Privacy Policy for Food in Community CIC

Last Updated: 14 July 2025

Data Food in Community collect about you

You provide this data in a variety of ways including when you:

• Contact us
• Register with us to become a volunteer or apply for a paid role
• Sign up to receive emails from us
• Donate to us directly or via a third party platform
• Take part in our events
• Express interest in providing or receiving food
• Enter into an agreement with us
• Are photographed, videoed or provide quotes
• Where you follow or interact with us on our social media platforms

We may also collect personal information about you from service providers, the press, search engines, social media (e.g. LinkedIn), and reputable public data sources (e.g. Companies House).

Types of data we collect about you

Personal Data we collect about you:

• First name and last name
• Postal address
• Email address
• Mobile and home phone number
• Date of birth
• Where you volunteer for us or apply for a job with us, information necessary for us to process these applications and assess your suitability, may include your next of kin details, experience, and any unspent criminal convictions
• Bank account details
• Data from your visit to our website, such as what pages you visited and how long you visited it for, your IP address and browser type you use, through the use of cookies

Use of Cookies

‘Cookies’ are small files that are automatically placed on your computer, storing an anonymous unique identifier for each website visitor.

Food in Community uses tracking cookies to be able to understand how people navigate our website and social media channels. We use this understanding to be able to improve the user journey of visitors to our website. These include cookies from third parties such as Google and Facebook.

The cookies are anonymous, and we do not use cookies to identify you personally.

You can disable cookies in your web browser settings, or disallow cookies for specific websites.

Special category data

Special category data is considered more sensitive than other data. It covers things such as your health, ethnicity, religion, political beliefs and sexual orientation. We only collect this type of information if there is a clear reason to do so, for example asking for health information where you are a volunteer or member of staff, so that we can make any reasonable adjustments.

How do we use your personal data

Food in Community uses the collected data for the following purposes:

• Relationship management: to keep a record of our interactions with you to better manage our relationship
• Market research on our services: contacting you by email, telephone, or by other electronic means in line with your preferences
• Carrying out our services: use your contact details to carry out our obligations under any business arrangement entered into between the organisation you work for and us
• Marketing communications: to provide information about our activities, campaigns, fundraising appeals, volunteering or events. This will usually be where you have provided your consent, unless we are able to rely on our Legitimate Interest for contacting you (see below on Lawful Basis for Processing).
• Donations: to process donations we may receive from you
• Fundraising: to fundraise in a manner that you would reasonably expect
• Email tracking: When you receive an email from us, we may receive certain information about how you interact with that email. The information we collect includes the number of times you have opened the email; if you have clicked links in the email; whether you have unsubscribed or marked the email as spam; whether the email has bounced; whether you have shared the information on social media, or forwarded it to friends. We use this information to assess how successful our email campaigns are; to identify what you are interested in and target further marketing campaigns more accurately; to reduce the frequency with which we contact you if appropriate; and to update our records of your marketing consent where you have asked to unsubscribe
• Record keeping: including enquiries, feedback or complaints
• Accidents: to record details of any accidents you might have on our premises as part of our health and safety obligations
• To process payments: where you work for one of our suppliers, to liaise with you in order to facilitate payment for services you have invoiced us for
• Recruitment: processing your job or volunteer application in order to evaluate your suitability and to respond to you
• Events: making the necessary transport and event arrangements (including catering)
• Photos and case studies: where you have consented, using your image or other types of Personal Data in our marketing materials and campaigns, and similar publications such as annual reports and reports to funders
• Surveys: to invite you to participate in surveys on a voluntary basis
• Service improvement: to gather analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our service
• Usage monitoring: to monitor the usage of our service
• Troubleshooting: to detect, prevent and address technical issues

Legal basis for processing personal data under GDPR

Food in Community’s legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described in this privacy notice depends on the Personal Data we collect and the specific context in which we collect it.

Food in Community may process your Personal Data because:

• We need to perform a contract with you
• You have given us consent to do so (e.g. for the use of your image in photos, for sending you our newsletters)
• The processing is in our legitimate interests and it’s not overridden by your rights. This includes:
  • Recruiting for staff and volunteers
  • If you are a volunteer, to provide you with service updates in relation to your role or which we think you might be interested in
  • Where you are one of our donors, to send you operational or marketing communications in relation to your service and to promote our aims and ideals
  • To arrange and organise events
• We have a legal obligation (e.g. for health and safety reasons if you are a member of staff or a volunteer, or to process payment for invoices where you work for one of our suppliers)

Retention of data

Food in Community will retain your Personal Data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice. We will retain and use your Personal Data to the extent necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, if we are required to retain your data to comply with applicable laws), resolve disputes, and enforce our legal agreements and policies. We have a retention policy that sets out the different retention periods based on the data type and how it is used, and we have processes in place to ensure these are reviewed and adhered to.

Food in Community will also retain Usage Data for internal analysis purposes. Usage Data is generally retained for a shorter period of time, approximately 50 months, except, when this data is used to strengthen the security or to improve the functionality of our Service, or we are legally obligated to retain this data for longer time periods

Personal data that no longer serves a purpose is securely disposed of, or made anonymous so that you are no longer identifiable from it.

Transfer of data outside the UK

Your Personal Data is normally kept within the UK, however on certain occasions, may be transferred to and maintained on computers located outside of the UK and the EEA where the data protection laws may differ.

Food in Community will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy notice and no transfer of your Personal Data will take place to an organisation or a country unless there are adequate controls in place including the security of your data and other personal information.

All information supplied on our internet based service is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.

Disclosure of data

We do not sell or trade your personal date to outside third parties. Your personal data however may be shared in the following circumstances:

• To third parties and suppliers to provide the services you have requested.
• To our funders and donors, where you have provided consent for your photo or case study to be used in marketing materials
• To third parties that process your data per our specific instructions, otherwise known as Data Processors, such as third party event organisers who organise events on our behalf
• To employment references, by consent for job applications
• To third parties where legally required to, for example to HMRC for any tax investigations, or to law enforcement agencies for the detection and prevention of crime

Security of data

The security of your data is important to us, but remember that no method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure. While we strive to use our best efforts and commercially acceptable means to protect your Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.

Your rights

You have the following rights in relation to the Personal Data Food in Community holds:

• The right to be informed: you have the right to be informed about how we collect and use your Personal Data. In particular we will be fully transparent about this in any policies and communications we provide you that involves your Personal Data
• The right to access: you have the right to request a copy of any of the Personal Data that we hold on you
• The right to rectification: we will ensure that all Personal Data we hold on you is accurate and up to date, and you have a right to have any inaccuracies rectified
• The right to erasure: also known as the “right to be forgotten” allows you to request that Personal Data we hold on you is erased
• The right to restrict processing: you have the right to request the restriction or suppression of your Personal Data if there is disagreement about its accuracy
• The right to object: you have the right to object to the processing of your Personal Data, where this is based on legitimate interest, or if it’s being used for direct marketing, or if we are using it for research purposes
• The right to data portability: this allows you to obtain and reuse your Personal Data for your own purpose across different services, for example to request that we transmit your data directly to another controller in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format

Please be aware that we may ask you to verify your identity before responding to such requests. We will respond fully to your request within one month of receipt, unless we require further clarification, in which case we will notify you of this without undue delay.

Please note that you are always able to easily opt-out of any of our marketing communications at any time by clicking on or typing “unsubscribe” in the subject line of emails or replying with “unsubscribe” to other communications.

For further information about your rights, please consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office.

How to exercise your rights

You can make a request to exercise any of your rights by emailing: Food in Community

If you feel we have not dealt with your request satisfactorily, you can also contact or lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner, telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Social Media

The data we are given access to by social media services will vary but will always be in line with the Terms of that particular service. We will not be able to access your private messages or photos and it will include only what you specifically send to us.

Food in Community’s website may use social sharing buttons which help share web content directly from web pages to the social media platform in question. Users are advised before using such social sharing buttons that they do so at their own discretion and note that the social media platform may track and save your request to share a web page respectively through your social media platform account.

Analytics

We may use third-party Service Providers to monitor and analyse the use of our Service.

External links

Our offer may contain links to other sites that are not operated by us.

Food in Community tries to include quality, safe and relevant external links, users are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website or on our social media channels.

Food in Community cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite our best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk and we cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Changes to this privacy notice

We may update our privacy notice from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new privacy notice, with the “effective date” at the top, on this page.

You are advised to review this privacy notice periodically for any changes.

Food in Community reserves the right to amend this privacy notice. The most up to date version will always be available on our website.

Definitions

Personal Data

Personal Data means data about a living individual who can be identified from those data (or from those and other information either in our possession or likely to come into our possession). Non-personal data means data that is in no way personally identifiable.

Usage Data

Usage Data is data collected automatically either generated by the use of the Service or from the Service infrastructure itself (for example, the duration of a page visit).

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device (computer or mobile device).

Data Controller

Data Controller means the natural or legal person who (either alone or jointly or in common with other persons) determines the purposes for which and the manner in which any personal information are, or are to be, processed.

For the purpose of this privacy notice, we are a Data Controller of your Personal Data.

Data Processors

Data Processor means any natural or legal person who processes the data on behalf of the Data Controller.

We may use the services of various Data Processors in order to process your data more effectively.

Data Subject

Data Subject is any living individual who provides us with Personal Data.

GDPR

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, and is the EU law regulating the data protection and privacy of individuals in the European Union and European Economic Area