Your privacy matters to us.

Bikur Cholim D'Satmar London (“Bikur Cholim”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is a registered charity in England and Wales (charity number 1085965) and a company limited by guarantee (company number 4001168). Our registered office is Ground Floor, 2a Northfield Road, London N16 5RN.

We are the “data controller” for the personal information described in this policy. This means we decide how and why your information is used, and we are responsible for looking after it in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

This policy explains what information we collect when you use our website, contact us, use our services, donate, volunteer or apply to work with us, and how we use and protect it.

Information you give us

• When you contact us: your name, email address, the subject and the content of your message. If you phone us, we may note your name, phone number and the reason for your call.
• When you use our services: your contact details, date of birth, address, next of kin, GP and care details, and information about your health, circumstances and support needs. Where a referral is made by a family member or professional, we receive this information from them.
• When you donate: your name, email address, postal address (where needed), the amount and frequency of your gift and, if you choose Gift Aid, your Gift Aid declaration.
• When you volunteer or apply for a job: your contact details, CV, work history, references, right-to-work documents and, where the role requires it, Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check results.

Information collected automatically

• Page visits: when you browse our website we record which page you viewed, the website that referred you (if any) and a random visitor identifier stored in your browser. This helps us understand how many people use our site and which pages are useful. It does not tell us who you are.
• Technical information: like all websites, our hosting and font providers receive your IP address and basic browser information when your device requests a page or font.

Special category information

Information about your physical or mental health, and in some cases your religious beliefs, is “special category” data under the law. We only collect it where we need it to provide care and support to you or your family, and we protect it with extra care. Please do not include health details in our website contact form unless you are comfortable doing so; you can always speak to us by phone instead.

• To reply to your enquiries and messages.
• To assess your needs and provide care, practical help, emotional support and talking therapies.
• To coordinate support with your family, GP, hospital or other professionals, where appropriate.
• To process donations, claim Gift Aid and thank you for your support.
• To recruit, vet and manage volunteers and staff.
• To keep people safe, including safeguarding children and adults at risk.
• To understand how our website is used and improve it.
• To meet our legal, regulatory and charity reporting obligations.

We will never sell your personal information, and we do not use it for automated decision-making or profiling that has a legal or similarly significant effect on you.

Data protection law requires us to have a lawful reason for each use of your information. We rely on:

• Consent, for example when you ask us to contact you or agree to receive updates. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Contract, where we need the information to provide a service you have asked for or to employ you.
• Legal obligation, for example Gift Aid records required by HMRC, employment checks and safeguarding duties.
• Legitimate interests, such as running and improving our website and charity, where this does not override your rights.
• Vital interests, in an emergency where someone’s life or health is at risk.

For special category data (such as health information), we rely on your explicit consent, or on the conditions that allow health and social care providers and not-for-profit bodies to process this information, or where it is needed to protect someone’s vital interests or for safeguarding.

We only share your information when we need to, and only as much as is necessary. This may include:

• Health and care professionals involved in your care, such as your GP, hospital team or social worker, with your agreement or where the law allows.
• HMRC, to claim Gift Aid on your donations.
• Trusted service providers who help us run our website and systems, including website hosting, our secure database provider (Supabase), and payment processors when online donations are taken. They may only use your information on our instructions.
• Google Fonts, which provides the typefaces on our website and receives your IP address when the fonts load.
• The police, local authority or other agencies where we are required to by law, or where there is a risk of serious harm to you or others.

Some of our service providers store or process data outside the UK. Where this happens, we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as a UK adequacy decision or the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum approved by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected, or as required by law. As a guide:

• Website enquiries: up to 2 years after our last contact with you.
• Service user and care records: in line with health and social care record-keeping guidance, normally 8 years after support ends (longer for children’s records).
• Donation and Gift Aid records: 6 years after the end of the financial year in which the gift was made.
• Unsuccessful job applications: 6 months after the recruitment decision.
• Website visit statistics: up to 2 years.

When information is no longer needed, we securely delete or anonymise it.

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your information, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), access controls so that only authorised staff can see records, staff training on confidentiality, and secure storage with our service providers. Card details for online donations are handled by our payment processor and are never stored on our website.

No method of transmitting information over the internet is completely secure, but we work hard to protect your data and will act promptly if anything goes wrong.

Our website does not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. We use a small amount of browser storage for the following:

• Visit counter (“bc_vid”, stored in your browser’s local storage): a random identifier that lets us count unique visitors. It contains no personal details.
• Staff sign-in: if you are a member of staff signing in to our dashboard, we store a secure session so you stay signed in. This is strictly necessary for the sign-in to work.

You can clear or block browser storage at any time in your browser settings. Our website will still work if you do.

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• Be informed about how we use your information (this policy).
• Ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete your information, where we no longer have a reason to keep it.
• Ask us to restrict or stop using your information in certain circumstances.
• Object to us using your information, including for direct marketing.
• Ask us to transfer your information to another organisation (data portability).
• Withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

To use any of these rights, contact us using the details below. We will respond within one month. There is normally no charge.

Our website is not designed for children to use on their own. Where we support children and young people through our services, we collect their information from, or with the agreement of, a parent or guardian, except where safeguarding requires otherwise.

Our website contains links to other organisations, such as crisis support lines and partner charities. We are not responsible for their privacy practices, so please read their privacy policies when you visit them.

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version will always be on this page, with the date it was last updated shown at the top.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we use your information, please contact us at reception@bikurcholim.co.uk, call 020 8800 7575, or write to us at Ground Floor, 2a Northfield Road, London N16 5RN.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.