Privacy

HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

This privacy notice is to let you know how AFSA promise to look after your personal information. This includes what you tell us about yourself, what we learn about your business, and the choices you give us about what marketing you want us to send you. This notice explains how we do this and tells you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

OUR PRIVACY PROMISE
We promise:
  • To keep your data safe and private
  • Not to sell your data
  • To give you ways to manage and review your marketing choices at any time
DATA PROTECTION LAW CHANGED ON 25 MAY 2018

This notice sets out most of your rights under the new laws.

WHO WE ARE

AFSA is an independent, inclusive, employee-led support group with the aim to raise the profile of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic issues in the fire and rescue services.

You can find out more about us on this website.

If you have any questions, or want more details about how we use your personal information, you can email us at:

enquiries@afsa.co.uk

HOW THE LAW PROTECTS YOU

As well as our Privacy Promise, your privacy is protected by law. This section explains how that works.

Data Protection law says that we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so. The law says we must have one or more of these reasons:

  • To fulfil a contract we have with you, or
  • When it is our legal duty, or
  • When it is in our legitimate interest, or
  • When you consent to it

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. But even then, it must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you. If we rely on our legitimate interest, we will tell you what that is.

Here is a list of all the ways that we may use your personal information, and which of the reasons we rely on to do so. This is also where we tell you what our legitimate interests are.

  • To manage our relationship with you or your business
  • To develop new ways to meet your business needs and to grow our business
  • To develop and carry out marketing activities
  • To provide advice or guidance about our products and services
  • To develop and manage our brands, products and services
  • To test new products
  • To deliver of our products and services
  • To manage fees, charges and interest due on customer accounts
  • To collect and recover money that is owed to us
  • To respond to complaints and seek to resolve them
  • To run our business in an efficient and proper way. This includes managing our financial position, business capability, planning, communications, corporate governance, and audit
  • To exercise our rights set out in agreements or contracts
  • Details about the products or services we provide to you
  • Details about how you use our products and services
  • What we learn about you from letters, emails and conversations between us

The law and other regulations treat some types of personal information as special. We will only collect and use these types of data if the law allows us to do so:

  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Religious or philosophical beliefs
  • Gender
  • Any permissions, consents or preferences that you give us. This includes things like how you want us to contact you

We may collect personal information about you (or your business). This is Data you give to us:

  • When you contact us for our products and services
  • When you talk to us on the phone
  • When you use our websites, mobile device apps, web chat or WebEx services
  • In emails and letters
  • In customer surveys
  • If you take part in our competitions or promotions
WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH

We may share your personal information with companies that work / support AFSA:

  • Agents and advisers who we use to help run our accounts and services
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities
  • Fraud prevention agencies
  • Agents and advisers that provide us with legal support
  • Any party linked with you or your business’s product or service
  • Organisations that introduce you to us
  • Companies that we introduce you to
  • Companies you ask us to share your data with

We may need to share your personal information with other organisations if the make-up of AFSA changes in the future:

  • We may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business, or our assets. Or we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them
  • During any such process, we may share your data with other parties. We’ll only do this if they agree to keep your data safe and private
  • If the change happens, then other parties may use your data in the same way as set out in this notice

Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs)

We may need to confirm your identity before we provide products or services to you or your business.

Both we and fraud prevention agencies can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason to do so. It must be needed either for us to obey the law, or for a ‘legitimate interest’.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. This must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you.

We will use the information to:

  • Confirm identities
  • Help prevent fraud and money-laundering
  • Fulfil any contracts you or your business has with us

We or an FPA may allow law enforcement agencies to access your personal information. This is to support their duty to detect, investigate, prevent and prosecute crime.

FPAs can keep personal information for different lengths of time. They can keep your data for up to six years if they find a risk of fraud or money-laundering.

These are some of the kinds of personal information that we use:

  • Name
  • Date of birth
  • Residential address
  • Contact details, such as email addresses and phone numbers
  • Financial data
  • Data relating to you or your businesses products or services
  • Employment details
  • Vehicle details
MARKETING

We may use your personal information to tell you about relevant products and offers. This is what we mean when we talk about ‘marketing’.

The personal information we have for you is made up of what you tell us, and data we collect when you use our services, or from third parties we work with.

We can only use your personal information to send you marketing messages if we have either your consent or a ‘legitimate interest’. That is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. It must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you.

You can ask us to stop sending you marketing messages by contacting us at any time.

If you change your mind you can update your choices at any time by contacting us.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We will keep your personal information for as long as you are a customer of AFSA. After you stop being a customer, we may keep your data for up to 10 years for one of these reasons:

  • To respond to any questions or complaints
  • To show that we treated you fairly
  • To maintain records according to rules that apply to us
WHAT IF YOU WANT US TO STOP USING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

You have the right to object to our use of your personal information, or to ask us to delete, remove, or stop using your personal information if there is no need for us to keep it. This is known as the ‘right to object’ and ‘right to erasure’, or the ‘right to be forgotten’.

There may be legal or other official reasons why we need to keep or use your data. But please tell us if you think that we should not be using it.

We may sometimes be able to restrict the use of your data. This means that it can only be used for certain things, such as legal claims or to exercise legal rights. In this situation, we would not use or share your information in other ways while it is restricted.

You can ask us to restrict the use of your personal information if:

  • It is not accurate
  • It has been used unlawfully but you don’t want us to delete it
  • It not relevant any more, but you want us to keep it for use in legal claims
  • You have already asked us to stop using your data but you are waiting for us to tell you if we are allowed to keep on using it

If you want to object to how we use your data, or ask us to delete it or restrict how we use it or, please contact us.

HOW TO WITHDRAW YOUR CONSENT

You can withdraw your consent at any time. Please contact us if you want to do so.

If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. If this is so, we will tell you.

HOW TO COMPLAIN

Please let us know if you are unhappy with how we have used your personal information. You can contact us by emailing:

complain@afsa.co.uk

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Find out on their website how to report a concern.

Information Commissioner’s Office Website

FUTURE FORMATS FOR SHARING DATA

The Data Privacy laws changed on 25 May 2018. From that date you will have the right to get your personal information from us in a format that can be easily re-used.