At the National Biodiversity Network Trust, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our websites, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to support@nbn.org.uk  Alternatively, you can telephone 0115 850 0177.

The NBN Trust is registered with the Information Commissioners Office. View our registration.

Who are we?

We’re the National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust), the organisation supporting the UK’s largest partnership for nature. We are dedicated to championing the collection, collation, sharing and use of biodiversity data. We are a registered charity (no. 1082163) and company limited by guarantee (no. 3963387). The registered address is 27 Old Gloucester St, Holborn, London WC1N 3AX.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you contact us, make a donation, register to use the NBN Atlas and its associated portals, or if you register to receive our monthly newsletters.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. If you make a donation online your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

  • send you our newsletters, where you have subscribed;
  • respond to any enquiry you make;
  • provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us;
  • provide you with information on relevant events, products or services, which you consented to if you signed up for our newsletter
  • ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

We may share your information with:

  • Our payment and credit card processors where relevant, so that we can process your payment.
  • Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our websites.
  • Data partners, so they can see who is using their wildlife data
  • Academic research institutions, such as universities, if we ask them to undertake specific research into our users, for example to understand their motivations for recording the UK’s biodiversity. This would relate primarily to iNaturalistUK and the management role we have, a function which will be better served if we understand our users and their needs. We may also share data to understand users of the NBN Atlas, please refer to the separate NBN Atlas Privacy Policy for more information.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

  • In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
  • If all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by us about our customers and users will be one of the transferred assets.
  • If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation
  • In order to:
    • enforce any documents referred to in this policy, other agreements or to investigate potential breaches; or
    • protect our rights, property, or safety, or those of our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction; or
    • detect, investigate and help prevent security threats, fraud or other malicious activity.

Lawful basis for processing 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 (e.g. if you book a place at our conference).

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 NBN Trust to process your information to help us to achieve our vision.

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.

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

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.

We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, post, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: support@nbn.org.uk or telephone on 0115 850 0177.

Retaining and deleting personal data

Personal data that we process for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.

Your rights

You have various rights in respect of the personal information we hold about you – these are set out in more detail below.  If you wish to exercise any of these rights or make a complaint, you can do so by contacting us by email at  support@nbn.org.uk or by phone on 0115 850 0177. You can also make a complaint to to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Your principle rights under data protection law are:

(a) the right to access – 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 via email, and provide us with evidence of your identity.

(b) the right to rectification – You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you

(c) the right to 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

(d) the right to restrict processing – 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.

(e) the right to object to processing – 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 this ground. 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.

(f) the right to data 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.

(g) the right to withdraw consent – If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for our newsletter), you can withdraw your consent at any time.

Cookies

When someone visits www.nbn.org.uk or any of the www.nbnatlas.org sites we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

 

Updated 1 August to reflect move away from Nottingham office.

Updated 14 February 2024 to reflect the potential for the NBN Trust to share data with institutions who may undertake user research on our behalf, to help us improve our services.