Privacy Statement

Privacy Policy 

Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) relies on the generosity and support of people like you to be able to enable us to continue to save lives and ensure the best patient outcomes.  As a values-led charity, we strive to generate trust in everyone we engage with, and transparency is at the core of what we do. We believe a person’s data is a footprint of that person and we aim to apply the same level of care and respect to handling that data as we would a patient. We are committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about what we do with it, and not do anything with your information that you wouldn’t reasonably expect. 

As you browse our website or social media channels, and whenever you communicate with us, we collect information. This helps us to deepen our relationship with you and our other supporters and helps us to understand, when it comes to our requests for support and information, what works and what doesn’t.  The better we can understand our supporters and what works, the more efficiently our funds will be raised for our life-saving work. 

This privacy policy applies to all personal information we collect or process about you. 

What is personal information? 

‘personal information’ is any information, or a combination of pieces of information, that could reasonably allow you to be identified. There is no prescriptive list of things that constitute personal information, but examples could include your name, date of birth, address, email address, IP address, CCTV images or photographs. 

Special category data 

Special category data is personal information that needs more protection because it is sensitive. UK data protection laws defines “special category data” as personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric data, or data concerning an individual’s health, sex-life or sexual orientation. We set out more detail on our use of special category data below. 

Criminal Offence data 

This is personal information relating to criminal convictions and offences (including allegations of the same) which is also subject to extra safeguards. We do not routinely collect criminal offence data. 

Please read this policy carefully, along with any other document referenced in this policy, to understand how we collect, use and store your personal information and your rights in relation to this. 

If you have any questions, please contact our data protections lead on 01634 471900 or dataprotection@aakss.org.uk 

Changes to this Privacy Policy 

The policy may change from time to time. Please visit this website section periodically to keep up to date with the changes in our policy. Any significant changes will be notified to you. This policy was last update in March 2023. 

 

Who we are 

KSS is comprised of both a charity and a trading company. In this policy, whenever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’, it refers to both our charity and our trading company. 

Our trading company, Air Ambulance Promotions Ltd, is wholly owned and controlled by KSS.  Any information we collected may be used by both entities. Our trading company exists to raise valuable funds through trading, such as the sale of our merchandise.  We also run our hugely popular raffles and lotteries through our trading company. 

Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex is a Charitable Company, registered in England and Wales with the Charity Commission (No. 1021367) and Companies House (No 2803242) Our trading company, Air Ambulance Promotions Limited, is a wholly owned subsidiary, registered in England and Wales with Companies House (No 02674568). KSS is the data controller for your personal information. For trading activities undertaken by AAPL, both KSS and AAPL are joint controllers for your personal information. 

Why we collect information 

We deliver outstanding specialist treatment, care and support to give our patients the very best possible outcome, relying on the incredibly generous support of local communities to be able to continue our life-saving work. This support relies on us having effective communication and fundraising activities. By understanding more about how our supporters engage with us, we can continue to improve. 

In order to provide our critical care to you, we need to gather information such as your personal details, details of any illness and injuries and what treatment you have received. To ensure you receive the best care possible, this information will be shared seamlessly with the South East Coast Ambulance Service and the NHS hospital receiving you. 

We believe in constantly reviewing and improving our practices and we will use information we gather through the delivery of our service to audit and evaluate our service, to ensure we are working to the best possible practices and participate in research projects to help improve understanding of pre-hospital care and ensure that, where it exists, our practices are led by science. 

None of this is possible without our supporters. 

As a supporter, we can share key messages generically through advertising and social media, but by communicating with you directly, we are able to keep you up to date with our activities, and any key appeals as they happen.   

We never do anything without carefully considering how much it costs. Collecting information about you and what grabs your attention allows us to work out the most efficient way to do things to ensure we are using our precious funds effectively and can spend even more on saving lives and ensuring the best patient outcomes. 

 

When and how we collect your personal data 

There are many instances in which we may collect information about you. We collect information about you: 

When you interact with us 

  • If you are a patient, you may be asked to provide our Helicopter Emergency Services (HEMS) operational team with personal information. 
  • If you volunteer or apply for a job or volunteering role with us. 
  • If you make a donation, buy something from our online shop, or make a pledge to leave us something in your will. 
  • If you participate in one of our fundraising events or organise an event fundraising in support of us. 
  • If you sign up to join our lotteries or raffles 
  • If you subscribe to our “mission update” newsletters 
  • When you visit our website or social media pages via tools such as cookies and online identifiers, including if you make comments on our pages. 
  • If you become an Ambassador or Young Ambassador (including parent/guardian details). 
  • If you contact us or become involved with us in any other way other than stated above. 

When you interact with third parties 

There are certain instances when we will collect personal information from you indirectly. These include but are not limited to: 

  • When you call 999 requesting help, and the call prompts our Dispatch Team to respond. 
  • If you sign up to an event organised by a third party and have told them that you would like to hear from us (e.g., London Marathon) 
  • If you use a third-party site in order to raise funds e.g., JustGiving or Virgin Money Giving 
  • if you are a researcher and your information is shared with us by the principal investigator or institution. 

You should check any privacy policy provided to you where you give your data to a third party. 

Information from other sources 

Social Media 

Communication, engagement and actions taken through external social media platforms that we participate on are subject to the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policies held with each social media platform respectively.  

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those services, for example when you publicly tag us in an event photo. 

Information available publicly  

We may use desktop research, profiling and screening techniques to analyse your personal information to create a profile of your interests and preferences so that we can contact you with information relevant to you, to be prepared when we meet you, or to help us find others like you who might like to show their support. We may include information found in places such as Companies House, LinkedIn and information that has been published in articles/newspapers. Please see “Building profiles of supporters and potential supporters” to find out more. We do not undertake this activity on all of our supporters; it takes place on a limited basis which depends upon the level of your donations and engagement. We may also carry out research using publicly available information to identify individuals who may have an affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch

Automated technologies or interactions 

If you enter details onto one of our online forms, and you don’t send or submit the form, we will automatically contact you via email to see if we can help with any problems you may be experiencing with the form or our website. 

Similarly, if you receive an email, open it, don’t open it, select a link or browse our website, we collect this information so we can see which stories are popular and which aren’t.  This helps us do better with the content we provide in the future. 

When we’re seeing what people do online like this, we’re using cookies. We use two categories of cookies; functional cookies that enable our website and the services it offers to operate properly and non-essential cookies.  

Functional cookies are automatically dropped when you visit our website because the website cannot function without them. 

Non-essential cookies are those that facilitate performance monitoring, tracking and marketing, and enhanced functionality (e.g., personalisation and remembering items you may have left in your shop basket). These cookies are not essential to the functionality of our website and therefore we need your consent to deploy them. Accepting non-essential cookies from us helps us to improve our content and deliver what our supporters want to see. You can choose to reject non-essential cookies by following the “Cookies Settings” option in our cookie banner, but you can also set your browser to notify you when you receive one, then choose to decline it.  

Please note that if you disable or refuse all cookies then some parts of our websites may become inaccessible or not function properly. 

Please read our Cookies Policy for more information.  

Change of address 

Where possible we use publicly available sources to keep your records up to date; for example, we use the Royal Mail’s National Change of Address Database (NCOA). This ensures we are using our charitable resources effectively. If you move house, please let us know directly, or sign up for the National Change of Address Database. We will only use this information if you have checked the box when signing up to the Database to say third parties can see your updated information. 

Bereavements 

We regularly check for deceased and gone away records to manage our supporter relationships and ensure data remains accurate, up to date and compliant. 

An external agency, Mortascreen, manages our data cleaning activity, and to screen for deceased persons. The agency matches individuals against certain source lists deemed the most reliable and these are updated regularly.  

When administering legacies, generally, we rely upon information provided to us by Executors/Administrators appointed by their Will and, where appropriate, we may use the government’s probate search to obtain a copy of the Will. We may also be informed by third parties of the death of supporters, particularly if we are a named beneficiary in the Will. 

What information we collect 

The information we may collect from these interactions may include but is not limited to any of the following: 

  • Your name, address, telephone number, mobile number and email address, along with your preference as to how we should contact you in the future. 
  • We may collect your year of birth or date of birth in order to verify you are an adult, or to establish you are able to participate in our lotteries and raffles. 
  • Financial and credit/debit card information which you give to us, including your gift aid status (we do not store any credit/debit card information). 
  • Information you enter onto our website, including information to take part in challenge events or to volunteer with us (such as your contact information and date of birth). When you enter a challenge competition, you may be asked by the organisers to complete information on your next of kin and medical history, but this information is not passed on to KSS. 
  • Records of your donation history, correspondence and other activities taken with us. 
  • Images, photographs or video if you volunteer or take part in an event with us. 
  • Details of your visit to our websites, including technical information such as the IP address you use to access the website, your device, browser type and version. 

We might also obtain personal data about individuals who may be interested in giving major gifts to organisations like ours (for example name and contact information). In these limited cases only, in addition to information you give to us directly, we may also collection information about you from publicly available sources such as your work or interests, any other details which you give to us including your reasons for supporting us. 

Body Worn Cameras 

KSS has equipped its medical crew members with body-worn video cameras so that we can continue to enhance the standard of healthcare we offer. Each incident is different, but on the scene, time is critical and the recording of our interventions with you enables the attending doctor or paramedic to review the case in detail with their managing consultant to review all aspects of the incident and aid their ongoing training. The footage is viewed and stored on a secure computer at our operational base. This computer is not connected to any other network, and the room has restricted access. 

The footage is not shared more widely or used for any other purpose. The only exception to sharing would be if KSS have received notification that a court order is being obtained from a higher authority, usually as part of a criminal investigation, where we will retain the footage until the court order has been received, though these cases are rare. Otherwise, the footage automatically deletes after seven days.  The footage does not form part of your clinical record with us. 

The cameras can be seen on the crew’s uniform, and you can request not to be filmed, in which case, we will fully honour that request. Similarly, if you would like us to delete this footage, you can contact us at dataprotection@aakss.org.uk  

Special category data 

If you are one of our patients, we will hold a medical record of the treatment you received from us, including your name, date of birth and contact details, details of injury or illness and treatment received, along with the hospital you were taken to. These records are then updated at a later date to ensure we have recorded outcome of your treatment, using information provided to us by the receiving hospital. This information is held on separate software and is only accessible by our medical team. 

We will only collect this type of information about our patients to the extent that there is a clear reason for us to do so, for example asking for information for the purpose of providing appropriate facilities or support. 

 

If you are invited to participate in an event, we may collect limited information about your health such as accessibility or dietary requirements, for Health and Safety requirements and to help us ensure your participation is appositive experience. 

As part of our commitment to being a more diverse and inclusive organisation and to ensure we treat people fairly, we may collect information about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, political opinions, sexual orientation or data concerning health and disabilities when you apply for a job with us. This information will only be used for monitoring the diversity of our applicants and to ensure that processes are being fairly applied and for no other purpose.  

We may collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the job or volunteer role and where we are legally able to do so. 

If you have been asked to participate in a diversity monitoring survey, or research project and you provide your explicit consent for us to do so, the data will only be used for the stated purpose and kept no longer than is necessary for that purpose. The resulting research paper will only contain anonymised data but we will retain the source data for a prescribed retention period which is determined by the project. You can withdraw your consent to us keeping this data at any time. Where possible we will collect information for these purposes on an anonymous basis so that you cannot be identified, in which case consent will not be required. 

What we use your information for  

We use personal data for a number of different processing activities which could include any of the following, depending on your relationship with us: 

Operational purposes 

  • The provision of our life saving service and after-care services. 
  • Managing and improving our life saving service through audit and evaluation. 
  • Participating in research that will further improve our services and the wider pre-hospital care community. A list of the current projects we are involved in can be found here. 
  • Video badges are used for the purpose of prevention of crime and for individual training purposes. 
  • Car dashcams are used for the prevention of crime and to encourage safe driving practices. 
  • If you visit either of our bases at Redhill or Rochester, CCTV is widely used for the detection and prevention of crime. 

Administration 

  • Providing you with the goods or services you have requested. 
  • Administering your donation, including processing Gift Aid. For larger donations, this may include due diligence and ethical screening. 
  • To carry out fraud prevention and money laundering checks. 
  • Keeping a record of your relationship with us so that we ensure you receive information and communications from us that are relevant to that relationship. 
  • Responding to or fulfilling any requests, complaints or queries you make to us using traditional methods and via social media platforms. 
  • Managing your communication preferences, including marketing preferences 
  • Understanding how we can improve our services, products or information. 

Direct Marketing 

  • Asking for financial and non-financial support 
  • Sending you tailored communications and displaying relevant adverts across various websites and apps which we think will be of interest to you. 
  • Sending you marketing materials which may include information about fundraising, campaigning and goods that are available for you to purchase. 
  • Inviting you to and managing our events and to invite you to take part in our advocacy work or participate in consultations to help us improve the services we provide. 
  • Analysing our database for statistical purposes, and to better communicate with you about thinks we think will be of interest. Note that this is on a generic rather than an individual level to ensure that our communications are cost effective. 

 

Governance and Legal 

  • Meeting our obligations to regulators or government departments or assisting the police or any other regulatory or government authorities investigating suspected illegal activities. Examples of our regulators include HMRC, the Gambling Commission and CQC. 
  • To establish, defend or enforce legal claims. 

Building profiles of supporters and potential supporters 

We use profiling to help us understand our supporters better. This is so we can send you information that you are interested in and is relevant to you and predict how you might be able to help us in the future. This ensures we don’t send marketing to vulnerable individuals, and means we raise more funds, sooner, and more cost-effectively than we otherwise would.

Like many charities, KSS undertakes research and screening techniques to engage with suitable high value donors. We do that by reviewing publicly available information to create a profile of your interests, preferences and your ability to support us, including the amount or level of potential donations or legacies you may be able to give. That research may be undertaken for both existing and prospective high value donors. We may also carry out research using publicly available information to identify individuals who may have an affinity to our cause but with whom we are not already in touch.

Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you, for example addresses for house price data, listed Directorships, social media posts, newspaper articles or typical earnings in a given industry. We may use additional information such as geographical information for measures of affluence where available. We only use reputable sources, where someone would expect their information may be read by the public. Examples of our sources include Companies House, Mosaic (an Experian tool), Insight Hub by woodfortrees, Zoopla, search engines and your donation history. We avoid any data that we believe has not been lawfully or ethically obtained, and we do not use information sources which have not been made public. Collating this publicly available information helps us better understand your motivations and preferences enabling us to deliver a more targeted and relevant donor experience, as well as raising more funds sooner and more cost-efficiently. 

We might also ask our existing supporters, volunteers or trustees whether they would be prepared to open their networks up to us, and if we discover that someone in our network knows a potential donor that we have identified, we might ask them to facilitate an introduction. Here, we would advise the individual facilitating the introduction about our data responsibilities and ask them to ensure that the potential supporter in question is happy for an introduction to take place. Following the introduction, we would direct the potential supporter to this privacy notice and confirm their marketing and communication preferences. 

Our legal basis for processing data 

The law requires us to only process data where we have a valid legal basis for doing so. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances: 

Vital interests 

This is where the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life. We rely on vital interests when we dispatch our crew by air or road and provide critical care to you, or when sharing your data with the receiving hospital to ensure your treatment continues safely.  

Contract 

This is where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract we have with you. We rely on contract as a legal basis in situations such as when you sign up as a volunteer, apply for a job with us or when we process your donation or event entry. 

Consent 

This is where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your information in a certain way.  We rely on this for sending you marketing emails, some types of calls, or if you have agreed to let us share your experience as a patient with us or allow us to use an individual photograph of you. 

Legal obligation 

This is where processing of your data is required for us to comply with a legal obligation. We rely on this for things like providing information to the HMRC for tax purposes, to police forces for the prevention or detection of crime or referring a case to the safeguarding board where the criteria has been met. 

Public task 

This is where processing of your data is required for us to carry out a task in the public interest. We rely on this for carrying out our clinical audit and local service evaluations. 

Legitimate interests 

This is where it is in our legitimate interests to process your data and our use of that information does not unfairly impact on your rights and freedoms. Our legitimate interests include the following summaries: 

When processing special categories of personal data, we rely on the following separate conditions for processing: 

Explicit consent 

This is where you have given your explicit consent to us for the processing of your data for a specific purpose.  We rely on this when you share your patient journey with us for marketing purposes and for certain research projects. 

Vital interests 

This is where processing of your information is necessary to protect the life of the data subject or of another natural person where the data subject is physically or legally incapable of giving consent. We rely on this when treating our patients in emergency situations. 

Legal claims and judicial acts 

This is where processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity. We may rely on this for specific court proceedings or obtaining relevant legal advice. 

Health or Social Care 

This is where processing is necessary for the purposes of preventative or occupational medicine, for the assessment of the working capacity of the employee, medical diagnosis, the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems and services. We rely on this for internal management processes including clinical audit and local service evaluations. 

Archiving, research and statistics 

This is where processing is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes. We rely on this for carefully identified research projects. 

  1. Administration of KSSIn order to deliver against our charitable purposes of saving lives and improving patient outcomes, we need to undertake certain processing activities. Some of these will be to govern KSS and AAPL and some will be for operational administration reasons. Specific examples of processing activities where we rely on legitimate interests include:
  • Recording your communication and marketing preferences and maintaining suppression files so we don’t contact you when you ask us not to. 
  • Keeping a record of who our supporters are, your relationship with us, and your order and donation history 
  • Reviewing out database of supporters across the organisation for historical, scientific and statistical purposes 
  • Operational administration such as: 
  • Keeping employee and volunteer records and monitoring 
  • Health and safety 
  • Management and planning purposes 
  • Thanking you for your support 
  • Administering your donation by sending your bank details to our bank 
  • Financial management and controls such as: 
  • Processing supplier invoices 
  • Taking steps to prevent fraud, knowing our donors and taking steps to ensure there is no misuse of services or money laundering. 
  • Enforcing legal claims. 
  1. To contact you by post and phone.

Being able to contact you is vital to the way we operate. We want to keep in touch with you and, along with telling you how your support is helping and what we have achieved together, we also want to keep you up to date with the numerous activities you can get involved with. We believe it is in our legitimate interest to send you such materials by post and to speak to you by phone, unless you have told us you would prefer us not to. Specific examples include: 

  • Asking for financial or non-financial support 
  • Inviting you to take part in an event or campaign 
  • Sending you details of products you can buy from our online shop  
  • Providing you information on similar products you may purchase from our online shop, if you have previously purchased from us, and have not opted out of receiving such information. 
  1. Understanding our supporters

It is important that we understand our supporters. If we don’t understand you, then we cannot communicate with you in a meaningful way, and in a way which will be engaging and interesting. This also helps us safeguard your donations and ensure value for money across our communication activities. In order to understand ou supporters, we undertake a number of processing activities including analysis, research, profiling and customising you experience as detailed in this policy. Specific examples of processing activities under this legitimate interest we undertake to understand our supporters include: 

  • Analysing our database and seeing what has worked and what hasn’t worked. This helps us develop our products and services, and helps inform our marketing strategy so we only send you information that we think will be of interest to you, and so that we understand the effectiveness of the marketing we serve you. 
  • Researching your interests – we want to utilise your donations in the most cost-effective way and so we don’t send blanket messages to the entirety of our database. Rather, we deliver content that we think will be relevant to you and personalised when appropriate. 
  • In limited circumstances, analysing the personal information we collect about you and using the publicly available information to better understand your interests, preferences and level of potential donations so that we can contact you more effectively. 
  • Customising your experience and displaying more relevant information (including adverts) to you. 
  1. Research

KSS participates in research to improve the medical support that we can offer at the scene and during transportation to hospital. Where possible, information used will be anonymised, but where this is not possible, we will use legitimate interests or, in some cases, public task as the lawful basis to process.  

Patient data is also protected by the common law duty of confidentiality, which means we will also ensure an appropriate lawful basis will be found under this common law in addition to the requirements of the UK GDPR.  

Where we process special category personal data, we will only do so with one of the additional lawful conditions for processing that type of data, for example with your explicit consent.  

  

Who do we share your data with. 

We do not sell or share your personal details with third parties so they can market to you. The types of third parties we engage with are: 

Service providers/suppliers 

As with other organisations, we do not undertake all of our processing activities ourselves and we appoint suppliers to help us out. In these cases, we ensure we have a contract with the supplier and as part of that agreement the supplier agrees to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We only permit suppliers to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. 

The main classes of recipients we disclose your data to and the reasons are listed below:
Process/Activity Class of recipient Location of recipient Reason
Financial actions Banks
HMRC
UK To process your direct debits and other donations.
To process your Gift Aid
Fundraising Appeals Third party fundraising company UK Make calls to our supporters on the latest appeals
To send you postal mailings
Lottery player acquisition Lottery Company UK Provide canvassing service for new lottery players
Data Analysis Data analysis UK To use our extensive database in the most efficient way possible.
Cloud hosting/ IT services IT service providers UK/EEC Provision of cloud storage and software
Other support Legal/ Auditors/ insurers UK Provision of the relevant services

NHS Trusts and South East Coast Ambulance Service 

In order to ensure our patients receive the best possible care, and their treatment is seamless from the moment we attend to the continuation of care at a receiving hospital, we have data sharing agreements in place with the ambulance service and all receiving hospitals that allows transfer of patients records to each of the medical teams caring directly for you.  

International Transfers 

In most cases we do not transfer your personal data outside of the UK or the European Economic Area (EEA). However, there may be some cases, such as with the use of a particular type of software, where your data may be shared temporarily outside of these regions, for example with the US.  

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK or EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards are in place: 

  • the country has been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the UK or European Commission; 
  • a specific contract which is approved by the UK or European Commission and gives personal data the same protection it has in the UK/EEA, has been entered into with the supplier (referred to as standard contractual clauses). 

Online advertising/Social Media 

Where you have given us consent to contact you electronically with direct marketing, we may use this to connect with you on Facebook. We send a list of “hashed” email addresses to Facebook (hashing is a security measure whereby the information is turned into a code). Facebook then matches these hashed email addresses to existing users and creates a group of people with similar characteristics. Our advertising is then presented to you. We use this method for our fundraising campaigns. The hashed data that is shared with Facebook is deleted after a short period of time and is not used for any other purpose. 

We may advertise to people signed up on an online platform (such as Facebook or Google) based on what the platform knows about them e.g., we may ask Facebook to show our KSS Ride advert to people interested in horses living in the Kent, Surrey or Sussex area. We keep a tally on the number of people that clicked through to the page so we understand whether our advertising is effective. We never target individuals based on special category data, such as health data. 

 

Where required 

In other cases we will not disclose any of your personal data except in accordance with this policy, or when we have your permission, or under special circumstances, such as when we believe in good faith that the law requires it or to protect the rights, property and safety of KSS, or others. This includes disclosing your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors. 

How we keep your data safe 

We have appropriate physical, technical and managerial controls in place to protect your personal details; for example, our online forms are always encrypted, and our network is protected and routinely monitored. Within our offices, your information is only accessed by those employees who have a business need to access it and who are trained in handling personal data securely.  

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. Whilst we hope it will never happen, we have procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breaches and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are required to do so. 

When we use external companies to collect or process personal data on our behalf, we undertake due diligence on these companies before we work with them and put a contract in place that sets out our expectations and requirements, including keeping and using your data securely. 

Our website may, from time to time, contain links to third party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites will have their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check those policies before you submit any personal data to those websites. 

Despite all of our precautions, however, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. So, whilst we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information which you disclose to us and therefore we advise you to be mindful of this when disclosing personal data. 

Persons at risk 

We place great importance on the safety of persons at risk. On occasion, if we deem it to be necessary, we may record on our database that a supporter or service user is vulnerable or at risk. We do this to ensure we are adequately protecting and supporting them in their engagement with us or complying with requirements under charity law and the Code of Fundraising Practice to ensure that we do not fundraise from them. 

Children’s personal information 

We are committed to protecting the privacy of young people and recognise there are a number of ways that children may engage with us, either through our Young Ambassador programme or through being a beneficiary of the charity. 

How long we keep your information 

Whatever your relationship with us, we will only store your information for a specified amount of time as set out in our internal data retention policy. Our retention policy is based on satisfying our legal, accounting and/or reporting requirements. I 

In order to determine how long we keep your data we look at the type of data and the reason we have collected and processed it. We look at whether that reason is ongoing and whether you are an active supporter or not. We consider you to be an active supporter if you have opened our mailings and have interacted with us in some way such as if you have corresponded with us, interacted with an electronic mailing we have sent you, and/or financially supported us at any time within the preceding three years. 

We also consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, whether we can achieve our purpose for processing through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. 

Patient records are retained in line with the NHS records management code of practice

Keeping your information up to date 

We really appreciate it if you let us know if your contact details, or circumstances change. To make changes to the information we hold about you, please contact us on 01634 471900 or hello@aakss.org.uk  

Where possible, we use publicly available sources to keep your records up to date; for example, the Royal Mail’s Nationals Change of Address database. 

How to change the way we contact you 

You can ask adjust your marketing preferences at any time by contacting us or by following the opt-out links on any marketing message sent to you. If you change your mind or want to hear from us again in the future, you can opt back in at any time by contacting us or otherwise engaging with our content. 

You can also now register your details with the Fundraising Preference Service if you want to tell us through the Fundraising Regulator that you would prefer us not to contact you with information on our fundraising, campaigns and events by post.  If you want to stop marketing via telephone then you can also register with the Telephone Preference Service (“TPS”). 

We will only email or text you if you have consented for us to do so. In every email or text we send there will be instructions on how to unsubscribe. During any phone conversation you have with us please feel free to let us know how you prefer to be contacted. 

Due to the timing of our mailings, there may be a delay of up to 6 weeks before your unsubscribe instruction is actioned on our systems or via our third parties, and during this time you may still receive mailings from us. There is no need to contact us again. If you are still hearing from us 6 weeks after you have asked us not to contact you then please contact us. 

Please note that if you request that we stop sending you marketing materials we will keep a record of your contact details and the appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us, but your information will be suppressed from us. 

Your rights 

When you give us your details, we will tell you what we are going to do with them. You can decide how you want us to contact you, whether by post, email, phone or text message and you can update your communication preferences at any time by using the contact details below hello@aakss.org.uk. From time to time we may also send you a communication asking you to confirm whether you still wish to hear from us or to update and refresh your communication preferences.  

Under UK data protection law, you have rights over personal information that we hold about you.  We’ve summarised these below: 

Right to access your personal information 

You have a right to request access to the personal data that we hold about you. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, and we will provide you with this unless the law allows us not to.  

If you want to access your information, it would be helpful if you sent to us a description of the information you want to see by post to Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex, Rochester City Airport, Maidstone Road, Chatham, Kent ME5 9SD or by email to hello@aakss.org.uk. But you can also make a request verbally or via any other means you prefer. 

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected 

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected.  If you believe the information we hold about you is inaccurate or incomplete, please provide us with details and we will investigate and, where applicable, correct any inaccuracies.   

Right to restrict use of your personal information 

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information in the following situations:  if some information we hold on you isn’t right; we’re not lawfully allowed to use it; you need us to retain your information in order for you to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim; or you believe your privacy rights outweigh our legitimate interests to use your information for a particular purpose and you have objected to us doing so. 

Right to erasure of your personal information 

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions, you have the right for this to be done. If we are unable to delete your information, we will explain why this is the case.  

If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials, we will keep a record of your contact details and the appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us. 

Right for your personal information to be portable 

If we are processing your personal information (1) based on your consent, or in order to enter into or carry out a contract with you, and (2) the processing is being done by automated means, you may ask us to provide it to you or another service provider in a machine-readable format. 

Right to object to the use of your personal information 

If we are processing your personal information based on our legitimate interests or for scientific/historical research or statistics, you have a right to object to our use of your information. 

If we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes, and you wish to object, we will stop processing your information for these purposes as soon as reasonably possible. 

Please note that exceptions apply to a number of these rights, and not all rights will be applicable in all circumstances. For more details we recommend you consult the guidance published by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO(link is external)).  

Complaints 

We are committed to working with you to obtain a fair resolution of any complaint or concern about privacy.  

For full details of our complaints procedure and how to make a complaint, please visit: https://www.aakss.org.uk/complaints-procedure  

If you have a complaint, then please contact us in the first instance and we hope to be able to resolve it with you to your satisfaction. If, however, you believe that we have not been able to assist with your complaint or concern then you have the right to make a complaint to the data protection authority in the UK, which is the Information Commissioner.  

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office here to find out more or report a concern. They are the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. We work with them to make sure that we collect, store and use your information appropriately and don’t do anything you wouldn’t expect us to.  

As a member of the Fundraising Regulator, we abide by the Code of Fundraising Practice. This is a code of best practice which governs how our fundraising must take place. We take the requirements very seriously. The Code has sections on personal data which sit alongside the laws as named above and we strive to comply with best practice as well as the law. If you have any concerns about how your data is used in fundraising, then please do contact us in the first instance or if your query is not resolved, you may contact the Fundraising Regulator. 

Contact us 

If you have any questions or you want to exercise any of your data protection rights, please contact us using the details below: 

Email: hello@aakss.org.uk  

Phone: 01634 471900 

Online: Get in touch with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex here – Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex (aakss.org.uk) 

Address: Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex,  

Rochester City Airport,  

Maidstone Road,  

Chatham, Kent ME5 9SD 

 

Please note that in responding to a request to exercise your data protection rights, we may be required to ask for further information and/or evidence of identity. We will endeavour to respond fully to all requests within one month of receipt of your request, however if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay. 

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