Privacy Policy
Lighthouse Women’s Aid (LWA) is a registered charity number (1069296) and we are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
This Policy explains why and when we collect personal information about our clients, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.
We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.
Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to admin@lighthousewa.org.uk or by writing to Lighthouse Women’s Aid, 238 Felixstowe Road, Ipswich , IP3 9AD
Who are we?
Lighthouse Women’s Aid is a charitable organisation based in Suffolk, providing emotional and practical support to women, young people and children affected by domestic abuse in their personal or family relationships.
How do we collect information from you?
We obtain information about you when you contact us and this can be via the phone, in person, by email, referrals to our services and when you use our website. For example, when you contact us about therapeutic services or training courses.
What type of information is collected from you? The personal information we collect might include your name; address; telephone number; email address; GP contact details.
You may be asked to provide other information that assists LWA to ensure we monitor equal opportunities and provide the best support. This is personal data (or “special category data”) includes your ethnicity, religion, sex life/orientation and overview of traumatic events and health, as well as details of other services you are in contact with.
The content and information you provide when you join our website/social media paltforms, any messages or communications you share with other members of the community and information about the groups you are connected to and how you interact with them (information you exchange on social media platforms is not within LWA’s control and is provided at your sole discretion), LWA does not monitor or share this information with any third parties.
Other information about you, that is otherwise lawfully obtained, including images from LWA events, quotes, and social impact information may be shared.
Cookies When you visit our website we collect information to help us to understand how supporters use our site, and to make improvements. This information consists of your IP address, your browser (e.g. Internet Explorer), when you visited and which pages you visited or downloaded during your visit. We cannot use this information to find out further personal information about you, and will not share any individual information unless required to do so by law. What is our Lawful Basis to process data? We will process your personal data on the basis of your consent and/or our legitimate interests (which include the administration and improvement of our websites, the provision of our services, campaigns and fundraising activities, management of relationships with our volunteers, donors and other supporters and for compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations). Special Category data is also processed under Article 9 conditions: Not for profit bodies – (this requires us to obtain your consent prior to sharing this data with third parties).
How is your information used?
We may use your information:
for making our services available to you
to process your request for support and accessing services
to seek your views or comments on the services we provide
to notify you of changes to our services
to send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, other fundraising activities and promotions of our services
we may also use your information to communicate with you about training courses and services we believe may be of interest to you in accordance with your communicated preferences. This might include sending you publicity on courses / programmes and wider VAWG sector news.
on occasion we may also use information you provide such as quotes, questionnaire and interview feedback, photographic images and video footage (where LWA owns the copyright in such materials), case studies and social impact information for marketing or fundraising purposes. This includes social media, website and on printed material.
We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity i.e. whilst you are accessing services and to meet our professional requirement for information retention.
Who has access to your information?
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties. We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: we may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents, subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf. However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime. There are times when we may be forced to share your information with police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors without your permission. This could be for one of the following reasons: • where the user is disclosing information about an act of terrorism • where a court orders Lighthouse Women’s Aid to disclose information • where there is reasonable cause to suspect that an adult’s life may be in immediate danger • where there is reasonable cause to suspect that a child or young person may be experiencing or at risk of experiencing significant harm.
Your choices
You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct communications from us about the vital work we do and our exciting services, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your preferences at any time by contacting us by email admin@lighthousewa.org.uk.
Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information
When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. We take steps to store your data securely including to ensure that only certain personnel with password protected authentication can access personal data for the purposes set out on section on ‘How is your information used’.
Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.
How you can access and update your information
The accuracy of your information is important to us. We’re working on ways to make it easier for you to review and correct the information that we hold about you. In the meantime, if you change email address, or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at admin@lighthousewa.org.uk or by writing to Lighthouse Women’s Aid, 238 Felixstowe Road, Ipswich, IP3 9AD. You also have the right to ask for a copy of the information LWA holds about you.
16 or Under
We are committed to protecting the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian's permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information. In case of life threatening risks, we will take your information seriously. In such situations we might need to contact third parties such as social services, the police or lawyers without your consent.
Transferring your information outside of Europe
As part of the services offered to you, the information which you provide to us may be stored securely on the Cloud and may therefore be outside the European Union (“EU”). These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.
If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.
Right to complain
If you are not happy about the way in which we are processing your personal data, please contact us at admin@lighthousewa.org.uk. You also have the right to make a complaint to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.
Review of this Policy
We keep this Statement under regular review. This Statement was last updated in January 2023.