Privacy Policy

This policy explains when and why we collect personal information about you, how we use it, how we keep it safe and secure and your rights and choices in relation to your information. We will never disclose your information to another party without your express permission.

Any questions regarding this policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to secretary@arvs.org.uk or by writing to ARVS Secretary, 16 Portfield Way, Buckingham MK18 1BB.

Who are we?

The Association of Racecourse Veterinary Surgeons (ARVS) aims to promote and safeguard the safety and welfare of horses at race meetings and to provide a forum for discussion and the exchange of ideas on the management of injury and disease on racecourses.

In this policy ‘ARVS, ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ means:

The Association of Racecourse Veterinary Surgeons (ARVS)

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you in the following ways:

Information you give us directly

For example, we may obtain information about you when you take part in one of our events, purchase products and services or when you register to receive one of our newsletters or write to us. We will never disclose your information to another party without your express permission.

When you visit this website

We, like many companies or associations, automatically collect the following information:

• technical information, including the type of device you’re using, the IP address, browser and operating system being used to connect your computer to the internet. This information may be used to improve the services we offer.
• information about your visit to this website, for example we collect information about pages you visit and how you navigate the website, i.e. length of visits to certain pages, products and services you viewed and searched for, referral sources (e.g. how you arrived at our website).

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – more information on cookies can be found under the ‘Use of Cookies’ section below.

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Lawful Processing

Data protection law requires us to rely on one or more lawful grounds to process your personal information. We consider the following grounds to be relevant:

Specific Consent

Where you have provided specific consent to us using your personal information in a certain way, such as to send you email, letter or newsletter.

Legitimate interests

Where it is reasonably necessary to achieve our or others’ legitimate interests (as long as what the information is used for is fair and does not duly impact your rights).

We consider our legitimate interests to be running ARVS in pursuit of our aims and ideals. For example to:

• send postal communications which we think will be of interest to you;
• conduct research to better understand who our members are to better target the information we send to them;
• monitor who we deal with to protect the ARVS against fraud, money laundering and other risks;
• enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services /communications for the benefit of our members; and
• understand better how people interact with our website.

When we legitimately process your personal information in this way, we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative), and your rights under data protection laws. We will not use your personal information where our interests are overridden by the impact on you, for example, where use would be excessively intrusive (unless, for instance, we are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

When we use sensitive personal information, we require an additional legal basis to do so under data protection laws, so will either do so on the basis of your explicit consent.

Email

We will only send you information and newsletter communications by email if you have explicitly provided your prior consent. You may opt out of our communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of our marketing emails.

Post

We may send you information and newsletter communications by post unless you have told us that you would prefer not to hear from us.

Your choices

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct communications from us, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form used to collect your information.

We’re committed to putting you in control of your data so you’re free to change your marketing preferences (including to tell us that you don’t want to be contacted) at any time by contacting us by email: secretary@arvs.org.uk, or post: ARVS Secretary, 16 Portfield Way, Buckingham MK18 1BB.

We will not use your personal information for marketing purposes and will retain your details on a suppression list to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes.

Your Rights

Under UK data protection law, you have certain rights over the personal information that we hold about you. Here is a summary of the rights that we think apply:

Right of access

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 legal exceptions apply.

If you want to access your information, please send a description of the information you want to see and proof of your identity by post to the address provided below.

Right to have your inaccurate personal information corrected

You have the right to have inaccurate or incomplete information we hold about you corrected. The accuracy of your information is important to us so, if you change email address, or if you believe any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please contact us via email or post (see below).

Right to restrict use

You have a right to ask us to restrict the processing of some or all of your personal information if there is a disagreement about its accuracy or we’re not lawfully allowed to use it.

Right of erasure

You may ask us to delete some or all of your personal information and in certain cases, and subject to certain exceptions; we will do so as far as we are required to.

Right for your personal information to be portable

If we are processing your personal information (1) based on your consent 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

You have the right to object to processing where we using your personal information.

If you want to exercise any of the above rights, please email us at secretary@arvs.org.uk or write to ARVS Secretary, 16 Portfield Way, Buckingham MK18 1BB. 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.

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, https://ico.org.uk/

Keeping your information safe

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect it.

Any sensitive information is encrypted and protected with the following software 128 Bit encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our website, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, this website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to deliver a better more personalised service when you browse our website and improve our services.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer, visit www.allaboutcookies.org . Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third party site.

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. For that reason membership is restricted to people over 18 years of age.

Vulnerable circumstances

We are committed to protecting vulnerable people and appreciate that additional care may be needed when we use their personal information. In recognition of this, we observe good practice guidelines in our interactions with vulnerable people.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to this policy in the future will be posted on this website so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. If we make any significant changes we’ll make this clear on this website.

Review of this Policy

We keep this policy under regular review. This policy was last updated in May 2018.