Privacy policy

North London U3A (NLU3A) treats your privacy rights seriously, operating fully within the guidelines of current data protection legislation. The Data Protection Act 2018 controls how your personal information is used by organisations, businesses or the government. The Data Protection Act 2018 is the UK’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

This privacy policy sets out the basis on which NLU3A collects and uses personal data, i.e. information that is about you and which identifies you. This policy further describes who is responsible for this personal data and how we retain and use it and to whom we may disclose it. This policy recognises your rights and choices in relation to your personal data.

As a membership organisation we collect information about our members in order to:

  •  provide the NLU3A services
  • communicate with members about NLU3A activities
  • and for the management and planning of NLU3A

The personal data we collect and how we use it

When you express an interest in becoming a member of or joining NLU3A, you will be asked to provide certain contact information, which includes:

  • your full name
  • home address
  • email address
  • telephone number
  • date of birth
  • Gift Aid status
  • skills and interests

We also ask you to provide information about the contact details of the person who should be contacted in an emergency; we only use this if an emergency occurs for the purpose of informing the contact about what has occurred.

Contact information 

Contact information (addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses) is used by NLU3A to communicate with its members, and to allow members to contact each other for U3A purposes.

Contact information for key members of NLU3A may be included in either our printed material or on our website.

Contact information is also shared with the Third Age Trust for the distribution of their publications to members.

Other details about a member

Information about each member’s skills, experience and year of birth (not exact date) is used for statistical purposes and to identify how members may contribute to the NLU3A.

All the above data is collected from members on membership application forms and renewals forms. Members can ask for this information to be updated at any time by contacting the membership secretary (email: membership@nlu3a.org.uk).

Membership data is held in a Beacon database, which is a service provided to us by the Third Age Trust. Access to data on Beacon is restricted to a limited number of members responsible for planning, managing and communicating with members.

We may receive information about financial transactions from banks and other payment organisations when members make payments for subscriptions or other purposes.  We use this information for administering membership records and accounts.

Extra information

We may collect further information, such as health or dietary information, for specific events as appropriate for that event. Such data is only retained as needed for that event.

We may keep letters and emails you send us, as a record of communication between us.

We are required by HM Revenue and Customs to retain information for seven years when it is then fully deleted.

Email messages that we send to members via our email service agents (MailChimp, Mailerlite or similar), may contain tracking beacons, tracked clickable links or similar server technologies in order to track recipient activity within those emails. This may record a range of data such as: times, dates, IP addresses, opens, clicks, forwards, geographic and demographic data. Such data, within its limitations, will show the activity each member made for that email. This data is used to assess the effectiveness of our emails.

Use of photography in NLU3A promotional media

We may use photographs including pictures of members in internal and external communications for promotional purposes. We will ask the person photographed for their permission before doing so.

Data protection

NLU3A operates a data protection policy that applies to any member who has access to members’ personal data, in order to protect it from unauthorised access. A member may request a copy of the data that NLU3A holds about them by contacting the Membership Secretary (membership@nlu3a.org.uk). We will usually respond fully within 28 days.

Website cookies

If you are a visitor to the website who is not logged in, no cookies are stored. If you are a user who is logged in, only essential cookies are stored to authenticate you and to record your preferred setting of certain admin pages. We do not use third-party, tracking, or statistics cookies.

Website forms

If you submit a form on the website, the form’s details will be stored on the system, and will be emailed to the relevant member of NLU3A.

August 2024