We’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.
BeFloodReady, CIWEM’s Community of Practice for PFR respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.
The GDPR and this policy apply to all of CIWEM’s personal data processing functions, including those performed on users’, employees’, supporters’ and partners’ personal data, and any other personal data the organisation processes from any source.
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact [email protected]. If you would like to update your marketing preferences, or unsubscribe from our newsletter, please contact [email protected].
Who are we?
CIWEM is a membership body and not-for-profit organisation. CIWEM is dedicated to the water and environment sector. We represent and support a community of thousands of members and organisations in around 89 countries. All our members are dedicated to improving water and environmental management as well as associated social and cultural issues, for the benefit of the public. CIWEM provides an extensive range of services to members and non-members.
CIWEM is a registered charity in England and Wales (1043409) and Scotland (SCo38212). CIWEM, CSL Ltd and 106-109 Saffron Hill Management Ltd are part of the CIWEM Group. CSL Ltd (CIWEM Services Limited) is registered in England and Wales Company No. 3166701. 106-109 Saffron Hill Management Ltd is registered in England and Wales Company No. 08822614.
This privacy policy applies to all three entities and relates to information obtained by CIWEM and for which CIWEM is the data controller.
BeFloodReady, CIWEM’s Community of Practice for PFR
Since the Code of Practice for Property Flood Resilience and associated guidance was published in 2021, a number of PFR initiatives have been developed through the PFR Pathfinder Projects and Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme. These projects have delivered a range of useful outputs on different elements of PFR delivery.
Created by CIWEM, and funded by our Partners and Supporters this Community of Practice for PFR consolidates these initiatives to improve the competence, confidence, and consistency of PFR delivery.
The data we collect from you
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
Identity Data: includes first name and last name, gender;
Contact Data: includes email address and company/residential address, telephone/mobile number;
Other Identifier Data: includes date of birth, marital status, job title, employer/company details, passport details;
Profile Data: includes dietary requirements, professional areas of interest, feedback and survey responses;
Communications Data: includes emails, notes of meetings, conversations or other attendance notes;
Technical Data: includes internet protocol (IP) address, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access our websites;
Usage Data: includes information about how you use our websites;
Marketing Data: includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us.
We also collect, use and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.
For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.
Generally, we do not collect special categories of personal data, which includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data. However, there are occasions when you might provide information to us that falls within this category. This might be for the purposes of event and course organisation where you provide your dietary requirements and access needs which we pass to third parties (our caterers and external venue suppliers) to ensure all of your needs are met.
Use of ‘cookies’
Like many other websites, the BeFloodReady website uses cookies. A technology called cookies may be used to provide you with tailored information. A cookie is a text-only string of information that we pass to your computer’s hard disk through your web-browser so that the website can remember who you are. Cookies cannot be used by themselves to identify you.
A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the “lifetime” of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.
You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies if you do not want to receive cookies from this website, or to alert you when websites set or access cookies. This can be done under the cookie settings in the privacy options of your browser settings and adding our domain to the list of websites you do not want to accept cookies from. Under settings you can also delete individual cookies or any cookies that your browser has stored. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of our websites may become inaccessible or not function properly.
To learn more about cookies please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org
Change of purpose
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact [email protected]
If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.
Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.
Our contact details
Full name of legal entity: The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM)
Name or title: Data Protection Officer
Email address: [email protected]
Postal address: 106-109, Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8QS
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.
Your legal rights
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:
Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Request restriction on processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios:
Request transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
Right to withdraw consent when we rely on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case when you withdraw your consent.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact [email protected] for further details.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
No fee required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data following 25 May 2018 (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Who has access to your information?
We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.
Third Party Service Providers
Some of our service providers acting as processors who provide IT and system administration services are based outside of the European Economic Area (EEA), so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Professional advisers acting as processors or joint controllers including lawyers, bankers, auditors, PR advisors and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, PR and accounting services.
HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities acting as processors or joint controllers based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
Disclosures of your personal data
We may have to share your personal data with the internal and external third parties but 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.
International transfers
Like a great many organisations we rely on external third parties to support our business, these include for example, Microsoft (who provide our email services), ASI (who provide our CRM platform), OVH SAS (who provide website hosting) each of whom has part of their business based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented. We will only transfer your personal data to countries deemed to provide adequate protection for them by the European Commission. For further details, see European Commission: Adequacy of the protection of personal data in non-EU countries.
Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US. For further details, see European Commission: EU-US Privacy Shield.
Please contact [email protected] if you require further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA.
Data security
CIWEM maintains strict physical, electronic, and administrative safeguards to protect your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
Data retention
We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Review of this Policy
We may change this policy from time to time by updating this page so please revisit and reread it periodically. This Policy was last updated in May 2024.
