Privacy Policy

How DENS uses your information

DENS is the first port of call for vulnerable people in Dacorum who are facing homelessness, poverty and social exclusion. Through a range of services, with the help of community partners and volunteers, DENS empowers people to rebuild their lives, to secure and sustain long term housing options and to be active members of the community.

In order to do this, we must process personal data about people who receive support and guidance from us – as well as those who donate and volunteer. Protecting your privacy and any information other organisations share with us is paramount to our work. This policy outlines what data we collect, how we may use it and how we protect your data. If you have any further questions or queries, please contact us via email (office@dens.org.uk) or phone 01442 262274.

1. Why we collect information about you

DENS collects personal data for various reasons, such as individuals accessing our services, communicating with our corporate contacts and individual supporters. Depending how you interact with us, we may process data for the following reasons:

• Provide you with advice, support or legal services that you have requested or been referred to.
• To record personal details shared during conversations with DENS services (Move on/ Elms).
• To record and contact you regarding payments you make to DENS.
• To record interactions with DENS through third parties e.g. providing a donation through JustGiving.
• To communicate our latest projects, events and campaigns.
• To process donations and administer Gift Aid information for any donation you make to DENS.
• For internal administrative purposes, and to keep a record of your relationship with us. We hold an internal data retention policy outlining how long we keep information.
• To manage your communication preferences.
• To process job applications and volunteer placements.
• Please see Cookies for more information about how we use cookies on our website to collect information.

DENS will keep all your case information in a confidential record, with restricted access. We use a CRM (a customer relationship management system) to store personal information.

2. Information we collect

Personal information we collect includes:

• Your full name.
• Contact details – including your postal address, telephone number/s and email address/es.
• Individuals accessing our services will have details of their case: name, date of birth, National Insurance number, medical form, right to reside, ID documents (passport/ driving license), next of kin.
• Supporters/volunteers: name, date of birth, contact details (email, telephone number(s), home address), preferred method of communication, bank details.
• Donation history and Gift Aid details.
• Records of your correspondence and engagement with us.
• Other information you share with us.

This information may be collected by a variety of methods such:

• Completing paper forms.
• Telephone conversations or face-to-face interactions.
• Digital forms via our website.
• Third party companies such as JustGiving.
• Communication through social media channels.

Sensitive personal data – Clients only

When accessing The Elms, Move On/Resettlement and Day Centre/Open Space we may need to collect sensitive personal data about individuals. This includes information about health, religion, sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity and criminal records. We only record information if we gain your consent, or unless we need to in order to fulfil your request, and this information may be shared with external agencies.

Information about children and young people

We sometimes receive data about children and young people if they decide to fundraise for us, and we will collect data about children and young people taking part in fundraising events/activities or where they agree to volunteer for us. Wherever possible, we will ask for consent from parents to collect information about children and young people under the age of 18.

3. Legal basis for using your information

When writing to you by post or contacting you by telephone, we rely on the ‘legitimate interest’ basis. By doing so, we believe that you have an interest in seeing DENS continue to grow and help rebuild the lives of local vulnerable people, and the charity has an interest in staying in touch with you and securing your ongoing support.

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 there is an imbalance.

For any marketing communications via email and SMS (text messaging), we will only contact you by these means if you have given us explicit permission to do so.

If you wish to stop hearing from DENS, or to change the communications you receive from us, you can do so at any time by contacting office@dens.org.uk.

4. Marketing

We want to keep you in the loop with all things DENS – whether that’s to do with our upcoming fundraising events and activities, updates about DENS success and services, our latest company collaborations or our marketing campaigns.

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support DENS by email or SMS (text message) if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner.

However, if you have provided us with your postal address or telephone number, we may contact you with information about our work and how you can support DENS unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us in that way. Please see 3. Legal basis for using your information for more information.

You can opt out of receiving marketing communications or update your preferences at any time by contacting office@dens.org.uk or clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the relevant communication. Please note that when you update your communication preferences it can take up to 28 days to take effect across all of our systems.

For marketing purposes, DENS may use your data for statistical reports as well as case studies. Your identity will not be compromised unless consented to.

5. Fundraising and profiling

We sometimes analyse the data we hold on our database, using profiling and screening methods, so that we can better understand our supporters. This includes preferences, interests and history of support for DENS. We may carry out targeted fundraising activities or approaches based on the information that we hold.

We may also gather information from publicly available sources – such as Companies House or online articles – to gain an insight into possible philanthropic interests and ability to further support DENS.

If you wish to opt-out of any future wealth profiling exercises, please contact office@dens.org.uk.

6. How we protect your data

Keeping your personal data safe is the utmost importance to us. DENS uses several policies and security features to protect your personal information. However, no data transmission over the internet is entirely secure. We do promise that when we receive your information, we will make reasonable steps to ensure data is kept safe, by preventing loss, misuse or modification.

We also promise to never disclose any of your personal data to a third party unless we are required to do so by law, we have obtained your consent or in order to protect an individual.

Any debit or credit card details that we receive are processed in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.

7. How long we keep your information for

We keep your personal information only for as long as it is reasonable or necessary for the relevant activity, and for compliance purposes (for example, the collection of Gift Aid). Where your information is no longer required, we will ensure it is erased in a secure manner.

8. Cookies

‘Cookie’ is a name for a small file, usually of letters and numbers, which is downloaded onto your device, like your computer, mobile phone or tablet, 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.

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you come to our website, and allows us to improve the user experience.

The cookies we use

We use the categorisation set out by the International Chamber of Commerce in their UK Cookie Guide.

We currently use the following categories of cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies are essential for you to move around our website and to use its features.
• Performance cookies collect anonymous information about how you use our site, like which pages are visited most.
• Functionality cookies collect anonymous information that remember choices you make to improve your experience on our website, like your text size or location. They may also be used to provide services you have requested, such as watching a video or filling in a form.

We don’t share or sell sensitive personal information that could directly identify an individual. We only share information about pages that devices have visited, for example the URL.

Can I control or delete cookies?

All recent versions of popular browsers (such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) allow you to control cookies. You can set your browser to accept or reject all, or certain cookies. You might, for example, be happy to accept a cookie that allows you to log in to a website, but prefer to reject any which are used to build a profile of your internet usage. You can also set your browser to prompt you each time a cookie is offered.

For more information, you may wish to visit www.aboutcookies.org, which contains comprehensive information on how to do this on a wide variety of browsers. You will also find details on how to delete cookies from your computer as well as more general information about cookies. For information on how to do this on the browser of your mobile phone you will need to refer to your handset manual.

Please note that if you restrict or delete cookies used by this website then it may not function as intended.

9. Changes to privacy policy

Our privacy policy may be subject to change, so we suggest supporters and web users check back occasionally. If we make any significant changes, we will contact you by email to inform you. If you continue to use the website or access our services, you will be deemed to have accepted them.

This privacy policy was last reviewed in August 2022.

10. Contact us

You are entitled to view, amend, update or delete the personal information that we hold about you. Please email your request to office@dens.org.uk, providing your details so that we can locate all records we hold. We will respond within 28 days of your request.

If you have any questions about our policy or would like further information, please don’t hesitate to contact us: office@dens.org.uk or 01442 262274.

Last reviewed 30/08/22