Waldringfield History Group (WHG) Data Protection Policy 2022

Waldringfield History Group (WHG) Data Protection Policy 2022

Waldringfield History Group is committed to the principles involved in the secure and sensitive processing and maintenance of personal information. This commitment, often described as a Privacy Policy, but also concerned with rights, may be described as follows:

There are three areas of WHG activity to which the principles apply.

• The maintenance of a Membership register.
• The maintenance of information stored on the website.
• The collection of personal data in the course of specific projects

Maintenance of the Register

• In order to communicate with Members, it is necessary to have their consent.
• It is also necessary to hold some personal details, but these are minimised to each Member’s name and email address or, alternatively, in the event of there being no email address, a postal address. These details will not be shared with any other parties
• Where consent has been obtained in writing eg membership application, the forms are held securely by the WHG member responsible for Data Protection.
• Subsequently Consent is considered to be implied on an annual basis through payment of the annual membership fee. This is due in September (Set at the AGM). If it remains unpaid, despite appropriate reminders, by the end of the subsequent December, the personal data of the Member will be erased from the Register. This does not apply to Lifetime or Honorary members who are asked to provide consent when taking up the privilege.
• A Member may withdraw his or her consent at any time by contacting waldringfieldhg@gmail.com The relevant data will then be erased from the Register. A Member may request a change of his/her personal details at any time.

The Website

• Parts of the website are not password controlled and are available to the general public. Any greater access, sometimes to information which might be considered sensitive, is restricted to Members for that very reason.
• Full access to the website requires a password. Each WHG Member is allocated a password and asked not to share it with anybody. Members are also asked not to copy or disclose any of the information on the site to a third party.
• Much of the information on the website may be useful for historical research. Consequently, the principle of limitation of storage does not apply. Material may be stored ad infinitum.
• In the event that interested parties such as Family History researchers, for instance, might wish for access to specific areas of the website, application should be made by contacting waldringfieldhg@gmail.com. On completion of the Data consent form and on payment of the appropriate fee, access to the website can be arranged. Similarly, any interested parties with information they would like to add, or with a request for removal or modification of information then they, too, should contact waldringfieldhg@gmail.com

Specific Projects

• When WHG undertakes a specific project involving the collection of personal data it will appoint one of its Members to ensure that consent is obtained from all involved parties. That Member will also ensure that the information is managed securely.

Appendix: The principles referred to above are given weight by the Data Protection Act of 1998 and by the European General Data Protection Regulation which became binding in 2018. Although privacy law is likely to change, mainly as a consequence of our leaving the European community, but also due to rapidly developing legal precedent, the basic principles of data management remain extant, being clarity of purpose and consent, specificity of purpose, limitation of storage, minimisation and accuracy of data, security of data, confidentiality and accountability.

WHG Oct 2022