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This privacy notice describes how we process your personal data to deliver our services.
These are our reasons for collecting it, what we do with it and what your rights are under the UK’s data protection laws.
Anxiety UK is the country’s largest anxiety, stress and anxiety-based depression charity dedicated to helping anyone affected by such conditions.
Anxiety UK is a registered charity (1113403), and a company limited by guarantee (company no. 5551121).
Our registered address is: Anxiety UK, Nunes House, 447 Chester Road, Old Trafford, Manchester M16 9HA.
We are the data controller for the processing described in this notice and are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office – reference number Z6130270.
We have appointed a Data Protection Officer who can be contacted at the above address, or via [email protected].
We process your personal data to:
Unfortunately, if you do not provide this information, then we will not be able to process your donation, sign you up as a volunteer or provide the products/services you have requested.
For those using the Anxiety UK website for any of the following purposes: membership subscriptions/volunteering enquiries/therapist applications/e-newsletter sign-ups/training, consultancy, charity of the year, informal partnerships, research requests, fundraiser requests, advertising and sponsorship enquiries, therapy referral requests, self-help group listings, structured courses, webinars and those making an online purchase, we will collect all/some of the following information:
Payment information such as credit card details are processed exclusively by our payments processing provider and we do not have access to those data.
We provide an automated online help tool, Anxia, to assist you with locating resources and required help via our website. Anxia is not designed to process personal data and collects no personal identifiers. We would discourage including personal data within your text interactions with Anxia. The service is entirely automated, UK hosted, and all interactions deleted after 30 days. We use interactions with Anxia to try and improve the quality of the service. We may share these anonymous interactions with third parties to evaluate and undertake research into this service.
We do not obtain data about you from any third party without your knowledge or consent. The above information is collected by Anxiety UK to ensure that the services provided are accessible and for monitoring, improving and evaluating our services together with enabling us to conduct research into anxiety. We collect all/some of the above information depending on the product or service that you wish to access and/or your reason for making contact with us.
Some types of personal data are more sensitive and require additional protections – these are known as Special Category Data and include details of your ethnicity, beliefs, health and sexuality. If you are a member or beneficiary then it is highly likely that we will be processing special category data about you, particularly those which deal with your health.
If you share your personal experience of anxiety with us or any data about your health and wellbeing we will treat this information with the upmost confidence and always in accordance with this notice.
In the event you provide us with any special category data we will only use this information:
We will never pass on your details to anyone else without your permission except in exceptional circumstances. Examples of this might include anyone reporting serious self-harm or when posing a threat to themselves or others.
If you share your personal experience with us for the purpose of it being shared on Anxiety UK’s blogs or in our magazine, you can of course decide if you want to remain anonymous or not, if you are happy to share your personal details with staff members or if you would like us to share your story with the media or other parties then we will, subject always to you having provided your consent to such sharing.
We can only process your personal data where we have a lawful basis to do so, which varies according to the purpose of processing and the nature of your relationship with us.
| Purpose | Lawful Basis |
|---|---|
| Delivering our therapy services and other benefits to members | Performance of a contract with you |
| Delivering our therapy services and other benefits to beneficiaries | Our legitimate interest in providing the services we are contracted to provide |
| Responding to your enquiries as a member or potential member | Performance of a contract with you, or taking the steps necessary to enter into a contract with you |
| Responding to your enquiries as a beneficiary | Our legitimate interest in providing the services we are contracted to provide |
| Managing our relationship with you as a administrative volunteer | Our legitimate interest in managing the volunteer relationship and maintaining appropriate records |
| Managing our relationship with you as a Volunteer therapist | Our legitimate interest in managing the therapist relationship and maintaining appropriate records |
| Managing our relationship with you as a donor | Our legitimate interest in managing the donor relationship and maintaining appropriate records; our legal obligation to maintain accurate records of Gift Aid |
| To market our services to you | Your consent for us to do so |
| To promote our charity to you for the purposes of fundraising | Your consent for us to do so |
| Recording of online events, webinars and other online services | Our legitimate interests where it is appropriate for us to maintain a record of the online event, webinar or other service |
| To process online orders | Performance of a contact with you, or our legitimate interest in performing a contract with your organisation |
| To conduct research to improve our services and to help us understand more about anxiety and related conditions. | Our legitimate interest in improving our services and developing our understanding of anxiety and related conditions. |
| Managing CCTV on our office premises. | Our legitimate interests in protecting the security and safety of our premises, staff and other visitors. |
Where we are processing special category data this will be with your explicit consent for us to do so and we will ask for this at the time of collecting the data. There are exceptional circumstances where we may need to process special category data if we believe that there is a risk of harm to you or others, in which case we will process because it is in your or the other person’s vital interests to do so.
We record our calls, or online interactions, to:
Our lawful basis for recording calls is that it is in our legitimate interest to do so, for the above purposes, and we will always let you know when we are recording.
Anxiety UK’s helpline service is a confidential service. However, there are certain situations where information will need to be shared even if this is against the wishes of the service user. This includes situations where:
We do this under the lawful basis of being in your vital interests (or the vital interests of another person) to do so, or where we have a legal obligation to do so.
There may also be occasions where there is a public interest justification for the disclosure of information including:
the prevention, detection or prosecution of serious crime.
All call data is stored in the UK or EEA. All call recordings are automatically deleted after 30 days. Our supplier of this service is certified to ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials, data are encrypted wherever possible and additional security measures implemented as appropriate. All processing of personal data for call recording purposes is performed by our supplier under a Data Processing Agreement as required under data protection legislation.
Call recordings will only be accessed by a manager, a relevant member of the Anxiety UK staff team or Board of Trustees and potentially other parties involved with the investigation of any complaint arising from the provision of the helpline service. All staff are trained in the UK GDPR.
Anxiety UK will never sell or rent your personal information to third parties and we promise to keep your details safe and secure. We will not share your personal information with third parties for marketing purposes.
Third Party Service Providers and Associates (including Anxiety UK Approved Therapists) working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings). However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the Anxiety UK network for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law or for reasons of safety, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime, or to comply with our safeguarding, confidentiality and risk assessment policies and processes.
Anxiety UK will not divulge information unless there is exceptional circumstances that we become aware of and after due consideration there is overriding reason that we may need to make a disclosure to appropriate authorities (police, courts, GP, social services etc). Anxiety UK would not usually need to contact your GP. However, as your welfare is of paramount importance, if issues of safety arise – for example, we believe or if you disclose that you are a risk to yourself or to others – we may need to contact your GP or relevant professional.
When you are using our secure online payment system, your payment is processed by a third party payment processor, who specialises in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions.
We may from time to time create statistical and aggregated data derived from your personal data to enable Anxiety UK to share aggregated outcome data for the purpose of evaluation, promotion, marketing and research of Anxiety UK’s therapy services or otherwise evaluate and try to improve our services. Any aggregated data will be in anonymous form and will not identify you as an individual in any way.
We use a number of third party systems providers to deliver our services, some of which are cloud-based packages. Where we are using such third party systems we ensure that we have a data processing agreement in place to protect your rights and comply with data protection laws.
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 about the vital work that we do supporting those with anxiety, stress and anxiety based depression and our range of products and services, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes on the form on which we collect your information.
We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your explicit consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us by email: [email protected] or telephone on 0161 226 7727.
We aim to retain personal data for no longer than is necessary, which is a core principle of UK data protections legislation. Anonymised data which no longer relates to an identified or identifiable individual, and is therefore no longer personal data, may be retained for longer to assist us with identifying potential service improvements.
This section describes our data retention policy for different kinds of personal data and for the different purposes we have. We schedule data deletion activities on an annual basis in accordance with this schedule:
| Type Of Record | Retention Period | Storage Media Location | Reason for Retention |
| Staff Emails | Up to 3 years | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
| Support Messages (Email or text) | 6 months | Electronic | To deliver continuity of service |
| Tax including Gift Aid | 7 years | Electronic | To comply with HMRC regulations |
| Therapy data (pertaining to member/non-member/partner referrals) | Up to 7 years | Electronic/physical | To comply with BABCP, BACP guidance |
| Training Records (externally delivered) | 7 years | Electronic/physical | Essential business continuity |
| Volunteer Records & Data | 1 year post cessation of volunteering | Electronic/physical | For supply of references |
| FAUK (Friends of Anxiety UK/Subscribers to Keeping Connected ezine) | Until subscription terminated | Electronic | To deliver continuity of service |
| Employee/Personnel Records | 7 years after employment ceases unless legally required to retain longer | Electronic/physical | For references and business continuity |
| Anxiety UK Approved Therapist records | 7 years after resigning | Electronic/physical | For business continuity |
| Fast Therapy & Therapy Referral Data | Up to 7 years | Electronic | To comply with BABCP, BACP guidance |
| Therapy referral forms | 2 years | Electronic/physical | Essential business continuity |
| Incidents, Complaints Data (including accident data) | 7 years | Electronic/physical | To comply with Charity Commission guidance |
| Membership forms | 1 year | Physical | Essential business continuity |
| Membership info | 12-15 months after end of membership | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
| Recruitment data | 1 year post application | Electronic/physical | For monitoring purposes & HR compliance |
| Fundraisers and donors | Up to 7 years | Electronic/physical | To comply w. Charity Commission guidance |
| Shop sales records | 1 year from purchase | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
| Dormant topics in Members’ message board | 6 months | Electronic | To deliver continuity of service |
| Courses and groups including Art For Anxiety Relief | 12-15 months | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
| Website user text interaction via Ask Anxia® | 30 days | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
| Call recordings | 45 days | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
| CCTV | 30 days | Electronic | To protect the business in the event of an incident |
| TAUK bookings | 12-15 months | Electronic | Essential business continuity |
We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.
The following key measures help keep us keep your personal data secure:
If you are using our online services please keep you password confidential and do not share it with anyone else. We recommend that you follow the latest online security advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) which you can access here.
A cookie is a small file, installed on your device, which helps analyse web traffic or lets you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
Session cookies are removed when you finish browsing and close your browser.
We always ask for your consent before installing any non-essential cookies on your device. These are the cookies we use:
| Cookie Name | Cookie Category | Description | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| wordpress_ | 2 | WordPress cookie for a logged in user. | session |
| wordpress_logged_in_ | 2 | WordPress cookie for a logged in user | session |
| wordpress_test_ | 2 | WordPress cookie for a logged in user | session |
| wordpress_test_cookie | 2 | WordPress test cookie | session |
| wp-settings- | 1 | WordPress also sets a few wp-settings-[UID] cookies. The number on the end is your individual user ID from the users database table. This is used to customize your view of admin interface, and possibly also the main site interface. | 1 year |
| wp-settings-time- | 2 | WordPress also sets a few wp-settings-{time}-[UID] cookies. The number on the end is your individual user ID from the users database table. This is used to customize your view of admin interface, and possibly also the main site interface. | 1 year |
| PHPSESSID | 1 | To identify your unique session on the website | session |
| SESS | 1 | To ensure that you are recognised when you move from page to page within the site and that any information you have entered is remembered. | session |
The Anxia app for iOS and Android devices enables you to easily access resources published on our website. If you login to the app as a member then we check your membership details to enable your access to the benefits included in your subscription, however some content is freely available to all including guest users.
The app processes no personal data beyond those already described above for the management of member benefits.
We utilise the Google Firebase and Crashlytics services to provide anonymised user analytics data and error reporting data – you will be prompted to provide your consent for us to read these data from your device, and you are free to decline and continue using the Anxia App.
Our website may contain links to enable you to visit other websites of interest easily. 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 whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy notice applicable to the website in question.
We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 17 or under. If you are aged 17 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.
We primarily process data in the UK: our website is hosted in the UK, and our Microsoft Office 365 environment is also hosted in the UK.
However we do use a number of cloud bases tools which are based outside the UK, including the USA.
We ensure that any such international transfers are conducted lawfully. Our primary systems provider is US based and registered with the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. Other transfers will be enabled by ensuring that the UK International Data Transfer Addendum is in place (this standard agreement is approved by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and aim to safeguard your rights when your personal data are transferred to any nation which lacks an agreement to uphold UK resident’s data protection rights by default.
You have the right to:
Please note, some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances and we may not be able to fulfil every request and there may be some circumstances where Anxiety UK is allowed to withhold information from you.
Please contact us using the details in “Who we are” to make any request in relation to your rights under data protection law.
If you would like to lodge a complaint with us regarding the processing of your personal data then please contact us using the above details (see “Who we are”).
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can contact the ICO on their helpline 0303 123 1113 or online at www.ico.org.uk. If you should contact the ICO they will normally ask you to contact us first.
We keep this privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated in June 2024.
Anxiety UK is a national registered charity formed in 1970, by Katharine and Harold Fisher, for those affected by anxiety and anxiety disorders.
To read more, please click here.
We do not tolerate rude, abusive, offensive, racist or sexist language. Any contact received with content deemed offensive, abusive, racist, sexist etc. will not be responded to as we operate a zero tolerance policy to abuse of any form. Legal action will be considered/taken if appropriate. For more information click here.
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Anxiety UK, Nunes House, 447 Chester Road, Manchester M16 9HA
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