Privacy policy

The National Centre for Social Research ("We") is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, via this website will be processed by us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purpose of Data Protection Legislation (GDPR), the data controller is the National Centre for Social Research of 35 Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0AX.

Information you give us

You may give us information about you by filling in forms on our site or by corresponding with us by phone, e-mail or otherwise. This includes information you provide when you register to use our site, join our mailing lists, subscribe to our service, participate in discussion boards or other social media functions on our site, or when you enter a competition, promotion or survey or when you report a problem with our site. The information you give us may include your name, address, e-mail address, phone number, financial and credit card information, personal description or photograph.

Information we collect about you

With regard to each of your visits to our site, we may automatically collect the following information:

  • IP address: technical information, including the Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
  • URL: information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); products you viewed or searched for; page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page and any phone number used to call our customer service number.

Information we receive from other sources

We may receive information about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case we will have informed you when we collected that data that it may be shared internally and combined with data collected on this site. We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

Information you give to us

  • to provide you with newsletters about NatCen’s work and projects;
  • to inform you of any training, initiatives or public outreach work that we are undertaking;
  • to notify you of changes to our service;
  • to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.

Information we collect about you

  • to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
  • to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer;
  • to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so;
  • as part of our efforts to keep our site safe and secure;
  • to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;
  • to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about goods or services that may interest you or them.

Information we receive from other sources

  • we may combine information we receive from other sources with information you give to us and information we collect about you. We may use this combined information for the purposes set out above (depending on the types of information we receive).

Where we store your personal data

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers and within the European Economic Area (EEA). Where you have chosen a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Keeping your personal data secure

We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy. All information you provide to us is stored on our secure server. We limit access to the information by our own employees, contractors, site service providers and those individuals who are authorised for the proper handling of such information. We request that our third party contractors and site service providers follow similar standards of security and confidentiality.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will take reasonable steps to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site and so; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Uses made of the information

We have listed below the ways in which we use your personal data.

We are also required by law to explain the legal basis for using your personal data, and this is also set out.

The legal basis in each case is either that we have your consent for the use of your personal data, or that we need to use your personal data in order to perform a contract with you, or that the use of your personal data is necessary for our (or third parties’) legitimate interests (in which case we will explain what those interests are). Where we use your personal data with your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

We may also use your personal data, or permit selected companies to use your personal data, to provide you with information about goods and services which may be of interest to you and we or they may contact you about these by post or telephone.  This is based on our legitimate interest, in providing you with information about our goods or services.

  • To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer (this is based on our legitimate interest in ensuring that our site is presented to you in the most effective way possible).
  • To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes (this is based on your consent, which you may withdraw at any time).
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us (this is based on contractual necessity – we need to use your personal data to perform our contract with you).
  • To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so (this is based on our legitimate interest of giving you the best possible experience when visiting our web page).
  • To notify you about changes to our service (this is based on our legitimate interest in keeping you informed about changes to our service).

How long we keep your personal data

We are required by law to keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which we collected it. The period for which we keep your personal data will be determined by a number of criteria, including the purposes for which we are using the information, the amount and sensitivity of the information, the potential risk from any unauthorised use or disclosure of the information, and our legal and regulatory obligations.

Your access rights / access to your information

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes. We will usually inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your information to any third party for such purposes. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect your data.  You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at info@natcen.ac.uk.

You also have the following rights in relation to your personal data (some of these rights apply only in certain circumstances, and some of them vary according to the legal basis on which we are processing your data.

  • The right to request copies of your personal data.
  • The right to ask us to correct any personal data that we hold about you that’s inaccurate or incomplete.
  • The right to ask us to delete personal data that we hold about you.
  • The right to object or restrict how we’re processing your personal data.
  • You can also ask us to transfer your personal data directly to another company if that’s feasible.

Third parties and partner networks

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates.  If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.  Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to dpo@natcen.ac.uk.

Complaints

If you believe we have not complied with your data protection rights you can contact us via dpo@natcen.ac.uk. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: https://ico.org.uk/concerns