The Wych Elm has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to your privacy. The following discloses our information-gathering and dissemination practices for this web site. If you have any questions or queries regarding this statement, please contact the person named at the end of this statement.
Information we automatically collect
As part of the on-going process of improving our web site, its content and the service we provide to our clients, we may record information about your computer. The information collected is limited to details of the web browser used, the operating system version, current screen resolution and colour depth, your domain name and the domain from which you are making your request. Unless you are the sole owner and user of the domain, we would not be able to identify you personally. This means your session will be logged, but who you are remains anonymous to us.
We use the information collected in this way to produce aggregate reports on visitor demographics and traffic patterns solely for our own use. This allows us to improve and tailor the content and design of the site.
Information you provide
On several pages such as Contact Us and Newsletter registration, you may be asked to provide us with a variety of details such as your name, email addresses, etc. We do not gather this or any other more personal information without your knowledge and active permission and participation.
Personal information that has been volunteered to us is not made available to any third parties or combined with data from external agencies.
Where you give your consent, we may make use of the information to contact you via email or postal mail (e.g. to send newsletters, brochures, etc.).
Changes and deletions
Should you wish to have your information removed from any of our mailing lists or believe the information we have is incorrect, please contact the person named at the end of this policy.
External links
This site may contain links to other web sites and The Wych Elm is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such sites.
Security of information
We recognise the need to ensure that information gathered through our web site remains secure and our site has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control.
Access to information volunteered by visitors to our web site is limited only to members and employees. Access to information gathered automatically is limited only to members and employees, our Internet Service Provider and our Visitor Statistics provider.
Any member or employee who violates our privacy and/or security policies may be subject to appropriate action, including possible civil and/or criminal prosecution.
Cookies
- In common with most websites, The Wych Elm uses cookies to capture certain information about our site’s use:
- We use analytic cookies to understand how our site is being used. This measures the number of visitors and tells us how they navigate the site.
We offer sharing tools (Facebook,Twitter etc) – If you use these the sharing tools those sites set a variety of cookies.
We seek to maintain compliance with the ICO regulations in force from 26-May 2012. It is widely accepted that the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC’s) clear and concise guidance on cookie regulations, though not constituting legal advice, provides the best guidance in lieu of any official documentation from ICO which is not yet available. To that end we categorise cookie use as follows:
1. Strictly necessary: to fit this category, the cookie must be “related to a service provided on the website that has been explicitly requested by the user”. Obvious cases include shopping cart cookies and access to protected areas. We also include cookies which remember previously entered text so it is not lost if the page refreshes in this category. This is inline with ICC suggestion.
2. Performance based: the ICC guidelines includes analytics, advertising and Pay Per Click cookies in this category – provided they only store anonymous data and cannot therefore be used for behavioural targeting of ads.
3. Functionality based: these include cookies that remember user choices so that they have a more personalised experience. This may include detecting if the user has already seen a popup so that it isn’t shown again, submitting comments and remembering colours, text size, etc.
4. Targeting/ advertising based: primarily these are the cookies that the ICO regulations were originally aimed at. This is aimed at cookies such as those which serve up targeted ads. The ICC guidance on these cookies, advises website owners to get clear, explicit consent from users if a site employs such technology. We do not use any cookies of this type.
We do not ask user consent for category one, two and three cookies on our websites in accordance with ICC guidance (PDF file) that no opt-in is required for these types of cookies by the user. We do not use any category four cookies, and would always ask for permission if we did. If you have further concerns or questions over our cookie usage, then we welcome and encourage you to get in touch. For general information about cookies and how to disable them, please visit www.allaboutcookies.org. For information on how to opt out of Google Analytics cookies: Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser Add-On.
Contact us
If you have any questions about this privacy statement, the practices of this site, or your own dealings with this Web site, please contact:
Charlotte Salaman
Elm Road,
Kingston-Upon-Thames,
Surrey,
KT2 6HTT
Tel: 0208 546 3271