U3A Canterbury and District treats your privacy rights seriously. This privacy policy sets out how we will deal with your ‘personal information’, that is, information that could identify, or is related to the identity of, an individual.

When you express an interest in becoming a member of U3A Canterbury and District you will be asked to provide certain information. This includes:

Name, Gender, Address, Email address, Telephone number, your Subscription Preferences, Records of Courses

All the information collected is obtained directly from you at the point of your initial registration and annual renewal. The information will be collected via membership and renewal forms. The lawful basis for collecting and storing your information is due to the contractual relationship that you, as a member, have with the U3A. In order to inform you about the groups, activities and events that you can access as a member we need to store and process a certain amount of personal data.

We use your personal information:

• To provide our U3A activities and services to you
• For administration, planning and management of our U3A
• To communicate with you about your group activities
• To monitor, develop and improve the provision of our U3A activity
• For delivery of the Trust publication – Third Age Matters

We’ll send you messages by email, post, other digital methods and telephone to advise you of U3A activities. We may disclose information about you, including your personal information:-

• Internally - to committee members, coordinators and Course Tutors/Leaders – as required to facilitate your participation in our U3A activities;
• Externally – for products or services such as direct mailing for the Trust magazine – Third Age Matters. The magazine is distributed by a third party processor and your information is shared with the distribution company via a secure online portal. Should you not wish to receive the magazine please contact the Membership Secretary.

If we have a statutory duty to disclose it for legal and/or regulatory reasons, in this instance we will seek to obtain your consent. Information would be shared without consent where there were serious safety concerns and it was felt to be in your or the U3As best interests to disclose information.

We need to keep your information so that we can provide our services to you. In most instances information about your membership will not be stored for longer than 12 months until the annual review. The exceptions to this are instances where there may be financial, legal or insurance circumstances that require information to be held for longer whilst the issues are investigated or resolved. Where this is the case member/s will be informed as to how long the information will be held for and when it is deleted.

To ensure the information we hold is accurate and up to date, member's need to inform the U3A as to any changes to their personal information. You can do this by contacting the Membership Secretary. whose contact details are on the Membership card. On an annual basis you will have the opportunity to update your information, as required, via the membership renewal process. Should you wish to view the information that the U3A holds on you, you can make this request by contacting the Membership Secretary – as detailed above. There may be certain circumstances where we are not able to comply with this request. This would include where the information may contain references to other individuals or for legal, investigative or security reasons. Otherwise we will usually respond within one month of the request being made.

We store the information on Beacon and The Courses Database. We have in place a range of security safeguards to protect your personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorised access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. Security measures include use of cloud storage, firewalls, use of a secure management database system. Your membership information is held securely and accessed by Committee Members and Volunteers who are required to sign a confidentiality agreement.

This policy, which may change from time to time is available on the U3A Canterbury and District Website. Members will be informed via the Newsletter when changes are made. Should you wish to withdraw consent to hold your information this can be done by contacting the Membership Secretary. However if you withdraw consent you will no longer be able to remain a member of U3A Canterbury and District.

This policy was adopted on: 9 September 2019