Privacy Policy

Published Date: 9th April 2024: Version: V6

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully, as it describes what personal information may be held for you, what it is used for, and how it is obtained. You should regularly review this Privacy Policy notice, as we may change it from time to time. If we make any significant changes, we will endeavour to send you an email to notify you of such changes, although this may not always be possible.

If you have any questions regarding this Privacy Policy or do not agree with specific points, refer to “Questions or Complaints” within this policy.

Who we are?

Gentle Dusk Ltd is also known commercially as Gentle Dusk. For clarification this Privacy Policy applies to both Gentle Dusk (Consultancy) and Gentle Dusk Ltd data.

Gentle Dusk Ltd is a socially-minded company working with communities and the workforce to lift the taboo around death, dying and bereavement and to raise awareness of the importance of end of life care planning. We do this by encouraging and supporting people to talk openly about death and dying, to put their end of life care plans in place and to begin honest and open discussions with their families, close friends, carers and all those who might be asked about their end of life wishes.

We deliver our own unique events to staff, volunteers and the public, helping them overcome barriers to talking about the end of life and increasing their knowledge of end of life planning (including advance care planning).

We deliver our unique services including Future Matters Service in partnership with many organisations. Some examples of our “Partners” can be found on our website.

We are a limited company registered in England and Wales, company number 12918509. Our work occurs in many locations.

What does data protection law state?

Data protection law states that we can only use your personal information if we have a valid reason to do so. We will only keep and use your information if we have one of the following reasons:

  • To fulfil or negotiate a contract with you
  • To comply with legal obligations
  • When it is in our legitimate interest
  • If you have provided consent

We will only use your information for our legitimate interests when we have appropriate business reasons, and we will tell you what our legitimate reasons are.

Privacy Policy Terms & Data Storage

This Privacy Policy outlines the personal data Gentle Dusk collects and why, and our commitment to storing this securely, respecting your privacy and in line with General Data Protection Regulation ”GDPR”. For the purposes of the GDPR the data controller is Gentle Dusk. ’Personal data’ for the purposes of GDPR, means any information from which you can be identified, for example – your name, your title, your email address, billing address, contact address, telephone number, IP address, and in some cases your work experience and training.

Who has access to your data?

Directors, project staff and select volunteers and freelance contractors may have access to your data for clear and explicit purposes. For example, when working in Partnership with Age UK Islington within the Future Matters Service delivery and/or other Partners for any other deliverables. Your data may be shared when setting up the Event(s), post event surveys and mailing lists for same Event(s). Before processing any personal data for any purpose, the team member will be briefed on Gentle Dusk’s privacy protocols and legal obligations. We do not sell or share your data with third parties for marketing purposes. We will disclose certain data to regulatory and government bodies and law enforcement agencies to meet our legal obligations. If you are registering a public event to be shared in a published programme either online or in print, we make clear in the registration process which information you submit will be made public. How we will keep your data secure We will take all reasonable steps to keep your personal data secure using appropriate technical and organisational measures. Where necessary we carefully select reputable third-party platforms for event bookings, emailing newsletters, collecting feedback and/or additional demographic data, and data analysing the reach of our digital information. Each has their own Privacy Policy. We always manage the terms of our subscriptions to these third-party platforms to be in line with our own Privacy Policy. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your information transmitted to other sites. We will take any data breach very seriously and follow GDPR reporting protocols should one arise. Your consent to Gentle Dusk will be clear and explicit about the specific purpose(s) for collecting personal data on each occasion we collect it. In certain circumstances, you are able to withdraw your consent for Gentle Dusk to hold your personal data (e.g. by unsubscribing to our newsletters), request erasure or correction, refer to “How Long Does Gentle Dusk Keep Your Data?” within this Privacy Policy for more information. In some instances, not giving your personal data may exclude you from taking part in a Gentle Dusk activity.

What we use your personal information for?

We aim to be clear about our purpose for collecting your personal data at the time we request it. We will collect personal data in person and/or digitally. We collect your personal data when:

  • you are a supplier and providing services to Gentle Dusk – we will keep your details for as long as we believe it reasonably necessary, so we can contact you to discuss/make payments for previous, current or future services;
  • you are a client – we will retain contact details for the duration of our engagement, and then for as long as we believe is reasonably necessary, so that we can contact you about previous, current and future engagements;
  • you are subscribing to our newsletter online or by using a sign-up sheet – we will email you bulletins about our forthcoming events for the event or projects you have signed up to, and may also ask for your feedback about event/projects you have taken part in. We may invite you to use third party platforms such as SurveyMonkey or googleforms to collect your feedback;
  • you are booking to attend an event (we often use third party booking platforms for this such as Eventbrite or Ticketlab) – we will send additional information pertinent to the event either directly or through the ticketing platform depending on how your booking was made;
  • you are registering an activity to be part of one of our public programmes – we will contact you by email with pertinent information for co-ordination of activities for our events programmes, we may also contact you by telephone to discuss your activity;
  • you are signing up to participate in one of our drop-in activities – we will take details that help us know who is taking part including information that helps us know of any additional support you might need. Sometimes we will also take contact details to let you know about future related events;
  • you are downloading resources from our website – we monitor frequencies of our resource documentation for future updates and also to ensure that the requests are valid but we will not store identifiable personal details in this instance unless you have requested to be put onto our mailing list;
  • you may also be applying to be a volunteer or to work with us – as well as staying in touch, we will use your data to develop a volunteer / work plan, review your progress and contact your emergency contacts (if needed). We may analyse some data (i.e. gender, postcode, age, health, employment, training) and present the results of this analysis to funders to evidence the impacts of their funding. All results are anonymised unless a participant has explicitly given permission for Gentle Dusk. to share some of their personal data in, for instance, a case study, blog or news article. We may refer to anonymised data reports collated by Google Analytics and Google Analytics 360 about frequency of access to our websites to help us monitor the reach and effectiveness of our information and publicity, and as one of the measures of interest in our services. These statistics are collated numerically and do not hold any identifiable personal information.

When do we use automated decision making?

We do not use automated means to make any decisions about you. All our decisions are made with humans involvement.

How long does Gentle Dusk keep your data?

If you are happy to remain subscribed to our mailing lists we may keep your information until Gentle Dusk decides to cease the activity or activities that mailing list is associated to. You can unsubscribe or correct your personal data at any time, and in doing so your personal data pertaining to that subscription will be removed or updated. For all other uses of your personal data you are welcome to make a request either verbally or in writing for this to be deleted or rectified. Written requests can be sent digitally to projects@gentledusk.org.uk or by post to Gentle Dusk Ltd, 8 Church View, Long Marston, Tring, Buckinghamshire, HP23 4QB. Gentle Dusk will respond to your request within one month of receiving it. Gentle Dusk will observe your request unless there is a statutory, legal or legitimate reason to retain your personal data without change. Gentle Dusk will retain information relating to individual members of staff for a maximum of seven years from the end of contractors employment with Gentle Dusk (unless there is a statutory or legal requirement to retain these for longer, or unless a funder stipulates otherwise). Gentle Dusk will retain personal data of unsuccessful applicants to opportunities for six months.

What are “Website cookies” and does Gentle Dusk collect data?

A cookie (called an Internet or Web cookie) is the term given to describe a type of message that is given to a web browser by a web server. Cookie text files are automatically placed onto your device by some websites you visit. The main purpose of a cookie is to identify users and save site login information for example passwords, shopping basket content (as applicable) and how the site is being used.

The Gentle Dusk website uses cookies to analyse the website use, effectiveness, and functionality. Cookie details are: ___cf_bm and __cf_bm

Details of what these 2 cookies do and are used for can be found at the following url: https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/policies-compliances/cloudflare-cookies/

The other cookie that is in use on the Gentle Dusk website is: privacy_embeds

This cookie helps to manage and store user consent to load the different third party embeds and tracking scripts.

No personally identifiable information is collected. Other than when enquiry forms/requests are submitted to us with personal details and/or when downloading resources and the mailing list option inclusion has been ticked to be put onto our future mailing lists. In this instance, email addresses are added to our mailing list. For further information on this, refer to “How Long Does Gentle Dusk Keep Your Data?” within this Privacy Policy.

What about links to other websites?

Gentle Dusk website contains links to other websites of interest for example the Partners we work with. However, once you have used these links and leave our website, you should note that we (Gentle Dusk) have no control over any of the other websites. Therefore, Gentle Dusk cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should always read and check the privacy statement applicable to the other company websites you are visiting.

When will Gentle Dusk review and update this Privacy Policy?

Gentle Dusk Directors and project teams will refer to and review this Privacy Policy at the beginning of each new project in order to inform the approach to engaging with participants, contributors and audiences and ensure we are meeting our obligations when collecting and processing personal data. As a minimum, Gentle Dusk Directors will review this policy annually. Gentle Dusk reserve the right to revise this policy at any time. Any person who feels that this policy has not been adhered to in respect of their personal data should raise this with Gentle Dusk’s Directors by post to Gentle Dusk Ltd, 8 Church View, Long Marston, Tring, Buckinghamshire, HP23 4QB

What if this Policy Changes?

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes we make will be published onto our website. We may also notify you by email if significant changes are made.

Questions or Complaints

It is the responsibility of our Data Protection Lead (DPL) to oversee compliance with this statement. Should you have any questions regarding this statement, or how we process your personal information, contact Mireille Hayden on mireille@gentledusk.org.uk

The supervisory authority in the UK for data protection matters is the Information Commissioner (ICO). If you think your data protection rights have been breached in any way by us, you are able to make a complaint to the ICO.