At the TaxPayers' Alliance Limited (TPA), we are committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. This Privacy Notice explains how we use your personal information and your rights under data protection laws.
We are committed to complying with data protection laws, including:
- The General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and any related legislation which applies in the UK, including any legislation derived from the Data Protection Act 2018.
- The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (2003) and any successor or related legislation, including the E-Privacy Regulation 2017/0003.
- All other applicable laws and regulations relating to the processing of personal information and privacy, including statutory instruments and, where applicable, the guidance and codes of practice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office or any other supervisory authority.
What we do
The TPA campaigns for lower taxes and less government waste. Our day-to-day activities include undertaking and publishing research, running campaigns, hosting events, promoting our work in the media and fundraising in order to continue our activities. We have built a grassroots network of supporters across the country to help us bring about positive change for the issues we campaign on.
Reasons we can collect and use your personal information
We rely on "legitimate interests" as the lawful basis on which we collect and use your personal information.
Our “legitimate interests” means the interests of our organisation in conducting and managing our activities. We have an interest in making sure you know about our research, events and campaigns, so we may process your information to keep you updated, and in particular to offer opportunities to engage with our activities.
When we process your personal information for our legitimate interests, we make sure to consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. Our legitimate interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
We will ensure that your personal information is processed fairly, lawfully and transparently, and we will only process personal information that is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary for our relationship.
How we collect your personal information, what we collect and how we use it
We will only process your personal information for the purposes set out below. Should we need to process your personal information for a new purpose, we will inform you beforehand.
When you provide any information to us, you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this Privacy Notice.
You may opt out from receiving our information at any time.
Supporters
As is most often the case, we obtain your personal information directly from you when you sign up to become a supporter of the TPA, either by phone, email, in person, via social media, via our website or when you sign up for our email newsletters. When you do so, we will ask you for your basic information in order to begin our relationship with you and keep you up-to-date on our activities. We may also obtain your personal information when you use the contact form on our website or email us directly.
We may hold the following types of personal information, depending on our relationship with you:
- Name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Social media usernames
- Job title
- Place of employment
- Policy interests
- Record of financial support
- Record of events attended
- Record of petitions signed
- Record of consultation tools used
- Correspondence history
We may use your personal information for email, telephone and postal direct marketing purposes, including:
- Regular email bulletins
- Press releases or research
- Invitations to sign petitions or join specific campaigns
- Invitations to events
- Appeals for funding
- Alerts via social media
Website users
Like most websites, our website uses data collection tools to track user interaction. We only use cookies that are necessary to provide certain basic functionality, to help us to improve the performance of our website and provide you with a better user experience. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but parts of the site may be negatively affected. You can read our cookies policy here.
We may hold the following types of personal information:
- IP address
- Approximate geographical location
- Device type
- Internet browser
- Operating system
We may also collect the personal information you give us if you contact us via our website.
Please note, our website and/or research may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide while visiting such sites, and such sites are not governed by this Privacy Notice. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy notice applicable to the website in question.
Elected or appointed government officials
We regularly contact elected or appointed government officials as part of our research and outreach. We obtain personal information from publicly available sources, such as government websites or directories, or when we correspond directly with an official.
We may hold the following types of personal information, depending on our relationship with you:
- Name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Social media usernames
- Job title
- Place of employment
- Policy interests
- Record of events attended
- Correspondence history
- Political affiliation (where this is publicly available)
We may use your personal information for email, telephone and postal direct marketing purposes, including:
- Regular email bulletins
- Press releases or research
- Invitations to sign petitions or join specific campaigns
- Invitations to events
- Alerts via social media
- To discuss a particular policy or issue
- Freedom of Information requests
- To conduct business with you or your employer
Members of the media
We also regularly contact members of the media as part of our research and outreach. We obtain personal information from publicly available sources, such as company websites, or when we correspond directly with a member of the media. We may also obtain personal information from a third party provider.
We may hold the following types of personal information, depending on our relationship with you:
- Name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Social media usernames
- Job title
- Place of employment
- Policy interests
- Record of events attended
- Correspondence history
We may use your personal information for email, telephone and postal direct marketing purposes, including:
- Regular email bulletins
- Press releases or research
- Invitations to sign petitions or join specific campaigns
- Invitations to events
- Alerts via social media
- To discuss a particular policy or issue
- To conduct business with you or your employer
Suppliers
If you do business with us on your own behalf or you are the point of contact for an organisation that we do business with, we collect the personal information you provide us with.
We may hold the following types of personal information:
- Name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Job title
- Place of employment
- Bank details (for payments to you only)
We may use your personal information for the following reasons:
- To conduct business with you or your employer. In some cases, providing information to us will be necessary for the performance of a contract and we will not be able to enter into, or fulfil, our contractual obligations without it.
Candidates
When we advertise for a paid position or for volunteers, we may collect the personal information you give us when you correspond with us by phone, email or post.
We may hold the following types of personal information:
- Name
- Address
- Telephone number
- Email address
- Social media usernames
- CV
- Correspondence history
We may use your personal information for the following reason:
- To discuss a particular employment or volunteer opportunity
Others
We may collect the personal information you give us when you correspond with us by phone, email or otherwise.
Who we share your personal information with
We may share your information:
- with NationBuilder for maintaining our website and to process some donations (see Stripe below). We hold some of the types of personal information listed above within this platform. You can read more about how NationBuilder interacts with us and protects your information at nationbuilder.com/privacy, nationbuilder.com/confidentiality and https://nationbuilder.com/gdpr.
- with Donorfy for maintaining our database. We hold some of the types of personal information listed above within this platform. You can read more about how Donorfy interacts with us and protects your information at https://donorfy.com/data-processing-agreement
- with Mailchimp, for sending email communications. We hold some of the types of information listed above within this platform. You can read more about Mailchimp's policies on their website at https://mailchimp.com/help/gdpr-faq/
- with PayPal and Stripe to process donations. They are all data controllers, meaning they control the personal information you enter to make a donation in order to process that donation. We have no access to the personal financial information you use to complete the financial transaction. You can read more about PayPal and Stripe policies on their websites.
- with Google Workspace for cloud computing. The only personal information we hold in this system is regular email correspondence between us and you. You can read more about Google's policy at https://cloud.google.com/security/gdpr/ and https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance.
- with Google Analytics (GA) to track user interaction on our website. Although GA records the types of data listed above, none of this information personally identifies you to us. GA also records your computer’s IP address which could be used to personally identify you, but GA do not grant us access to this. You can read more about GA’s policy at https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance.
- with Xero accounting software. We hold some of the types of information listed above within this platform. You can read more about Xero's policies on their website at https://www.xero.com/uk/campaigns/xero-and-gdpr/
- if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation.
We will never sell, rent or otherwise distribute or make public any of your personal information, unless legally required to do so.
All companies we use to process your data are GDPR compliant.
How we secure your personal information and how we handle data breaches
We take the security of all personal information seriously and have put into place robust physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard your information against unauthorised access, theft and loss.
We limit access to personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Individuals processing personal information will do so in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We will report any suspected data breach to the applicable authorities and to individuals where we are legally required to do so.
How long we retain your personal information
We retain your personal information for as long as we maintain a relationship with you. If we do business with you, we may also retain and use some personal information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.
What are your rights?
Under data protection laws, you have a number of important rights which you can exercise free of charge. In summary, these rights are:
- The right to rectification: If your personal information is incorrect or incomplete, you have the right to have it corrected.
- The right to be forgotten: In certain circumstances, you may request the removal of your personal information.
- The right to restrict processing: In certain circumstances, you can block the processing of your personal information.
- The right to data portability: In certain circumstances, you can receive the personal information which you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit that information to a third party, or for your own use anywhere you prefer.
- The right to object: You can object to the use of your personal information for direct marketing or in certain other situations.
For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.
How to exercise your rights
If you would like to exercise these rights, details of how to do so are set out below.
Subject access requests
You can request a copy of any personal information that we hold about you, as well as the description of the type of information that we are processing, the uses that are being made of the information, details of anyone to whom their personal information has been disclosed, and how long the personal information will be stored. This is known as a “subject access request”. This information must be provided within one month of request at no charge to you. Please email our Data Compliance Officer or call us on the number below to make a request.
Updating your details
We have an obligation to store accurate information about you, so should your personal information change at any point, please email our Data Compliance Officer or call us on the number below to update your details.
Opting out
If you just want to stop receiving emails from us, you can unsubscribe using the unsubscribe links contained in any email that we send you, by emailing our Data Compliance Officer or calling us on the number below to update your details. When requesting removal via email, please contact us using the email account that is subscribed to the mailing list. If you are under 16 years of age you must obtain parental consent before signing up to our emails.
If you would like to stop receiving post from us, please email our Data Compliance Officer or call us on the number below.
You can always request that we remove you from our database. If you would like us to delete your record, please email our Data Compliance Officer or call us on the number below. We may continue processing this data if we have an overriding legitimate interest to continue the processing.
How to complain
We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you raise about our use of your information.
You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner, who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by telephone on: 0303 123 1113. If you live or work elsewhere in the EU or EEA, you can also complain to your local supervisory authority.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
This policy is reviewed annually by our directors to ensure we are meeting our legal obligations. It therefore may change from time to time in line with legislation or industry developments. We recommend that you check this page occasionally for any policy changes or updates.
How to contact us
Please contact us if you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or the information we hold about you.
Data Compliance Officer
Registered address and operating office: 55 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3QL
Telephone: 020 7340 6020
Email: [email protected]
TaxPayers' Alliance is a trading name of The TaxPayers' Alliance Limited, a company incorporated in England & Wales under company registration no. 04873888.