We want everyone who supports us, or who comes to us for support, to feel confident and comfortable with how any personal information you share with us will be looked after or used.

This Privacy Policy sets out how we collect, use and store your personal information (this means any information that identifies or could identify you).

Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website.

Who we are

The Bike Project is a “data controller” for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 1998 and (from 25 May 2018) the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“Data Protection Law”).  This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

For further information about our privacy practices, please contact us by:

  • Writing to us at The Bike Project, 3Space International House (7th Floor), Canterbury Crescent, London, SW9 7QE
  • Emailing us at www.thebikeproject.co.uk/contact-us

Why we collect information about you

Everything we do, we do to ensure that we can meet our charitable aim of getting refugees cycling.

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 register for services that we provide, buy a product, book on an event, donate a bike, volunteering for us or make financial a donation.

How we collect information about you

  • When you interact with us directly: This could be if you make an enquiry to us, register for our free services, purchase a product from us, book a place at an event, make a donation to us, apply for a job or volunteering opportunity or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you phone us, visit our website, make a purchase from our shop, or get in touch through the post or in person.
  • When you interact with us through partners or suppliers working on our behalf: This could be if you access a service such Pedal Power which is delivered in partnership with trusted partner organisations working on our behalf and always under our instruction.
  • When you interact with us through third parties: This could be if you provide a donation through a third party such as JustGiving or one of the other third parties that we work with and only if you consent for your personal information to be shared with us.
  • When you visit our website: We gather general information that might include which pages you visit most often and which services, events or information is of most interest to you. We may also track which pages you visit when you click on links in emails from us. We also use ‘cookies’ to help our site run effectively. See our Cookies Policy for more details.
  • From other information that is available to the public: In order to tailor our communications we may collect information from publicly available sources.

Personal information we collect, and why we use it

This 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 while registering for a service that we provide, making a donation, registering for an event, placing an order on our website or any of the other ways you can interact with us.

We will mainly use this information:

  • To process your donations or other payments, and to claim Gift Aid on your donations and verify any financial transactions.
  • To provide the services or goods that you have requested.
  • To update you with important administrative messages about your donation, an event or services or goods you have requested.
  • To comply with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Act 2016 and follow the recommendations of the official regulator of charities, the Charity Commission, which require us to identify and verify the identity of supporters who make major gifts so we can assess any risks associated with accepting their donations.
  • To keep a record of your relationship with us.
  • If 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 the goods and services you have requested.

We may also use your personal information to contact you about our work and how you can support The Bike Project (see the Marketing section below for further information on this).

Sensitive information we collect, and why we use it

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

Where we collect sensitive personal information, we will only use it for the purposes of dealing with your enquiry, service delivery, or monitoring and evaluating the services we provide.

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.

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, and other such safeguarding issues.

We will only pass on sensitive personal information when you have given us your express consent or otherwise clearly indicated to us that you are happy for us to do so. This might happen if you would like us to share your story with the media, other parties or on our blog, in which instance we would advise remaining anonymous.

Legal basis for using your information

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 have placed an order on our website).

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 The Bike Project to process your information to help us to achieve our mission of getting refugees cycling.

Whenever we process your personal information under the ‘legitimate interest’ lawful basis we make sure that we take into account your rights and interests and will not process your personal information if we feel that it is not justified.

Some examples of where we have a legitimate interest to process your personal information are where we contact you about our work via post, use your personal information for data analytics, conduct research to better understand who our supporters are, for improving our services, or for our legal purposes (for example, dealing with complaints and claims), or for complying with guidance from the Charity Commission.

Children

We do not hold personal information from persons under 13 years of age longer than necessary to process their application for a bike (which is only permitted with permission of their parent/guardian). No part of the website is directed to persons under 13 years of age. If you are under 13 years of age, then please do not use or access the website at any time or in any manner.

Marketing

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support The Bike Project 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 The Bike Project 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 going to our communications preference form on our website or clicking the opt out link at the bottom of the relevant communication.

If you have given us permission to receive email communications from us, we sometimes upload your email address (in an encrypted format) to social media platforms such as Facebook and X. Those platforms will then show our digital advertising campaigns to you as well as identifying audiences with similar interests to yours.

Sharing your Information

The personal information we collect about you will mainly be used by our staff and volunteers at The Bike Project 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.

The Bike Project 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 within a data sharing agreement. We make sure that they 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 regarding your purchases or registration, or with platforms that we use to process donations and claim Gift Aid.

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.

Keeping your information safe

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, 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 other websites may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites.

Any debit or credit card details which we receive on our website are processed directly by our payment processing partners, currently Shopify and Just Giving, who operate in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.

How long we hold your information for

We only keep information 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). This will never exceed 6 years.

We regularly and securely delete information that goes out of date or if it is no longer needed.

The Bike Project annually reviews this data retention schedule, including the purposes for which we hold the information and how long we retain it.

Your rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below.

  • Contacting The Bike Project or making a complaint: If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting our team at The Bike Project, 3Space International House (7th Floor), Canterbury Crescent, London, SW9 7QE, by email via www.thebikeproject.co.uk/contact-us and by phone on 020 8215 2243. You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office. Read more about your rights on the ICO website.
  • 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 these grounds. 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 (for example, for marketing), 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, or when 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.

Cookies Policy

‘Cookie’ is the name for a small file that is downloaded onto your device 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.

We use cookies to help identify your computer so we can tailor your experience, track the contents of your shopping basket and remember where you are in the order process. Please read our Cookies Policy for more details.

More information

For further information about our privacy practices, please contact us by:

  • Writing to us at The Bike Project, 3Space International House (7th Floor), Canterbury Crescent, London, SW9 7QE
  • Emailing us at www.thebikeproject.co.uk/contact-us
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