About this policy
This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting this website, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.
The Participatr Limited registered office is at 13-14 Orchard Street, Bristol, BS1 5EH and we are registered with the Information Commissioners Office (registration number ZA543627).
Our role
In all instances, we work with (or on behalf of) another organisation (that we will refer to as the agent of change in this statement) to communicate and engage with citizens, collect their insight and opinions and provide information about projects relating to the built environment, public places, transport, infrastructure and public policy. This information helps agents of change gain insights on community opinions, sentiments and feelings and make better, more informed decisions as a result. It is in that capacity that we collect, process and manage personal data.
Personal data is information that relates to an identified or identifiable individual. If it is possible to identify an individual directly from information, then that information may be personal data.
In some instances, for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation, we are the data processor because we process personal data on behalf of the agent of change and we make no decisions how and why personal data is processed. Where Participatr Limited acts as the data processor on behalf of the agent of change, the data controller (the agent of change) will use the information gathered for purposes specified in their privacy policy.
In all other instances, for the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation, we are a joint data controller because we work jointly with the agent of change to make decisions about how and why personal data is processed. In these instances, we will process personal data in line with the policies set out in this privacy policy and the data controller (the agent of change) will use the information gathered for purposes specified in their own privacy policy.
In all instances, we only collect and process data where necessary and to fulfil our legal responsibilities, our responsibilities to you and our responsibilities to the agent of change. The personal data collected is never used for any other purpose.
In all instances, it is our responsibility to make it clear who is the agent of change (the organisation we are working with or acting on behalf of to collect your personal data) and who is responsible for collecting, processing and managing your personal data.
Information we may collect from you
We may collect and process data about you in the following circumstances:
- When you visit a Participatr engagement website
- When you complete a form on a Participatr engagement website
- When you contact us by telephone
- When you contact us by email
- When information is passed to us for processing by another organisation (such as the agent of change or an organisation associated with the agent of change in a professional or commercial capacity)
Depending on the scope of the engagement process carried out by Participatr Limited on behalf of, or working with, the agent of change, we may collect the following information about you:
Your name
We collect your name to help discern between you and somebody else who has responded to a survey, completed a form or contacted us in any other way. In combination with your email address, your name is used as a unique identifier to make sure that the information that we gather is accurate, that it is submitted by real people and that malicious, duplicate or repetitive responses are discounted (where appropriate).
Your email address
We collect your email address to help discern between you and somebody else who has responded to a survey, completed a form or contacted us in any other way. In combination with your name, your email address is used as a unique identifier to make sure that the information that we gather is accurate, that it is submitted by real people and that malicious, duplicate or repetitive responses are discounted (where appropriate).
Your address (house number and/or postcode)
We collect your postcode to provide additional context to your comment, insight or opinions and relate them to your location. In some instances, we will collect your building name or number to provide more localised context to your comment, insight or opinions where many people are likely to respond within a particular postcode area and a greater detail of insight is required. We will occasionally use your building name/number or postcode to contact you or send you information by post if you have given us permission to do so.
Your telephone number
Our engagement websites will never ask for your telephone number explicitly. However, we may ask for your telephone number by email in the course of a telephone conversation in order to respond to a specific query or question. It is also possible that you may provide your telephone number without us asking you to, as part of a comment, insight or opinion that you submit using a Participatr engagement website.
Your age group
Information collected about age is aggregated, anonymised and used only for statistical analysis. This information is used to ensure that the engagement process has created an equal opportunity for people in all age groups to contribute and participate, and to analyse opinion trends within certain age groups.
Your ethnicity
Information collected about ethnicity is aggregated, anonymised and used only for statistical analysis. This information is used to ensure that the engagement process has created an equal opportunity for people in all racial and ethnic groups to contribute and participate, and to analyse opinion trends within certain racial and ethnic groups.
Your employment status
Information collected about employment status is aggregated, anonymised and used only for statistical analysis. This information is used to ensure that the engagement process has created an opportunity for people in all employment circumstances to contribute and participate, and to analyse opinion trends for people in each employment status.
Your housing tenure status
Information collected about tenure status is aggregated, anonymised and used only for statistical analysis. This information is used to ensure that the engagement process has created an equal opportunity for people in all tenures to contribute and participate, and to analyse opinion trends for people in tenure.
Your relationship to a geographical area or project
Information collected about your relationship to a geographical area or project (e.g. tourist, commuter, visitor, resident) is aggregated, anonymised and used only for statistical analysis. This information is used to ensure that the engagement process has created an equal opportunity for everyone that has a stake in a particular area to contribute and participate, and to analyse opinion trends for each stakeholder group.
Your health status
We may occasionally ask you whether you have a physical or non-physical impairment and how it affects you. This information is aggregated, anonymised and used only for statistical analysis. This information is used to ensure that the engagement process has created an equal opportunity for people with a range of impairments of health conditions to contribute and participate, and to analyse opinion trends for people with health conditions or impairments.
Your Internet Protocol (IP) address
Participatr engagement websites collect the IP address of each visitor. This data is anonymised and is not linked to any other personal data held or processed by Participatr Limited. It is used to determine the broad geographical location of each visitor website and aggregated for statistical analysis purposes only.
Your opinions
We collect information about your opinions relating to the built environment, public places, transport, infrastructure and public policy. This information is used for qualitative and quantitative analysis and is associated with your name, email address and location (in certain circumstances). This information is used to address your specific aspirations or concerns for a project and is aggregated to provide statistical insights on broad community sentiments, aspirations and concerns about a built environment, public space, transport, infrastructure or public policy project.
Your consent
In all instances, when you provide personal data either directly through a Participatr engagement website or indirectly by providing information in another format (such as post, paper questionnaire, telephone or email) which is then processed by Participatr Limited, you will be asked to 'opt-in' to receiving future communications by post or email, giving you control over how your personal information is used. This information will be held for as long as your personal information is held, to ensure that your personal information is used in an appropriate manner.
In some circumstances, we may collect data which is classed as special category data. The General Data Protection Regulation defines special category data as:
- Personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin
- Personal data revealing political opinions
- Personal data revealing religious or philosophical beliefs
- Personal data revealing trade union membership
- Genetic data
- Biometric data (where used for identification purposes)
- Data concerning health
- Data concerning sex life
- Data concerning sexual orientation
Special category data includes personal data revealing or concerning the above types of data. This data is anonymised and collected by Participatr Limited on behalf of the agent of change for statistical purposes only to ensure equality of opportunity or treatment. You are under no obligation to provide special category data and have a right to withdraw consent for it to be processed.
You should be aware that responses you might give to some questions on a Participatr engagement website may reveal or concern special category data and you should be aware of this when providing responses. However, we will generally only explicitly ask for and collect special category data relating to:
- Health, to understand how physical interventions in public spaces or the built environment may affect people with certain health conditions or physical or non-physical impairments
- Racial or ethnic origin, to understand how physical interventions in public spaces or the built environment may affect people of a certain racial group or ethnic origin
Cookies
Our websites use the 'PHPSESSID' cookie to temporarily store information about the user, which enables the user to make multiple responses in one browsing session (where appropriate) without having to enter their personal details multiple times. This cookie is deemed as 'technical' and 'strictly necessary', as it is required for the website to function correctly. This cookie has no expiration time and is therefore automatically deleted in its entirety when the user closes their browser.
Where we store your data
The data that we collect from you stored on a private, secure server, located in the United Kingdom, owned and operated solely by Participatr Limited. If we ever need to transfer personal data outside of the United Kingdom, we will follow the relevant rules that govern that geographical location.
Keeping personal data secure
Each Participatr engagement website establishes a secure, encrypted connection between the website and the server to ensure that information provided is transmitted as securely as possible. However. unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure.
Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to this website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.
Uses made of the information
We use information held about you in the following ways:
- To carry out statistical, qualitative and quantitative analysis of opinions, insight and demographic information, informing decisions about the built environment, public places, transport, infrastructure and public policy
- To respond to any enquiry or communication that you make through a Participatr engagement website
- If you have consented, to send you information that may be of interest to you
- To administer Participatr engagement websites website and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes
- To to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your internet access device
- As part of our efforts to keep our websites safe and secure.
In certain circumstances, information submitted by participants may be made publicly visible on a Participatr engagement website. If this is the case, your comments and any additional feedback added by you are anonymised before being made available publicly to anyone who has an interest in the information. The content of your comments and other types of feedback may be used for further analysis, but your identity will not be revealed unless you shared something in your comment that reveals it.
Third party links
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility for these third parties.
Please check their privacy policies before you submit any personal data to these websites (and that includes checking the privacy policies of agents of change).
Disclosure of your information
We may disclose your personal information to third parties:
- In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets
- If Participatr Limited or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets
- If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Participatr Limited, our customers, or others.
How long we keep your information
We will only keep your information for as long as necessary to carry out the purposes for which we collected it. This will depend on the type of information and the types of legal and contractual obligations we must comply with.
We will not keep personal data for longer than is necessary, so when we are deciding how long to keep each category of personal data, we think about the following things: how much data we have, whether it is sensitive or not, what kind of harm there could be if there were an unauthorised disclosure.
The periods for which agents of change will keep your data will vary, so if you have a question about how long personal information is kept for each Participatr engagement website, please check the privacy policy of the agent of change. The agent of change will have their own policies for holding and processing personal data.
Your rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have the following rights:
Right to be informed
You have the right to know what we do with your personal data (which we explain on all of our websites and in this privacy policy).
Right of access
You have the right to know what personal information we process and why. That's why we inform you in advance about our processing activities using this statement. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about what information we process, please contact hello@participatr.co.uk.
Right to rectification
If you believe that we store incorrect information about you, such as your name or postcode, please contact us to correct this at hello@participatr.co.uk.
Right to be forgotten
You have the right to tell us to permanently erase your personal information from our records. For example, you may believe that there is no longer a reason for us to hold this information or you may wish to withdraw your permission for us to hold your data.
Right to restrict processing activities
You have the right to restrict our processing activities in certain situations. This means we will continue to store your information, but we'll temporarily stop any other processing. For example, you may have asked us to correct incorrect information.
Right to data portability
You have the right to ask us, in certain circumstances, to transfer your personal data from us to a third party.
Right to object
You have the right to object to the processing of your information, even when we have a legitimate legal reason to process it. You can do this when we process your information on the basis of our legitimate interest, and you believe that your interest outweighs ours.
Right to withdraw consent
If we process your personal information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.
Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority
If you are not satisfied with the way that we treat your personal information, you have a right to lodge a complaint to the national supervisory authority. In the UK this is the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).
If you wish to exercise your rights in respect of data controlled by an agent of change or any of their partners you should check their respective privacy policies for details on how to do this directly with them.
Changes to our privacy policy
Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.
Contact
Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to hello@participatr.co.uk.