process payments. We do not hold your payment details these are stored by the 3rd party provider. For more information about how they process data please see Paypal or Stripe privacy notices.

Shopping Cart

To process our subscription services we use third party shopping cart services Sendowl. Information from those payment cards is then stored by the relevant provider PayPal or Stripe. We do not store your card details. For more information about how they process data please see Sendowl’s privacy notice.

Demio

We use Demio to run webinars, which collects you name and email, plus other optional information, so we can communicate with you about the webinar you have signed up for. You have find out more about how Demio processes your data here:

People who email us

We will monitor any emails sent to us, including file attachments, for viruses or malicious software. Please be aware that you have a responsibility to ensure that any email you send is within the bounds of the law.

People who make a complaint to us

When we receive a complaint from a person we make up a file containing the details of the complaint. This normally contains the identity of the complainant and any other individuals involved in the complaint.

We will only use the personal information we collect to process the complaint and to check on the level of service we provide. We do compile and publish statistics showing information like the number of complaints we receive, but not in a form which identifies anyone.

We usually have to disclose the complainant’s identity to whoever the complaint is about. This is inevitable where, for example, the accuracy of a person’s record is in dispute. If a complainant doesn’t want information identifying him or her to be disclosed, we will try to respect that. However, it may not be possible to handle a complaint on an anonymous basis.

We will keep personal information contained in complaint files in line with our retention policy. This means that information relating to a complaint will be retained for two years from closure. It will be retained in a secure environment and access to it will be restricted according to the ‘need to know’ principle.

Similarly, where enquiries are submitted to us we will only use the information supplied to us to deal with the enquiry and any subsequent issues and to check on the level of service we provide.

When we take enforcement action against someone, we may publish the identity of the defendant in our Annual Report or elsewhere. Usually, we do not identify any complainants unless the details have already been made public.

Your rights

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have rights as an individual which you can exercise in relation to the information we hold about you.

You can read more about these rights here – https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/is-my-information-being-handled-correctly/

Complaints or queries

The Organic Cookery School tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.

This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of The Organic Cookery School’s collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to the address below.

If you want to make a complaint about the way we have processed your personal information, you can contact the ICO as the statutory body which oversees data protection law – www.ico.org.uk/concerns.

Access to personal information

The Organic Cookery School tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a ‘subject access request’ under the Data Protection Act 1998. If we do hold information about you we will:

give you a description of it;

tell you why we are holding it;

tell you who it could be disclosed to; and

let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request to The Organic Cookery School for any personal information we may hold you need to put the request in writing to the address provided below.

If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone.

If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to correct any mistakes by, once again, contacting us.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 23 May 2018.

How to contact us

If you want to request information about our privacy policy you can email us at info@organiccookeryschool/org or write to:

The Organic Cookery School, 50 Weycombe Road Haslemere GU271EQ