Privacy Policy
- Provide digital platforms to give communities of interest a voice.
- Utilise existing digital tools to support bespoke campaigns and programmes.
How we handle your personal information?
The following tells you what to expect when Shared Voice collects personal information about you when you provide it via feedback through our websites and events. Shared Voice is committed to protecting your personal information when you provide us with it.
Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Why do we need your data?
We want to be really clear about what we do, because it sets the scene for how and why we collect and process personal data. Personal data means any information about a living individual from which that person can be identified (but not data where the identity has been removed, like anonymous data). Shared Voice provide online engagement platforms, people, organisations and businesses – people just like you – to use digital tools to talk to decision makers. Our clients use our platforms to gather information that may reveal issues and suggest solutions, as well as for statutory consultation and formal processes. We can’t make good engagement happen without collecting, using and sharing personal data.
How do we collect information?
We collect data from you in a number of different ways, depending on how you interact with us. You can interact with us directly, for example through a website. Or you can interact with us via someone else, for example by filling in a paper or digital questionnaire in your local area (this data is then provided to us for use in the consultation). If you interact with us directly, we may collect data from you:
- Via a website
- Through social media
- By email
- Over the phone
- In person
We may also be given data about you from third parties:
- From our customers and their partners
- From service providers who we engage on our behalf.
- From publicly available sources.
We may also automatically collect some technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns.
What information do we collect about you?
We may collect and process the data about you described below. The specific data categories vary for each project. The data might include:
- Information that you provide by participating, for example your email address. (This is important, because we want to make sure our platform is used for feedback from real people – not lots of bots!)
- Information that you provide by filling in about you as part of responding to a consultation. Different projects might require a mix of these and other things, depending on what would be helpful for engagement purposes.
- Why ask for my postcode? It helps map which roads/estates have and haven’t responded.
- Why ask for my age range? It helps identify how many residents have been reached in a particular age group.
- Why ask for my gender? It helps ensure that it has reached a balanced group of people. It’s totally up to you if you share that information.
- Why ask for my ethnicity? It helps identify how many residents have been reached in an ethnic group. It’s totally up to you if you share that information.
- Generally, information that you provide by filling in questions online or a paper questionnaire that is recorded on a consultation database.
- Some of this information is mandatory (for example, we would like you to confirm that your feedback is genuine) and some may be requested to be provided on a voluntary basis – the screens will always make it clear which is which and why.
- The questions that you fill in is bespoke for the project, so there may also be project specific information requested.
- Details of any materials, agreements and comments you provide
- If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
- We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
- Details of your visits to our websites including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data and the resources that you access (see IP addresses and cookies below).
IP addresses
We may collect information about your computer, including where available: your IP address, operating system and browser type. This may be used for system administration and to report aggregate information to our customers. This is statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual. We collect information about how you use our websites and the device(s) you use to access it. This includes collecting unique online identifiers such as IP addresses, which are numbers that uniquely identify a specific computer or other network device on the internet. For more information, see our section on ‘cookies’.
How we use the information we collect?
We will use your personal information for several purposes including the following:
- To record accurately and analyse any questions or feedback you have provided in response to our project;
- This information will provide us with data for the form reports about the public’s views on issues.
- To keep a record of sections of the community who have provided feedback on our proposals;
- To provide insight to assist with the development of our proposed plans.
If we collect and use your personal information, our legal basis for processing your personal information is that it is necessary for our legitimate interest in receiving feedback. Your information will be handled and will be used solely by Shared Voice. We will keep your information within Shared Voice and our trusted third parties except where disclosure is required by law, for example to government bodies and law enforcement agencies or where you have given us explicit permission to share as part of our campaigns. Your information is processed only in the UK and is not moved or transferred overseas.
How long we will keep your information?
Your information will be retained and held in a secure environment until our proposals for this project are fully completed.
What rights do I have over my personal information?
Under the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the right to:
- Obtain a copy of the personal information we hold about you by making a subject access request.
- Ask us to correct any incorrect information we hold about you.
- Ask us to delete any of your personal information which we no longer have a legitimate reason for keeping.
- Restrict the processing of your information if we are using it for a purpose other than for which it was originally collected.
- Object to the processing of your information where this is justified.
For further information about exercising your rights, please contact: wyn@sharedvoice.co.uk You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority if you have concerns about how your personal information is being processed. Please go to www.ico.org.uk for further information.
Third Party Software
We will from time to time use third party software to analyse data and communicate with individuals who have expressed they wish to be contacted. We use the following software to process or store data:
- Mail Chimp to find out about their privacy policy click here.
- Survey Monkey whose privacy policy can be viewed here.
- Google Analytics is used to measure the performance of the website their privacy policy can be found here.
- Maptive is used to visually display data on a customized Google map. Maptive’s privacy policy can be found here.
- Zeemaps allows you to easily create, publish, and share interactive maps, their privacy policy can be viewed here.
- 20i Domain registration and hosting services, their privacy policy can be viewed here.
Last updated 11.08.2021
