Privacy Policy

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We will not rent, swap or sell your personal information to other organisations for them to use in their own marketing activities.

The legal basis that we rely on for processing your data will depend upon the circumstances in which it is being collected and used, but will in most cases fall into one of the following categories:

• where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your data in a certain way;
• where the processing is necessary to carry out for the performance of a contract with you;
• where the processing is necessary in order for us to comply with a legal obligation;
• where it is in our legitimate interests to perform our functions, for example, processing donations or sending you administrative communications where our legitimate interest is to raise funds and to deliver our charitable purposes.

Service Providers

We use service providers (such as fundraising agencies, direct mailing companies and software platform providers) to help us provide you with our services.

We may give relevant persons within these service providers access to your personal information, but only to allow them to perform their services for us. Some service providers may be based outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) however, we will endeavour to ensure that any data transfers outside of the EEA are carried out in compliance with relevant data protection legislation and that the processing of your data is subject to appropriate security measures.

Legal Requirements

We may disclose your personal/sensitive personal information when required to by law, for example, to HMRC for tax purposes or to police forces for the prevention or detection of crime. Further, we safeguard the sharing of such information by using formalised information sharing agreements with organisations where appropriate, or on an ad hoc basis after ensuring the request and disclosure are legally compliant.

When we conduct prosecutions, we may publish the identity of the defendant in court alerts and press statements.

Rehoming an Animal From Us

When you apply to rehome an animal from us, we'll need to share personal information such as your name, address and telephone number, to enable a home visit by one of our volunteer home-visitors.

We try to make sure that all animals are microchipped when they're rehomed from us; this is a legal requirement in relation to dogs. We will share your personal information with a microchip company in case your animal goes missing. Depending on which microchip is used, this will be one of the following providers: AVID, Anibase or Petlog.

If you rehome a cat or dog from us, we will also share your personal information with MORE TH>N, our pet insurance provider, so they can offer you six weeks free pet insurance. If you take this up, MORE TH>N will contact you with an offer to extend the cover after the free period ends.

Volunteers and Job Applicants

If you apply for a job with us or volunteer, we'll hold the personal information you provide to process your application.

We may undertake monitoring of recruitment statistics, in line with employment and data protection law.  If we need to disclose information to a third party, we will not do so without asking you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law. For example if we need to take up a reference, or obtain 'disclosure' from the Disclosure & Barring Service.

If you apply to work with us we'll only hold your data for the purposes of that application. We won't hold your personal information for any longer than is necessary for the purposes of that application.

Reporting a Concern About Animal Welfare

When reporting an animal welfare concern to our branch via phone or in person, we will treat your personal information in confidence and will only share it in the circumstances mentioned below or where we are authorised to do so by law.

We use your personal information for the purposes of animal welfare and for the prevention and detection of crime and to provide brief updates to you in relation to the investigation if requested.

We do not use your personal information for any other purpose unless we obtain your prior consent to do so. For example, where as a result of your telephone call to our office phone number you wish to make a donation to us, your personal information will be used to process this donation and to keep in contact with you, only if you agree to us doing so.

Depending on the nature of your concern, we may need to pass information to enforcement agencies such as Trading Standards, Animal Plant and Health Agency (APHA), or law enforcement or to another animal welfare charity. We will only pass on your personal information where it is necessary for the purposes of investigating or resolving your concern.

From time to time we undertake statistical research on calls to our cruelty helpline to help us manage our service better. This data is anonymised and does not identify individuals' personal data. We also use data and information from calls to our cruelty helpline as the basis for case studies in our annual review. Any personal data is always anonymised.

Our Members

If you are a member of our branch we need to hold your personal information so that we can keep our register of members up to date. We will also communicate with you about your RSPCA membership and provide you with information in accordance with our governing documents.

When applying to become a member of the RSPCA, we may check if you have any affiliations to groups that you may have that oppose or seek to undermine the RSPCA's aims.

Our Donors and Supporters

If you wish to support us by making a donation or registering to fundraise for us, we will collect your name and contact details as a minimum.

Where appropriate, we may also ask for your date of birth and your motivation or personal experience for supporting us. We will use the information you provide to give you the services, products or information you asked for, tailor communications  to you, to administer your donation including processing gift aid, to send you a thank you letter, to support your fundraising or manage your marketing preferences.

We may also send you administrative communications, for example confirming a direct debit instruction when you have made a donation to us.

To make an online donation or payment by direct debit or payment card, you will be directed to a payment gateway which uses security features and encryption to ensure your data remains safe.

We offer the use of PayPal for some of our products and services, and have payment gateways operated on behalf of and under contract to us by service providers. Further information about the collection and use of your data will be provided on the relevant payment gateway for you.

If you enter your details into one of our online forms and you don't 'send' or 'submit' the form we may contact you to see if we can help you with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our website.

Data Profiling and Analysis

We may also carry out analysis of the personal information we collect about you and add publicly available information to create a profile of your interests, preferences and your ability to support us, including the amount or level of potential donation or legacy you may be able to give.

This is so we can contact you in the most appropriate way and with the most relevant information, which enables us to raise funds sooner and more cost-effectively.

This information is compiled from sources such as public registers (e.g. listed Directorships), the electoral roll, newspaper articles and social media posts.

• Cookies are small text files placed either temporarily or permanently on your computer by websites that you visit which collect and record information, including your IP address. Each time you visit one of our websites, your browser will send the cookie file back to the website's server on each subsequent visit unless your alter your browser settings.

We do not use cookies to store financial information.

Why Do We Use Cookies?

Cookies help us to:

• understand how visitors use our websites and collect anonymised statistics (e.g. the number of visitors to our websites) in order to improve performance;
• provide a more personalised online experience by displaying content that would be of interest to you;
• display relevant advertising to you when you visit websites other than ours;
• remember your details and preferences to avoid asking you for that information again;
• measure how cost-effective our advertising is.

What Information Do We Collect Using Cookies?

Examples of ways we may use cookies to record information include:-

• areas of the website you visit and engage with, and the amount of time you spend on the website;
• whether you have visited our website before or whether you are a new visitor;
• the country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device;
• how you came to our website;
• the type of device and browser you use;
• any error messages that you receive on the site.

Types of Cookies

There are two types of cookies; first party cookies and third party cookies. First party cookies are set by us. Third party cookies are set by service providers on our behalf in order to provide a service to you; for example, if you visit a webpage with a Twitter feed of YouTube videos embedded in it you may notice cookies set by each of those websites too. We may collect some or all of the information available from cookies when you visit our website, depending on how you use it.

The cookies set by Facebook (including when you visit our page on Facebook) are first party cookies; which means they are set by Facebook and if you are a Facebook user, you should visit Facebook¿s cookie policy on how to manage your cookie preferences.

Cookies can be further categorised as session cookies and persistent cookies. If a cookie does not contain an expiration date, it is considered a session cookie. Session cookies are stored in memory temporarily and when the browser closes, the cookie is permanently lost. In contrast, persistent cookies are stored in a user¿s hard drive in accordance with an expiration date attached to the cookie, on the specified expiration date the cookie will be removed from your browser.

Categories of Cookies We Use

• Strictly necessary cookies: these cookies are needed in order for our website to function and they cannot be switched off. They're usually only set in response to you requesting a service such as setting your privacy preferences, filling in forms or searching for a pet; and without the cookies, the service cannot be provided to you. You can set your browser to block these cookies but some parts of our site will then not work as you would expect. These cookies do not store any information that could identify you and they are usually only set in response to an action (e.g. you filling in a form). 
• Performance cookies: these cookies collect statistical information about the pages on our website which have been visited, how many visits they receive, how often and where visits come from. The cookie has no way of identifying you, it doesn't hold any of your personal data nor can it be used retrospectively to track you. These cookies help us to ensure we can develop our website to provide the content you need and would expect. 
• Personalisation cookies:  These cookies allow you to select 'remember me' options when creating an account, or to be shown the types of content you've previously indicated is useful to you. The cookie does not seek to identify you as an individual, just the computer used in order to make using our websites easier and more relevant for you next time.
• Targeted Marketing Cookies:  we use targeted marketing cookies to help tailor the advertising we think may be of interest to you in order to help raise awareness of, and funds for, our vital animal welfare work. Based on this activity on our websites we are able to measure how cost-effective advertising is and can ensure any adverts we do place perform well. These cookies may remember that you have visited our website and this information could then be shared with other organisations (e.g. advertisers) so that you may then see our adverts relating to our work on other websites that you visit. This information may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other websites. These cookies are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device; they may collect personal data in the form of an IP address but we would not be able to identify you from that IP address. As with IP addresses generally, it may be possible for other organisations or individuals, with the relevant technical solutions, without or without other information available to them about you, to identify you from that information. If you do not allow these cookies you will experience less targeted advertising. You may still see our adverts elsewhere online but these will not be connected to your previous activity on our website.

Website Cookie Acceptance

By continuing to use our website, you consent to our use of cookies and those we use will be stored on your device unless you change your cookie preferences in your browser. 

Our website may also contain hyperlinks to third party websites that are owned and operated by other organisations. These websites have their own privacy policies, including policies on their use of cookies, and it is important that you read them as they will govern the use of any personal information you submit or which is collected by cookies whilst you browse that website. We cannot accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy practices of third party websites and your use of such websites is at your own risk.

Changing Your Cookie Preferences

 If you wish to reject or disable any cookies which are set by our websites, you can do this through your browser settings. The 'Help' function within your browser should tell you how to do this.  Please note that if you visit our website anonymously (i.e. you switch off cookies), we may still collect certain information from your browser, such as your IP address, for the purpose of protecting our website from malicious attacks.