Privacy & Cookie Policy
We are committed to protecting your personal data, whether you are an applicant, Assembly Member or other stakeholder. Please read this policy carefully to understand how we collect, use and store your personal data.
The processing of your personal data is carried out by, or on behalf of, the Scottish Assembly of Parent and Carers (the Assembly, SAPC)
The Assembly is hosted by Connect, a trading name of Scottish Parent Teacher Council, is a registered charity in Scotland (SC019168) and a registered company in Scotland (SC151086).
If you have any questions or concerns regarding our Privacy Policy or our processing of your personal information, please contact:
Connect
The Melting Pot, 15 Calton Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8DL
Email: info@connect.scot
or by telephone at 0131 474 6199.
Notification of change of Privacy & Cookie Policy
This Privacy & Cookie Policy may change from time to time. Please revisit this section in order to keep up to date with the changes in our Privacy Policy. Last updated: September 2024
By using our website, our social media pages (such as Facebook and Twitter) or subscribing to our website, you agree that we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy, unless you have set your computer's browser to reject cookies.
To remember that you have accepted our use of cookies, we will place a temporary cookie to remember your consent for 3 months. For more information about how we use cookies on this site, please review our Cookie Policy below.
How do we collect your information?
When you apply to join the Assembly
We may collect information about you in the course of your work as an Assembly Member
We may collect information about you directly whenever you interact with us by email, through our website, or engage with our social media, you may provide us with your personal information.
We may collect aggregated or anonymous information when you visit our website or interact with our content. For example, we may collect information about the services you use and how you use them, visit our website or view and interact with our content. Please see our Cookie Policy for more detail.
What information do we collect?
The information we collect from you directly, or from third parties with whom we work, may include:
- name
- address
- email address
- telephone number
- contact preferences
- demographic information
- We do not use cookies to collect this type of information
We may also collect and process information about your interactions with us, including details about our contacts with you through email, post, on the phone or in person (i.e., the date, time, method of contact, and what it is regarding), and events or activities that you register for or attend. This information is treated as confidential and no information which can identify an individual will be shared outside the organisation.
Do we process ‘sensitive’ personal information?
Under data protection law, certain categories of personal information are recognised as sensitive, including health information and information regarding race, religious beliefs, and political opinions (‘special category data’) or criminal offence data. We process sensitive data only in relation to monitoring demographics to ensure the Assembly Membership is representative, which is anonymised and collated in reporting.
How will we disclose the information we have collected to outside parties?
We enter into contracts with service providers that require them to comply with data protection laws and to ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to protect the security of your information.
We will never sell or provide your details to third parties.
How do we protect your personal information?
We take appropriate physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your information secure, accurate and up to date, and that we only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary.
Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal information, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure. We do our best to protect personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to our website or through email, so any transmission is at the user’s own risk.
How can you change your preferences or update the information we hold about you?
You can change or update your preferences for communication by contacting us by telephone 0131 474 6199 or email info@connect.scot.
If you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted, we may hold your details to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes, including (but not limited to):
- Explaining and apologising where we have made a mistake.
If your contact details have changed or you think any information we have about you is incorrect or incomplete, you can always update or correct the information we hold about you by contacting us as explained above.
Why are we allowed to process your personal information?
Our Privacy and Cookie Policies take into account several laws, including:
- The Data Protection Act 2018
- General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679
Generally, our processing of your personal information as described in this policy is allowed by these laws based on one or more lawful grounds, including:
- Where you have given us consent to use your personal information in a certain way.
- So we can fulfil a contract with you, or are taking preliminary steps before entering a contract.
- When it is required to allow us to comply with a legal obligation.
- Where it is reasonably necessary for the purpose of a legitimate interest, and your privacy rights do not override the legitimate interest. We will consider any potential impact on you (positive or negative), your rights under data protection laws, and will not use your personal information for activities where the impact on you overrides the legitimate interests in the processing.
We cannot be held responsible for the privacy of data collected by websites not owned or managed by the Assembly, including those linked through our website.
Emails aren’t always secure, and they may be intercepted or changed after they’ve been sent. The Assembly doesn’t accept liability if this happens. The contents of emails reflect their author's views and not necessarily those of the Assembly.
Please do not send the Assembly any financial data by email.
The information in emails is confidential, so if you’ve received one by mistake, please delete it without copying, using, or telling anyone about its contents.
UK GDPR gives certain legal rights to individuals over their own personal data. These rights are:
- Data access rights
- Right to restrict processing
- Right of Rectification
- Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten)
- Right to object to processing
- Right to withdraw consent; and
- Data portability rights.
These give you the right to know if we hold information on you, to obtain the information we hold on you, and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances.
These rights are not absolute, and some may be subject to some exceptions or limitations.
We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within 30 days of receiving a request. Please see ‘How to contact us’ above.
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device and to target the content displayed to the user’s interests.
You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu for a video about cookies, visit this website.
Yes.
There are two broad types of cookies - 'first party cookies' and 'third party cookies':
First party cookies are cookies that are served directly by the website operator to your computer and are often used to recognise your computer when it revisits that site and to remember your preferences as you browse the site. These are the cookies we use.
Third party cookies are served by a service provider on behalf of the website operator and can be used by the service provider to recognise your computer when you visit other web sites. Third party cookies are most commonly used for web site analytics or advertising purposes.
In addition, cookies may be either 'session cookies' or 'persistent cookies'. Your computer automatically removes session cookies once you close your browser. Persistent cookies will survive on your computer until an expiry date specified in the cookie itself, is reached. We use both session and persistent cookies.
What information do we collect using cookies?
We may collect some, or all, of the information available from cookies when you visit our website, depending on how you use it. We monitor how people use our website so we can improve it. We collect this information anonymously.
However, you can choose to use our website anonymously without giving us any information. Please see ‘Changing your cookie preferences’ below.
If you visit our website, we may use cookies to record information about:
- the areas of the website you visit
- the amount of time you spend on the site
- whether you are new to the site, or have visited it before
- the country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device
- how you came to our website – for example, through an email link or a search engine
- the type of device and browser you use
- how you use the website and the quality of your experience – for example we may track your bandwidth when viewing videos
- how you interact with our sign-up forms – for example what you select as your communication preferences
- any error messages that you receive on the site.
Although not through cookies, we do measure the success of the emails we send – so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. We receive this information anonymously. We don’t share this information.
Website statistics analytics, testing and personalisation
Our website currently uses a third party web analytics service:
Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which (as discussed above) are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.
Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using our website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
You can always opt-out of Google Analytics cookies using Google’s opt-out tool.
Changing your cookie preferences
The "Help" menu in the toolbar of most web browsers will tell you how to change your browser's cookie settings, including how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable cookies altogether. Below is some helpful guidance about how to make these changes.
You can find out information on how to block cookies at your browser’s website:
Find out more detailed information on disabling cookies here.