Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, process and protect your data. Please read the policy carefully to understand how it applies to you. If you would like to receive this policy in a different format please contact [email protected].

Who we are

The Sex Education Forum (SEF) is a charity that works to ensure that all young people can get high-quality Relationships and Sex Education (RSE).

We bring together a range of professionals and organisations to make sure the RSE young people get is right for them and is the best it can be. We do this by training educators and sharing research with teachers, school leaders and politicians.

SEF adheres to data protection legislation, currently the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR). We are registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) (registration No. Z7988835).

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) on [email protected].

Contents

1. Your rights regarding your information

​Current data protection legislation provides the following rights for individuals:

  • The right to be informed.
  • The right of access.
  • The right to rectification.
  • The right to erase.
  • The right to restrict processing.
  • The right to data portability.
  • The right to object.
  • Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.


You can read more about your data rights on the ICO website.

This policy outlines our practices and processes for ensuring these rights are met and maintained.

2. What information we collect

Information you give us
This is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on our website or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. It includes information you provide when you purchase a membership subscription, apply for a job or voluntary post, complete an online form to sign up to our mailing list, book our training or consultancy services, take part in an event, participate in a survey, make a donation or make an enquiry.

We will usually collect basic personal data about you like your name, postal address, telephone or mobile number, email address, financial details and payment card details (if you are purchasing a membership, booking training or supporting us financially).

Our services are designed for professionals. Except in the circumstances of certain projects, we will treat all information given to us as professional data and your relationship with us as professional.

Information we receive from other sources
Certain third party organisations collect data on our behalf, for example Eventbrite (our booking system for training courses), TidyHQ (our membership management system), Vimeo (our video provider for event recordings), Mailchimp (our email communications provider), Zoom (our online meeting/event software) to fulfil our services to you and for our marketing purposes where there is consent.

You should check the privacy policy for third party organisations to understand how they will process your information. Once we have obtained this information from the third party it will be covered by our privacy policy as well as by the originating third party.

From time to time, we may pay for contact details so that we can introduce ourselves to professionals who might be interested in hearing about our work.

When you use our website
Like most websites, we use cookies to collect information. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them see our Cookie Policy. Some of the information we collect via Cookies:

  • Technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet. We only store a subset of your IP address which is used to signify which country you are visiting from and nothing more specific than that, browser type and version, time zone setting.
  • 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.

Other information we store on the website:

Your login information, your username and email address used to sign up on our website. We store your password in an encrypted format which means that they cannot be viewed by us via the website itself or in the website's database.
 

​3. What we do with your information

We use your information we have collected to do things like:

  • Provide information, which you have requested, about relationships and sex education (RSE) sector activities and events, research and public policy analysis, campaigns and ways to support Sex Education Forum (including donations to fund our work).
  • To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information, products and services that you request from us
  • Process donations (including Gift Aid donations) or other payments and verify financial transactions.
  • Process a purchase such as a membership subscription or training course booking.
  • Involve you as an employee or volunteer.
  • Check on your contact preferences from time to time to ensure they are up to date.
  • Record contact we have with you to help us ensure we provide you with the most appropriate communications.
  • Prevent or detect fraud or abuses of our website and enable third parties to carry out technical, logistical or other functions on our behalf.
  • Analyse and report on the number and nature of contacts with the organisation.
  • Carry out research on the demographics, interests and behaviour of our contacts to help us gain a better understanding of them and to enable us to improve our work. This research may be carried out internally or we may ask a third party to do this work for us.
  • Provide you with information that we think may be of interest to you that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about.
  • Notify you about changes to our services.
  • Ensure that content from our websites is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer; to administer our sites and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes as part of our efforts to keep our sites safe and secure.
  • Measure or understand the effectiveness of any marketing we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant marketing to you.

4. Our legal basis for processing your data

We need a lawful basis to collect and use your personal data under data protection law. The law allows for six ways to process personal data (and additional ways for sensitive personal data).
 

You can find out more about these from the Information Commissioner's Office website.
 

We may use the following lawful bases to process your data:

Sex Education Forum's legitimate interests
We may collect and process your data under ‘legitimate Interests’, proportionately and balanced to fulfil our organisational purpose. Our reason for using this basis will be considered either to be in your or our interests, commercial interest or wider societal benefit. We will ensure that we use your data under this basis only in ways that you may expect and that are easily explainable such as marketing, events, training, or if you participate in any of our advisory or working groups and forums.


To fulfil 'contractual' obligations
For example, to provide membership services, fulfil our employment or training commission contracts, including during procurement or other such processes leading up to entering into a full contractual agreement with you.

Where there is a 'legal' obligation
Where we have to do so to comply with a common law or statutory obligation laid down by UK or EU law, for example to comply with statutes set out by regulatory bodies and the Charity Commission.

A person's 'consent'
For example, if you have consented to receiving our communications via email. All our communications will include information on how you may withdraw your consent at any time, and we shall continue to make this obvious and easy for you to do.

Your 'vital interests'
In exceptional circumstances, we may rely on this basis should we need your personal information to protect your life.

Carrying out tasks in the 'public interest'
At times public interest may be the basis for processing data. This will be documented in bespoke project assessments.

Special Category Data

We rely on ‘Special Category Data’, where information is more sensitive and, as such, so we can further protect your fundamental rights and freedoms. For example, anonymised demographic monitoring so we can ensure fair and equitable recruitment processes and for some of our project work.
 

More information about Special Category Data can be found on the ICO website.

Criminal offence data

Collecting and processing this type of data is only relevant to those in employment or voluntary positions within the organisation. It is part of our Safeguarding Policy to process this type of data where necessary. We have a policy on the Recruitment of Ex Offenders.
 

5. How we look after your data


We ensure that there are appropriate technical controls in place to protect your personal details in accordance with current data protection legislation.
 

All payment card transactions are processed online using third party providers (currently Stripe, Eventbrite and PayPal) that are Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant. Internally, we do not have access to, and we do not store, payment card details.
 

The personal information that we collect may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). In this case, we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and in accordance with UK data protection laws.
 

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password enabling you access to parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.
 

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet, including email, is not 100% secure. We cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information at all times and will regularly review who has access to your information, ensuring it is only accessed by the appropriate members of staff, volunteers or third parties.

6. How long we keep your data

We commit to retaining your personal data for no longer than is necessary and in-line with legal minimum and maximum requirements which are set out in our Retention Schedule. As feasible, we will erase your personal data as soon as possible.

Where it is appropriate for us to retain information such as feedback from our events, surveys and research purposes the data we collect will be anonymised. As such, we shall only retain the details and statistics needed to support us in our organisational purpose to continue making improvements that promote and protect the physical and mental health of young people by improving their access to RSE.
 

7. Sharing your information

We are committed to protecting your data and will only share data with those acting as processors carrying out work on our behalf (i.e. the delivery of our programmes, projects, training and other events, or research purposes) or when obliged to do so by law. When we do, we will ensure our delivery partners and third-party processors understand and commit to complying with the agreements they enter with us as to how they handle your information.
 

Third parties may include - Eventbrite, Stripe, Zoom, Mailchimp, TidyHQ, PayPal.
 

When you use these third-party services, we encourage you to read the Privacy Policy of every website you visit.

8. How to access, correct or delete your information

You have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you and the right to ask us to correct or remove information you think is not accurate.

To do this please contact the Data Protection Officer on [email protected] or PO Box 78778, London SW4 4GP.

For more information on your rights please see the ICO Guidance.

9. How to contact us

Changing the way we communicate with you
If you would like us to change the way we contact you, please contact:


Data protection enquiries and queries
For more information on the way we handle data or if you do not think that we have processed your data in accordance with this policy, please contact:

Complaints
For complaints, please follow our policy and procedure here.

10. How to contact the Information Commissioner's Office

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law you may wish to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) via 0303 123 113 or www.ico.org.uk.

11. Privacy Policy updates

This Privacy Policy was last updated in November 2024

It may be necessary for Sex Education Forum to occasionally make alterations to this. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your information we will make this clear on our website or by contacting you directly. Please let us know if you ever have any questions or concerns.