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Privacy policy

Your privacy is important to us

To better protect your privacy, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulations, we provide this notice explaining our general information practices and the way your information is collected and used.  To make this notice easy to find and access it is available on all of our website pages, located at the bottom right hand corner of each page.

Links

Our website also contains links to other third party sites. If you click on a third party link, you will be directed to that third party’s site. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of other sites and encourage you to read their privacy statements.

The information we collect

The PDA Society does not capture or store any personal information, other than that you submit using our online forms, your emails, your posts in our forum, your eLearning record in our training hub and cookies. The data captured is only used for the purposes for which it is submitted and is not shared with any third party (other than the Data Processors we use to help us manage our records/training and process orders/payments) without your permission. For information about how we use cookies please see our cookies policy.

For more detailed information about your data rights, our lawful bases for processing, data retention, and international transfers, please see our Data Protection and GDPR policy which forms part of this notice. 

Use and storage of your personal information

The PDA Society Commit to:

  1. Only process information necessary to establish or maintain registration or support.
  2. Only process information necessary to provide or administer activities for people who are registered users of the organisation, have regular contact with it or who contact us for support.
  3. Only share this information with people and organisations outside of the PDA Society when this is necessary to carry out the organisation’s activities or when there is a legal reason to do so, for example, relating to the protection or safeguarding of you or another person’s safety.
  4. Only keep the information while the individual is a registered user, supporter or requires our support or for as long as necessary for the purposes of our support administration, and remove your personal information at your request.

The PDA Society (registered charity number 1165038) is the data controller for the purposes of data protection law in the UK. 

When you use our Support Service, including online support groups, we may use the information you share and/or post and the responses to compile aggregate statistics (e.g. number of registered users, numbers of individuals addressing specific issues, etc.), to assist us in research and development to supply to our partners. In these cases, all information will be completely anonymous.

We publish newsletters and occasionally operate online surveys, which you can select to receive from the PDA Society at the point of registration. We will never sell our members e-mail addresses.

If you use our training hub:

  1. When you enrol as a student or subscriber (“learner”) on our training hub or related courses, as part of the enrolling process, we collect the personal information you give us such as your name and email address.
  2. When you provide us with personal information to become a learner on our training hub, make a purchase, or participate in the course, you imply that you consent to our collecting it and using it for that specific reason only.
  3. If we ask for your personal information for a secondary reason, like marketing, we will either ask you directly for your expressed consent, or provide you with an opportunity to say no.
  4. We will only send you emails about your registration, your course content, your course progress or other updates relevant to your account. We may also use your email to inform you about changes to the course, survey you about your usage, or collect your opinion. By agreeing to our privacy policy you consent to the above.
  5. We may disclose your personal information if we are required by law to do so or if you violate our Terms and Conditions.
  6. Until January 2025 we used Thinkific Labs Inc, a third-party platform, for delivering our online training. Personal information such as name, email address and purchase records were processed through this service. Although Thinkific is no longer active, we retain related purchase and participation records in line with our legal obligations and will delete or anonymise this data once legal retention periods have expired..

Payments

If you make a purchase or donation on our website or shop site, we use a third-party payment processor. Courses and event tickets purchased through our training hub and Eventbrite are also processed by a third-party. Payments are encrypted. For more insight, you may also want to read:

Our Commitment to Data Security

To prevent unauthorised access, maintain data accuracy, and ensure the correct use of information, we have put in place appropriate physical, electronic, and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online. As a user, you agree to any information you have entered above being stored in a database. While this information will not be disclosed to any third party without your consent the webmaster, administrator and moderators cannot be held responsible for any hacking attempt that may lead to the data being compromised.

We also use third party organisations (‘Data Processors’) to help us manage our records and process orders, donations and payments and we ensure that the Data Processors we use are fully compliant with all Data Protection legislation. For more insight, you may also want to read their privacy statements:

We retain information collected via Thinkific, Eventbrite and Donr for as long as required to comply with statutory record-keeping obligations (for example, financial or audit requirements). After the relevant retention period has expired, data from this service will be securely deleted or anonymised in line with our data retention policy. 

We also link from our website to the following third-party fundraising platforms whose privacy statements are also detailed below:

Our Commitment to Safeguarding Children and Adults at Risk

All the information that we receive is treated confidentially, unless there are any concerns regarding safeguarding. Any concerns regarding safeguarding, in accordance with our safeguarding policy, would be forwarded to our Safeguarding Lead Person, to be dealt with in accordance with current legislation and guidelines.

How to Contact Us

Should you have other questions or concerns about these policies or to find out what information we hold about you please write to:

The PDA Society
PO Box 6080
SHEFFIELD
S12 9EW

or send us an email at info@pdasociety.org.uk.