Privacy Policy

This privacy policy sets out how the Buntingford & District Chamber of Commerce known as the Buntingford Chamber of Commerce uses and protects any information that you give us when you use our website.

We collect basic information when you contact us to make an enquiry through our online enquiry form. This is used to answer your query and provide you with information about our services or news in the future. We also collect emails when business people want to subscribe to our email news via our website. We also use cookies in accordance with this privacy statement. We may change this policy on occasions by updating this page to keep up to date with EU privacy regulations. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

This current policy has been developed in line with the 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA), Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) and subsequent legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), law from 25 May 2018.

Information we collect and why

We collect basic personal information in order to do business, such as:

• Your name and company name.
• Contact information including email address and telephone number.
• Geographic information such as postcode.

We need this information to respond to your enquiry. It also helps us provide you with a better service. For example:

• To provide and improve our products and services.
• To provide emails about what’s new in Buntingford from a business perspective. You can unsubscribe at any time.
• From time to time, we may also use your information to contact you for market research purposes. You can choose whether to take part.

Looking after your information

We collect personal data on the basis of legitimate interest, where personal data is used in ways that you would reasonably expect to answer your queries, do business and inform you of our services. This means we always seek a happy balance between our business interests and the best interests of the individuals we are here to help.

You have the right to object to us processing your data, for example for direct marketing purposes, and we will action your request as required, for example you can unsubscribe from marketing emails.

You have the right to ask us whether we hold your personal information and to request a copy. Please write to The Data Controller, Buntingford Chamber of Commerce, c/o The Manor House, High Street, Buntingford, Hertfordshire SG9 9AB. We have the right to refuse to respond or charge a reasonable fee for requests which are unfounded, excessive or repetitive and will let you know where this is the case.

We aim to ensure that personal data is accurate and up-to-date. Should you spot an error please let us know and we’ll put it right.

We’re committed to ensuring that your information is secure. To prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Who sees your personal information

Personal data is seen by Buntingford Chamber of Commerce committee members. It is used in the normal running of the organisation to manage membership or provide marketing news, for example. We have never sold the personal data we collect to external organisations. We only share personal data with contractors or external organisations when this is necessary to administer your membership. For example, so that marketing materials can be printed by our selected printers, featuring your name and contact details. When we work with external specialists and have a need to share personal data, they are partners we trust, and we refer to their Data Protection credentials, generally through contractual terms.

How long we keep your information

The Chamber of Commerce does not keep your personal information for longer than necessary for our business purposes or for legal requirements. We do keep your contact information for a reasonable time in order to be able to provide a good service and if you haven’t opted out of marketing communications.

Where your information goes

In general, we collect, use and store data at the premises of Committee members. However, due to use of the internet, personal data you provide on this website may be processed through servers based in other countries and outside the European Economic Area. To ensure the security of data we use reputable platforms and check their Data Protection credentials.

Policies on websites we link to may be different

This website, in particular our news pages, contain links to other websites. Their privacy policies are likely to be different. When you follow a link, just check that you are happy with the privacy policies of the external websites. For example, you can decide, when asked, if you accept cookies.

About cookies and how to control them

Our website uses cookies, as most websites do, to help give you the best website experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are logged on a website user’s computer to allow the website to remember certain things about their website usage. When the user visits next time, the cookie will be retrieved by the original website.

We use cookies to:

• Improve our website by using anonymous Performance cookies for analytics. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors, see what devices they use to access the website and see how visitors move around the site when they are using it.
• Understand which pages are of interest using Session cookies which only last for the duration of the website visit.
• Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Remember, if you link to outside tools, like Facebook, and external websites, they may use cookies we don’t control.
• Improve the speed and security of the site.

We do not use cookies to:

• Collect any personally identifiable information
• Collect any sensitive information
• Pass data to advertising networks or third parties
• Pay sales commissions.

This website does not use Targeting or Persistent cookies which collect information on browsing habits to guide advertising.

If the settings on the browser you use to view this website are set to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you accept our policy. If you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can usually adjust your browser settings, but this may mean that our website will not work as you would expect. Find out how to do this for Microsoft Explorer and Google Chrome, at www.aboutcookies.org or use the Help menu on your browser. We adhere to the guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office about the EU Privacy and Communications Directive 2012, to make sure you’re aware of the reasons our website uses certain cookies.