Privacy Policy

Here at Bristol Mind we are committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.

We are a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 which means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information. 

Everything we do, we do to ensure that we can help people experiencing a mental health problem get both support and respect. We want to make sure you receive the communications that are most relevant to you, be it through visiting our website or receiving emails, post or phone calls. We want to make sure you receive the best attention when you use our services, book on an event, become a Friend of Bristol Mind or make a donation.

We collect information from you in the following ways:

When you interact with us directly: This could be if you ask us about our activities, register with us for training or an event, make a donation to us, ask a question about mental health, apply for a job or volunteering opportunity or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you phone us, contact us through our website or get in touch through the post, by email or in person.

When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as Just Giving or one of the other third parties that we work with and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.

Personal Information

Personal information we collect includes details such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number and credit/debit card details (if you are making a purchase or donation), as well as information you provide in any communications between us.  You will have given us this information whilst making a donation, registering for a service, event or any of the other ways to interact with us.

We will mainly use this information:

• To provide the services that you have requested.
• To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, an event or services you have requested.
• To process your donations or other payments, to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
• To keep a record of your relationship with us.
• Where you volunteer with us, to administer the volunteering arrangement.

If you do not provide this information, we will not be able to process your donation, sign you up for a particular event or provide services you have requested.

We may also use your personal information to contact you about our work and how you can support Bristol Mind. 

Sensitive Personal Information

If you share your personal experience or the experiences of a friend or relative, we may also collect this health information. If you provide us with any Sensitive Personal Information by telephone, email or by other means, we will treat that information with extra care and confidentiality and always in accordance with this Privacy Policy. 

A special note about the Sensitive Personal Information we hold   

Data Protection Law recognises that some categories of personal information are more sensitive. Sensitive Personal Information can include information about a person’s health, race, ethnic origin, political opinions, sex life, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

If you contact us at Bristol Mind through our phone lines or in other more general communications with us such as blogs or emails, you may choose to provide details of a sensitive nature.

We will only use this information:

• For the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, training, and quality monitoring or evaluating the services we provide.
• We will not pass on your details to anyone else without your express permission except in exceptional circumstances. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or posing a threat to others or children contacting us and sharing serious issues such as physical abuse or exploitation.
• Where you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us that you are happy for us to share your story, then we may publish it on our blog or in other media. 

We want to improve how we talk to you and the information we provide through our website, services, products and information. To do this we sometimes use profiling and screening methods so that we can better understand our supporters, your preferences and needs to provide a better experience for you.

We may carry out targeted fundraising activities using profiling techniques based on the information that we hold about you. We may also work with third party organisations who provide additional insight, this may include providing wealth screening information or general information about you that is publicly available.

This information can be appended to the information that you have provided which allows us to use our resources more effectively by better understanding the background of our supporters and making appropriate requests based on what may interest them and their capacity to give.

You can of course opt out of this activity at any time. To do this, email [email protected] or call us on 0117 980 0370

In some cases, we will only use your personal information where we have your consent or because we need to use it in order to fulfil a contract with you (for example, because you use one of our services or book onto one of our courses) or where we are obliged to do so for legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission. 

However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. This means that the reason that we are processing information is because there is a legitimate interest for Bristol Mind to process your information to help us to achieve our vision to support everyone in and around Bristol in achieving the best mental health possible.

Whenever we process your Personal Information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests. Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your personal information are where we respond to your request for information about our work or services; send out newsletters about our work; use your personal information for data analytics or contact you to ask for feedback to improve our services.

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support Bristol Mind by phone, email or text message if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.

However, if you have provided us with your postal address we may send you information about our work and how you can support Mind by mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way.

You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting us directly or by emailing [email protected] 

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff (and volunteers) so that they can support you.

We will never sell or share your personal information with organisations so that they can contact you for any marketing activities. Nor do we sell any information about your web browsing activity.

Bristol Mind may however share your information with our trusted partners and suppliers who work with us on or on our behalf to deliver our services, but processing of this information is always carried out under our instruction. We make sure that partners store the data securely, delete it when they no longer need it and never use it for any other purposes. Some examples of where we may share your information are with our fulfilment partners who help to create and send information to you to reduce our costs, with our partners who help us to process donations and claim Gift Aid and our partners who help us to manage our social media accounts.

We enter into contracts with these service providers that require them to comply with Data Protection Laws and ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to secure your information.

Legal disclosure

We may disclose your information if required to do so by law (for example, to comply with applicable laws, regulations and codes of practice or in response to a valid request from a competent authority); or, in order to enforce our conditions of sale and other agreements.

We take looking after your information very seriously. We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.

Our websites may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content, or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.

Any debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are passed securely to our payment processing partners, according to the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.

We only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary for the relevant activity, which may be to fulfil statutory obligations (for example, the collection of Gift Aid).  Our data retention policy is available on request.

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below.  If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting our team at Bristol Mind, by email at [email protected] and by phone on 0117 980 0370.  You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/:

• Access to your personal information: You have the right to request access to a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, along with information on what personal information we use, why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it for and whether it has been used for any automated decision making. You can make a request for access free of charge.  Please make all requests for access in writing and provide us with evidence of your identity.
• Right to object: You can object to our processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.  Please contact us as noted above, providing details of your objection.
• Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information you can withdraw your consent at any time.
• Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
• Erasure: You can ask us to delete your personal information where it is no longer necessary for us to use it, you have withdrawn consent, or where we have no lawful basis for keeping it.
• Portability: You can ask us to provide you or a third party with some of the personal information that we hold about you in a structured, commonly used, electronic form, so it can be easily transferred.
• Restriction: You can ask us to restrict the personal information we use about you where you have asked for it to be erased or where you have objected to our use of it.
• No automated-decision making:  Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention.  You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law.  You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you.  We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making.

Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.

‘Cookie’ is a name for a small file, usually of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or tablet when you visit a website.

They let websites recognise your device, so that the sites can work more effectively, and also gather information about how you use the site. A cookie, by itself, can’t be used to identify you. 

How do we use cookies?

We may use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you come to our website and allows us to improve the user experience.  

The cookies we use

We use the categorisation set out by the International Chamber of Commerce in their UK Cookie Guide.

We may use all four categories of cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies are essential for you to move around our website and to use its features, like our shopping basket and your account.
• Performance cookies collect anonymous information about how you use our site, like which pages are visited most.
• Functionality cookies collect anonymous information that remember choices you make to improve your experience, like your text size or location. They may also be used to provide services you have asked for such as watching a video or commenting on a blog.
• Targeting or advertising cookies collect information about your browsing habits in order to make advertising relevant to you and your interests. As such if you visit the Mind website you may then be more likely to see adverts about Mind’s work on other websites as your browsing suggests that this is an area of interest.

No cookies, please

You can opt out of all our cookies (except the strictly necessary ones).  But, if you choose to refuse all cookies, our website may not function for you as we would like it to.

If you have any questions about how we use cookies, please contact us.