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Birch Awards privacy notice

17.06.2022

This notice explains what personal information we hold about you, how we collect it, how we use and may share information about you. 

Who we are

Crisis collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information when you nominate, or are nominated for an award. When we do so we are regulated under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018. In law we are known as the ‘data controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws. Our Data Protection Officer is Beverley Adams-Reynolds and can be contacted on data.protection@crisis.org.uk.

The Birch Awards are for young people who fundraise for Crisis either under exceptional circumstances or achieve amazing results on our behalf. Crisis is the national charity for homeless people. We help people out of homelessness directly and we campaign for the changes needed to solve it altogether. We work side by side with people to help them rebuild their lives. From decades of experience of working with thousands of homeless people, we know what's needed to leave homelessness behind for good. We use this experience to shape the services we provide and the changes we campaign for.

Crisis UK is a registered charity in both England and Wales, and Scotland. Our registration number for England and Wales is 1082947, and for Scotland it's 040094. Crisis at Christmas is also a company limited by guarantee – Company number 1949056

We collect and use your personal information to assess, decide and facilitate The Birch Awards, to promote positive stories of young people to celebrate their efforts and achievements across the UK in supporting ending someone’s homelessness.

Judging panels are made up of panels of someone with lived experience of homelessness, one of our external partners, Crisis staff and Crisis Senior Management.

The Judging panels are presented with 300 words describing the activity of the young person and the age category they are in.  No personal details of the nominator or nominee are submitted to judges. The Judging is based on the achievement from the nomination form only. 

Personal information we collect

In running the Birch Awards process, from nomination to awards, we collect the following personal information, when you are nominated and the nominator provides it to us:

  • Your personal information (such as your name and age) when you are nominated
  • nominator’s personal information provided (such as name, organisation and contact details, mobile phone number)
  • information provided by the person giving consent (where needed) if parent/guardian (such as name, contact details)
  • reason for nomination (achievements and efforts recognised)
  • any further details such as issues or challenges faced, working together with others and in your community.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • maintain a secure nominations log for recording purposes.  This data is held with a central team and not shared.
  • provide all nominated young people with a recognition certificate.
  • transfer and pseudonymise your nomination story into a Word document for the judging panel
  • enable judging rounds throughout the process
  • securely save your nomination form and further information submitted into a secure area
  • to support the invite to the Final for the young person and their guests (when physical award ceremonies take place)
  • to facilitate script/ sound bite research and development with the nominator, the young person and their parent/guardian prior to the Final event
  • where consent has been given for photos and recordings, these will be used by Crisis to publicise the event
  • evaluate and quality assure the services we provide throughout the organisation of the Birch Award

How long your personal data will be kept

Nominees – we will hold the information about you for three months after the final award ceremony after which it will be anonymised and used for statistical purposes

Parent / guardian - we will hold the information about you for three months after the final award ceremony after which your information will be deleted

Nominator – we will hold your information for one month and use it to thank you for your support and engagement after the event

If, as an adult, you are already a Crisis supporter we will continue to use your information as held on your personal supporter account with us.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We only collect and use your personal information as we have a legitimate interest to collect Celebration Event nominations to promote positive stories of young people, celebrating their efforts and achievements in fundraising to end homelessness.

Following receipt of nominations, we rely on consent to process your personal information and proceed with the judging and award stages. If you are 13 or over we will seek your consent. If you are under 13 or have difficulty in making your own decisions, we will seek consent from your parent/guardian.

We rely on consent for the taking and use of photos, sound bites and video recordings. When physical ceremonies take place, we will give bands to wear to those who have not consented to ensure any third party (such as approved photographer) is aware.

To process any special category information we rely upon your (if you are over 13 years of age and able to make give that decision) or your parent/guardians explicit consent.

You may withdraw your consent at any time.  If you withdraw your consent prior to judging your nomination will not be processed any further and any personal information that had been collected will be held in line with Crisis’ data protection policy.

If you are nominated for the Birch Awards and you remove your consent after the awards evening, your name will be removed from the website and our social media platforms

If you withdraw your consent to photographs and video recording being taken prior to in-person award ceremonies your photograph will not be taken at the event

If you withdraw your consent after the photographs have been put up on line, if able to we will remove your photograph from the webpage and social media platforms

After three months, we will anonymise nominee data and store it to be used for statistical purposes in the future e.g. to track the number of nominations for each award and measure levels of engagement.

Who we share your personal information with

  • Pseudonymised information is passed to the judging panels
  • The person or organisation who made the nomination e.g. scout group will receive information on how far nomination has got, and a photograph of the event for their newsletter, where consent has been given
  • Crisis’ media team in order to publish results and summarised success stories, where consent has been given
  • The presenters of the award ceremony so that they can read the agreed script and share your positive story with the audience

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required to do so by applicable law.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and DPA 2018 you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

  • know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
  • ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
  • ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
  • object to direct marketing
  • make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
  • withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

  • ask us to delete information we hold about you
  • have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
  • object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
  • object to how we are using your information
  • stop us using your information in certain ways

We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note, your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under GDPR.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Who to contact

Please contact our data protection officer on data.protection@crisis.org.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.

The UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

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