Your privacy is important to us

What we collect

We need to process personal data in order to deliver our services to you::

  • Name and job title and organisation
  • Contact information including email address
  • Demographic information such as postcode, Local Authority information, registered location information

What we do with the information we gather

We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service, and in particular for the following reasons:

  • Internal record keeping.
  • We may use the information to improve our services.
  • We may send promotional emails about new services, invitations to events and conferences, special offers or other information including social care news which we think you may find interesting using the email address which you have provided.
  • From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes e.g. ECA member surveys and feedback.
  • We may use the information to improve the services that ECA offers.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

  • Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
  • Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
  • Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
  • Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
  • You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at office@essexcare.org.uk if you wish to make a request.

Security

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

How we use cookies

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer's hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyse web traffic or lets 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.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

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.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. 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.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest e.g. ECA Commercial Partners However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

We are committed to treating your information securely, with respect and in line with data protection law.

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and we will place all updates of this page on the website as soon as is practicable.

For further information you can contact us as follows:

Essex Care Association
251-255 Church Road

Benfleet
Essex
SS7 4QP

Telephone: 01268 565551
Email: office@essexcare.org.uk

For independent advice about data protection issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner:

Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow, Cheshire,
UK
SK9 5AF

Phone: +44 303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk
Website: www.ico.org.uk

We will only collect personal information when we need it. The type of information we need from you will relate purely to contact information allowing us to communicate with you. When we ask you for information, we will make it clear why we need it. We only collect personal information when you complete the forms on this website if you wish to send us a comment or ask for our email newsletter.

Sending us a comment:

  • we will need your name and email address.
  • we will use this information only if we need to reply to your comment.

We never share personal information with any other organisation for third-party marketing purposes.

We may share information when required by law, for example, where ordered by the Court or to protect an individual from immediate harm.

We only hold records during the period of our relationship and for a set period afterwards to allow us to meet our legal obligations, including resolving any follow-up issues between us.

Please contact us if you would like any more information.

We will apply appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure your personal information is secure.  For example, we have systems in place to ensure that access to personal information is restricted to authorised individuals on a strictly need-to-know basis.

To help us ensure confidentiality of your personal information we may ask you (and any of your representatives) security questions to confirm your identity when you call us and as may be necessary when we call you. We will not discuss your personal information with anyone other than you, unless you have given us prior written authorisation to do so or where we have received a clear verbal instruction from you (as a one-off circumstance).

We are committed to upholding your rights in respect of your personal data.

The right to be informed

Through the provision of this and other privacy notices on the website, we will be open and transparent about how and why we use your personal information.

The right of access

You have a right to ask us what personal information we hold about you and to request a copy of your information. This is known as a ‘subject access request’ (SAR).

SARs need to be made in writing and we ask that your written request is accompanied by proof of your address and identity.

If you are seeking to obtain specific information (e.g. about a particular matter or from a particular time period), it helps if you clarify the details of what you would like to receive in your written request.

If someone is requesting information on your behalf they will need written confirmation from you to evidence your consent for us to release this and proof of ID (both yours and theirs).

We have 30 calendar days within which to provide you with the information you’ve asked for (although we will try to provide this to you as promptly as possible).

The right to rectification

You can ask us to rectify your personal data if it is inaccurate or incomplete. Please help us to keep our records accurate by keeping us informed if your details change.

The right to erasure

The right to erasure is also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’. In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing.  This is not an absolute right, and we will need to consider the circumstances of any such request and balance this against our need to continue processing the data.  Our response will also be guided by the provisions of our retention schedule.

The right to object

You can tell us you object to us processing your data to provide update emails.

You can specifically opt-out of update emails at any time by following the link at the bottom of each email.

To make this site simpler to use, we place small files on your computer, known as cookies, almost all websites do this. Cookies have many uses and most are not damaging to your privacy, all of the cookies used on this website fall into that category. We do not permit cookies that collect or transfer your detailed personal data to other websites for advertising or other purposes.

Cookies are used on this site purely to improve services for you through, for example:

  • enabling a service to recognise your device so you don't have to give the same information several times during one task
  • recognising that you may already have given a username and password so you don't need to do it for every web page requested
  • measuring how many people are using the site, so it can be made easier to use and ensure there is enough capacity and fast enough

We use Google Analytics to determine how many people use this site. Google Analytics stores information about the pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and how you utilise the website. We do not collect or store any directly identifiable personal information (e.g. your name or address) which could be used to identify who you are. To find out more about how Google uses the information it stores in cookies please review their documentation.

The following cookies are used by Google Analytics:

  • _ga is used to distinguish users (anonymously) and expires after 2 years
  • _gid is used to distinguish users (anonymously) and expires after 24 hours
  • _gat is used to manage usage of the analytics functions and expires after 1 minute
  • _gac contains anonymous usage information and expires after 90 days

The following cookie may be used to provide other normal website functions:

  • asp.net_sessionid contains session related information for the user and  expires when the browser is closed

If you do not wish to accept any cookies on to your machine you can disable them by adjusting the settings on your browser. However, this is likely to adversely affect the functionality of the websites you visit. For further information visit: www.allaboutcookies.org.