Privacy Policy

We want everyone who works with and supports us to feel confident about how we look after your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and store your personal information (any information that identifies you).

 

SC Scotland is committed to protecting your personal information and making every effort to ensure that your personal information is processed in a fair, open and transparent manner.

 

We are a “data controller” under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. This means that we are responsible for, and control the processing of, your personal information.

 

Contact Us About Your Data

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your data:

Data Protection Enquiries: hello@scscotland.org.uk

Address: Safer Communities Scotland (SC Scotland), Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow G4 9RH

You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO): https://ico.org.uk

 

How We Collect Information About You

When you interact with us directly: This could be if you ask us about our activities, register as a member with us, sign up for training or an event, subscribe to our newsletter, participate in our surveys or research, or otherwise provide us with your personal information. This includes when you email us, visit our website, get in touch through the post, in person, or when you interact with us through third parties such as event ticketing systems (e.g. Eventbrite) and provide your consent for your personal information to be shared with us.

 

Information We Collect and Why We Use It

Personal information we collect includes details such as your name, email address, job title, organisation, postal address, telephone number and bank details (if we make payments to you), as well as information you provide in any communications between us.

 

We will mainly use this information:

  • To administer your membership with us
  • To provide the services or goods that you have requested (e.g. training, events)
  • To update you with important administrative messages
  • To keep a record of your relationship with us
  • To process your payments and verify any financial transactions

 

We may also use your personal information:

  • To contact you about our work and how you can support us
  • To invite you to participate in surveys or research

 

When We’ll Contact You

 

If you’re a member: We may send you information about membership benefits, events, training, and community safety updates relevant to your membership. This is part of our membership relationship.

If you’re a professional contact: We may contact you about events, training, and work relevant to your professional role in community safety. We do this as part of our professional network.

If you subscribe to our newsletter: We’ll send you regular updates about our work based on your subscription consent

If you’ve asked to be added to specific mailing lists (like our Lunchtime Learning updates): We’ll contact you about those specific topics.

If you’ve attended our events or used our services: We may follow up with you about that specific event or service.

 

You can opt out of any communications at any time by emailing hello@scscotland.org.uk or clicking unsubscribe in our newsletter emails.

 

Legal Basis for Using 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.

However, there are other lawful reasons that allow us to process your personal information and one of those is called ‘legitimate interests’. We rely on legitimate interests when we have a genuine business reason to process your information that doesn’t override your rights. For example:

  • Contacting members about membership-related activities
  • Emailing professional contacts about work relevant to their role in community safety
  • Keeping records of our relationships with partners and organisations

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.

 

Marketing

We will only contact you about our work and how you can support SC Scotland by email if you have agreed for us to contact you in this manner or if we have an existing relationship with you (such as membership or professional partnership).

You can update your choices or stop us sending you these communications at any time by contacting hello@scscotland.org.uk or using the unsubscribe link in our newsletter emails.

 

How We Use Email

Organisational/Professional Emails:

If we have your work email address (e.g., name@organisation.gov.uk), we may contact you about:

  • Events, training, and opportunities relevant to your professional role
  • Community safety updates and resources
  • Partnership opportunities and enquiries

This is based on our legitimate interest in maintaining professional relationships within the community safety network.

 

Personal Emails:

If we have your personal email address (e.g., name@gmail.com), we’ll only send you marketing communications if:

  • You’ve subscribed to our newsletter, OR
  • You’ve asked to be added to specific mailing lists (like event updates), OR
  • You’ve recently engaged with us (attended an event, used our services) and we’re following up about similar services

 

You can unsubscribe or opt out at any time using the link in our emails or by contacting hello@scscotland.org.uk

 

Event Invitations and Webinars

If you request to join a specific event: When you email us asking for a Teams link or event access, we’ll use your email address to send you that specific invitation and any follow-up information after the event. We will not automatically add you to our mailing list. If you’d like to receive future event invitations, we’ll offer you the option to opt in.

If an invitation is forwarded to you: You’re welcome to attend events even if the invitation was forwarded by someone else. We may email you follow-up information after the event. When you join the Teams call, your name will be visible to other participants. If you’d like to receive future invitations directly from us, you can request this by contacting us.

Microsoft Teams: When you join our online events via Microsoft Teams, your name and organisation (as displayed in your Teams profile) are visible to other participants and Microsoft processes your data according to their privacy policy. We usually record a transcription of sessions to create summaries of key discussion points and learnings for sharing with attendees and members who couldn’t attend. On rare occasions, we may record video or audio for training purposes. We’ll always inform you at the start of the session if any recording is taking place and give you the option to turn off your camera or leave the call if you’re not comfortable being recorded.

 

Sharing Your Information

Within SC Scotland: The personal information we collect is used by our small team of staff to deliver our services and support our network.

Sharing with Network Members and Partners: As a membership network, we may share your contact details (name, job title, organisation, and email) with other members and partner organisations to facilitate communication, collaboration, and information sharing in the community safety sector. This might include sharing your details in member directories, for collaborative projects, when responding to general enquiries or at joint events. We will always:

  • Ask for your consent first before sharing
  • Tell you clearly which organisations we’re working with
  • Explain why we need to share your information
  • Give you the opportunity to opt out
  • Only share the minimum information necessary

 

We will never sell or share your personal information for marketing purposes.

 

You can opt out of having your details shared at any time by contacting hello@scscotland.org.uk

 

Service Providers We Use

To deliver our services, we share information with trusted service providers:

  • Microsoft 365 – for email (Outlook), video conferencing (Teams), online forms (Forms) and secure data storage (OneDrive).  When you join our Teams webinars or meetings: Your name and organisation (as displayed in your Teams profile) will be visible to other participants. Microsoft processes this data according to their privacy policy. We usually record a transcription of sessions to create summaries of key discussion points and learnings for sharing with attendees and members who couldn’t attend. On rare occasions, we may record video or audio for training purposes. We’ll always inform you at the start of the session if any recording is taking place and give you the option to turn off your camera or leave the call if you’re not comfortable being recorded.
  • Mailchimp – for newsletter distribution
  • Eventbrite – for event registration and ticketing

 

These providers can only use your data as we instruct them. They must keep it secure and comply with data protection laws.

 

Technical Infrastructure:

Our website is hosted by a third-party provider who may process technical data (such as IP addresses and server logs) as part of standard website operation. This data is not used for marketing or profiling purposes.

 

Legal Requirements:

We may share your information if required by law, such as responding to valid legal requests from authorities.

 

Keeping Your Information Safe

We take looking after your information very seriously. We’ve implemented appropriate physical, technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we have under our control, both on and off-line, from improper access, use, alteration, destruction and loss.

Our data is stored securely on Microsoft OneDrive with access restricted to SCSN staff members only. We use secure password-protected systems and regularly review who has access to what information.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information using the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information sent to us this way, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to our site.

Our website may contain links to other sites. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices employed by other sites. Please be aware that advertisers or websites that have links on our site may collect personally identifiable information about you. This privacy statement does not cover the information practices of those websites or advertisers.

 

How Long We Hold Your Information For

We keep your personal information only for as long as necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. The periods below are our maximum retention times – we regularly review our data and delete information sooner if we no longer need it.

 

Non-Employee Personal Data

  • Event registrations: Up to 36 months after the event date
  • Newsletter subscriptions: Until you unsubscribe
  • Membership records: Duration of active membership plus up to 36 months after membership ends
  • Survey responses: Up to 36 months after collection
  • General enquiries and contacts:
  • Email correspondence: Retained as business records with no fixed deletion period
  • Contact database entries: Up to 36 months after last interaction (such as attending an event, responding to communications, or engaging with our services)
  • Contact/Engagement tracking: Up to 36 months after the financial year ends
  • Financial records: 6 years (legal requirement)

 

Information from Event Attendees:

When you register for our events (through Eventbrite or via email), we collect your name, email, organisation, job title, and any dietary or accessibility requirements you provide.

 

We use this information to:

  • Manage event logistics and communicate about that specific event
  • Send you event materials (agendas, presentations, follow-up resources)
  • Improve our events through feedback

 

We keep event registration information for up to 36 months to help us plan future events and report on our activities.

 

We do not automatically add event attendees to our general mailing lists. If you’d like to receive regular updates from us, you can subscribe to our newsletter separately.

 

Employee Personal Data

For records relating to SCSN employees, please email us to request for the Data Retention Policy which covers:

  • Job applications: 1 year after notification
  • Wage/salary records: 6 years after end of tax year
  • HR/personnel files: 6 years after employment terminates
  • Accident records: 3 years (or until age 21 for young persons)
  • Other statutory records: As per legal requirements (3-6 years)

 

Data Review Process:

We conduct an annual review to:

  • Remove contact information for people who are no longer engaged with our work
  • Delete event, survey and other data that’s beyond our retention periods
  • Update or remove outdated information

Between annual reviews, we also delete data on an ongoing basis when we identify it’s no longer needed for our purposes.

 

Email correspondence is kept as business records and doesn’t have a fixed deletion period. However, we regularly review and delete obviously outdated or irrelevant emails.

After these retention periods, we securely delete your information unless we have a legal obligation to keep it longer.

 

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 at hello@scscotland.org.uk. You can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk.

  • Access to your personal information: 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, and provide us with evidence of your identity.
  • Right to object: 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.
  • Consent: If you have given us your consent to use personal information (for example, for marketing), you can withdraw your consent at any time.
  • Rectification: You can ask us to change or complete any inaccurate or incomplete personal information held about you.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Restriction: 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.
  • No automated decision-making: Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention. You have the right not to be subject to automated decisions that will create legal effects or have a similar significant impact on you, unless you have given us your consent, it is necessary for a contract between you and us or is otherwise permitted by law. You also have certain rights to challenge decisions made about you. We do not currently carry out any automated decision-making.

Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request.

 

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or how we handle your data:

Data Protection Enquiries: hello@scscotland.org.uk

Address: Safer Communities Scotland (SC Scotland), Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow G4 9RH

You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO): https://ico.org.uk

 

Scottish Community Safety Network (known as Safer Communities Scotland) is a Scottish charity, SC040464  , regulated by the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) and registered as a company limited by guarantee, SC357649.

 

Last updated: 29 October 2025

Next review: 29 October 2026

Download a PDF version of this policy