Privacy Policy
Who we are
The Greystoke Community Land Trust respects your privacy and aims to comply with current data protection legislation. This policy explains how we collect and handle personal data relating to website visitors, members, supporters, newsletter subscribers, people who contact us, and people who express an interest in local housing or future CLT homes. This policy may be updated from time to time. It was last updated in July 2026. Our website address is https://greystokeclt.org.uk/
Greystoke Community Land Trust is a Community Benefit Society registered with the FCA under number 9601
Our registered address is:
18 Jefferson Garth,
Greystoke,
Penrith,
CA11 0UA
We are a member of the Community Land Trust Network
What does this notice cover?
This Privacy Information explains how we use your personal data: how it is collected, how it is held, and how it is processed. It also explains your rights under the law relating to your personal data.
What is personal data?
Personal data is defined by the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 (collectively, “the Data Protection Legislation”) as ‘any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified in particular by reference to an identifier’.
Personal data is, in simpler terms, any information about you that enables you to be identified. Personal data covers obvious information such as your name and contact details, but it also covers less obvious information such as identification numbers, electronic location data, and other online identifiers.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Contact forms and email
We need to collect minimal personal information so we can provide the products and services you have requested from us.
When you contact us by email or via a contact form on the website, we will collect your name, email address and contact number so that we can process your inquiry. When you contact us via a contact form, we also need to collect your anonymised IP address to help prevent spam.
Housing need and housing interest information
If you contact us about local housing need, affordable housing, key worker housing, or your interest in future CLT homes, we may collect information such as your name, contact details, household circumstances, local connection, housing situation and the type of housing you are interested in.
We will only collect the information we reasonably need. Some housing-need information may be sensitive, for example information about health, disability, vulnerability, financial circumstances or household composition. We will treat this information as confidential and restrict access to authorised CLT officers or board members who need it for CLT purposes.
We use this information to understand local housing need, plan potential CLT housing projects, communicate with people who have expressed interest, and support discussions with relevant partners such as housing providers, local authorities, funders and professional advisers.
Where possible, we will use anonymised or aggregated information when reporting housing need. We will not share identifiable housing-need information with third parties unless this is necessary, lawful and appropriate, and usually only with your knowledge or consent.
We will review housing-need and housing-interest information regularly and delete or update it when it is no longer needed.
Membership Applications
In addition to data retained for the purposes of membership administration (such as when you joined), we will collect and use the following personal data:
- Name
- Address
- Email address
- Telephone number
We will collect this personal data by the following means:
- Membership application forms.
We will use this personal data for the following purposes:
- Governing the CLT, for example inviting you to Annual General Meetings.
- Informing you of opportunities to engage with our work, for example feeding into the design for a housing development.
- Investigating complaints.
- Improving our service to members.
We will not share this data with any other organisation without your explicit consent. We will share aggregate information on our membership without any identifying individual data, based on this data, with interested parties.
We will retain membership records while you are a member. After your membership ends, we may retain limited records where this is necessary for legal, governance, accounting, audit or dispute-resolution purposes. Some statutory society records, including registers and board or member-meeting records, may need to be retained for longer.
Supporters
We collect the following personal data for other individuals who may support or be interested in our work, for our newsletter:
- Email address
We will collect this personal data by the following means:
- Website form.
- Sign-up sheets at meetings and on street stalls.
We will use this personal data for the following purposes:
- Email updates on the CLT and our work.
We will not share this data with any other organisation.
We will retain this data so long as you subscribe to our newsletter.
Users under 18 years of age
Membership of Greystoke Community Land Trust is only open to people aged 18 or over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children for membership purposes. However, children and young people may be able to interact with our website in limited ways, for example by reading posts or leaving a comment on a blog post. We ask children and young people not to include unnecessary personal information in public comments. Comments may be moderated, and we may remove comments that contain personal information or that we consider inappropriate.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics to gather anonymised information about visitors to this site and how they interact with our site in order that we can improve the website. You can read more about those cookies, and how to opt out in the Cookie Policy.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the blog posts we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy-notice/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Embedded content from other websites
This site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website. If you do not accept cookies, this functionality might not work as intended.
Our lawful basis for using your personal data
| Data use | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Membership register | Legal obligation / legitimate interests |
| Member communications, AGM notices, governance | Legal obligation / legitimate interests |
| Newsletter | Consent |
| General enquiries | Legitimate interests |
| Housing-need records | Legitimate interests |
| Financial/accounting records | Legal obligation |
| Complaints | Legitimate interests / legal obligation |
| Website analytics | Consent, if non-essential cookies are used |
Who we share your data with
We do not sell your personal data or share it with third parties for their own marketing purposes. We may share personal data with trusted service providers who process data on our behalf, such as Mailchimp, Google, website hosting providers, analytics providers, spam-prevention tools and other technical service providers. We may also share information where this is necessary for legal, governance, accounting, professional advice, housing project, funding or regulatory purposes, or where we are required to do so by law.
Marketing
You will not be sent any unlawful marketing or spam. We will always work to fully protect your rights and comply with our obligations under the Data Protection Legislation and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and you will always have the opportunity to opt-out. We will always obtain your express opt-in consent before sharing your personal data with third parties for marketing purposes and you will be able to opt-out at any time.
We will only use your personal data for the purpose(s) for which it was originally collected unless we reasonably believe that another purpose is compatible with that or those original purpose(s) and need to use your personal data for that purpose. If we do use your personal data in this way and you wish us to explain how the new purpose is compatible with the original, please contact us.
If we need to use your personal data for a purpose that is unrelated to, or incompatible with, the purpose(s) for which it was originally collected, we will inform you and explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
In some circumstances, where permitted or required by law, we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent. This will only be done within the bounds of the Data Protection Legislation and your legal rights.
How long we retain your data
Personal data may be required for legal purposes and record keeping. All data will only be stored for as long as it is legally required.
| Data type | Retention Period |
|---|---|
| Membership records | While a person is a member, 6 years after membership ends |
| Statutory society records, minutes and governance records | Long-term / permanent where needed for governance history |
| Newsletter subscription records | Until unsubscribe, plus a suppression record to avoid re-adding |
| Housing-need enquiries | Reviewed every 12 months; deleted or refreshed consent if no longer current |
| General website enquiries | 12–24 months unless needed longer |
| Financial/accounting records | 6 years |
| Conflict-of-interest records | While relevant, then retained with board/governance records |
What rights you have over your data
You can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes. When you make a request to receive or erase your personal data, we may ask for additional information to prove your identity.
If you are not satisfied with our response or do not believe we are processing your personal data in accordance with the law, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Where we send your data
Forms may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
When you sign up to the newsletter, or become a member, we use the services of Mailchimp. This is a United States based company and your data (name and email address) is stored on servers in the US.
When you are accepted as a member we are legally required to keep a register of members. This data is stored in a protected folder on google drive. Only board members have access to it. Google may use servers outside the UK and Europe.
Some of the service providers we use, including Mailchimp and Google, may process personal data outside the UK. Where this happens, we rely on the safeguards, contractual terms and privacy commitments provided by those service providers, including appropriate transfer mechanisms where required by data protection law. We only use service providers where we consider this necessary and appropriate for the operation of the CLT and its website, membership, communications and records.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
You can read more about this here: https://mailchimp.com/help/mailchimp-european-data-transfers/ and here: https://policies.google.com/privacy/frameworks?hl=en-US
Additional information
How we protect your data
We will store all personal information you provide securely. All traffic between your browser and this website is encrypted and protected via SSL (Secure Socket Layers).
Data Breaches
Finally, we will endeavour to report any unlawful data breach of this website’s database or the databases of any of our third party data processors to any and all relevant persons and authorities within 72 hours of the breach if it is apparent that personal data stored in an identifiable manner has been stolen.
Contact
If you have any queries about this privacy policy, how we safeguard your personal data, or if you wish to raise a data protection complaint, please contact us at . We will acknowledge data protection complaints within 30 days, investigate them appropriately, and let you know the outcome. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Cookies
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. You can read more about this in our cookie policy.
Originally approved by the Board of Greystoke Community Land Trust on 1 September 2025. Version 2 reviewed and approved by the Board on 5 August 2026.
This privacy policy will be reviewed annually, or sooner if there are significant changes to how we handle personal data or to relevant data protection law.