Privacy notice

Last updated: 15th August 2025

This privacy notice for the Blue Carbon Trust (BCT) (“Charity,” “we,” “us,” or “our“), describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share (“process“) your information when you use our services (“Services“), such as when you:

Visit our website at bluecarbon.org.uk, or any website of ours that links to this privacy notice
Engage with us in other related ways – such as events or fundraising

Questions or concerns?

Reading this privacy notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our Services. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at info@bluecarbon.org.uk

Summary of key points

What personal information do we process? When you visit, use, or navigate our Services, we may process personal information depending on how you interact with Blue Carbon Trust and the Services, the choices you make, and the features you use.

Do we process any sensitive personal information?

We do not process your sensitive personal information.

Do you receive any information from third parties?

We may receive information from public databases, marketing partners, social media platforms, and other outside sources.

How do you process my information?

We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent. We process your information only when we have a valid legal reason to do so.

In what situations and with which types of parties do we share personal information?

We will not share your personal data without explicit consent, for example to pass contact information to another charitable organisation.

How do we keep your information safe?

We have organisational and technical processes and procedures in place to protect your personal information. However, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorised third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information.

What are your rights?

Depending on where you are located geographically, the applicable privacy law may mean you have certain rights regarding your personal information.

How do I exercise my rights?

The easiest way to exercise your rights is by contacting us. We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

Review the notice in full below to understand more about why and how we collect personal information

1. What information do we collect?

Personal information you disclose to us

In Short: We collect personal information that you provide to us.

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us or our Services, when you participate in activities on the Services, or otherwise when you contact us.

Personal Information Provided by You

The personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us and the Services, the choices you make, and the features you use. The personal information we collect may include the following:

Your name
Your email address
Your phone number

Sensitive Information

We do not process any sensitive personal information.

Payment Data

We do not process any payment data.

Social Media Login Data

We will not ask for any social media login data.

Information collected from other sources

We will not collect personal information or data about you from third party databases or websites.

2. How do we process your information?

In Short: We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent.

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our Services, including:

To deliver and facilitate delivery of services to the user: We may process your information to provide you with the requested service.
To respond to user enquiries/offer support to users: We may process your information to respond to your enquiries and solve any potential issues you might have with the requested service.
To send administrative information to you: We may process your information to send you details about our services, changes to our terms and policies, and other similar information.
To request feedback: We may process your information when necessary to request feedback and to contact you about your use of our Services.
To protect our Services: We may process your information as part of our efforts to keep our Services safe and secure, including fraud monitoring and prevention.
To identify usage trends: We may process information about how you use our Services to better understand how they are being used so we can improve them.
To save or protect an individual’s vital interest: We may process your information when necessary to save or protect an individual’s vital interest, such as to prevent harm.

3. What legal bases do we rely on to process your personal information?

In Short: We only process your personal information when we believe it is necessary and we have a valid legal reason (i.e., legal basis) to do so under applicable law, like with your consent, to comply with laws, to provide you with services to enter into or fulfil our contractual obligations, to protect your rights, or to fulfil our charitable activities.

If you are located in the EU or UK, this section applies to you.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and UK GDPR require us to explain the valid legal bases we rely on in order to process your personal information. As such, we may rely on the following legal bases to process your personal information:

Consent: We may process your information if you have given us permission (i.e., consent) to use your personal information for a specific purpose. You can withdraw your consent at any time.
Performance of a Contract: We may process your personal information when we believe it is necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations to you, including providing our Services or at your request prior to entering into a contract with you.
Legitimate Interests: We may process your information when we believe it is reasonably necessary to aid our charitable goals and those interests do not outweigh your interests and fundamental rights and freedoms. For example, we may process your personal information for some of the purposes described in order to:

Send users information about fundraising events we are holding
Contact potential beneficiaries to discuss our services
Analyse how our services are used so we can improve them to engage and retain users
Diagnose problems and/or prevent fraudulent activities
Understand how our users use our services so we can improve user experience

Legal Obligations: We may process your information where we believe it is necessary for compliance with our legal obligations, such as to cooperate with a law enforcement body or regulatory agency, exercise or defend our legal rights, or disclose your information as evidence in litigation in which we are involved.
Vital Interests: We may process your information where we believe it is necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of a third party, such as situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person.

In legal terms, we are generally the “data controller” under European data protection laws of the personal information described in this privacy notice, since we determine the means and/or purposes of the data processing we perform.

4. When and with whom do we share your personal information?

In Short: We may share information in specific situations described in this section and/or with the following categories of third parties.

We will only share your personal data with a third party with your explicit consent.

5. What is our stance on third-party websites?

In Short: We are not responsible for the safety of any information that you share with third parties that we may link to on our Services, but are not affiliated with, our Services.

The Services may link to third-party websites or online services from third parties that are not affiliated with us and which may link to other websites, services, or applications. Accordingly, we do not make any guarantee regarding any such third parties, and we will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by the use of such third-party websites, services, or applications. The inclusion of a link towards a third-party website, service, or application does not imply an endorsement by us. We cannot guarantee the safety and privacy of data you provide to any third parties. Any data collected by third parties is not covered by this privacy notice. We are not responsible for the content or privacy and security practices and policies of any third parties, including other websites, services, or applications that may be linked to or from the Services. You should review the policies of such third parties and contact them directly to respond to your questions.

6. Do we use cookies and other tracking technologies?

We use “cookies” to collect information about you and your activity across our site. A cookie is a small piece of data that our website stores on your computer, and accesses each time you visit, so we can understand how you use our site.

7. Is your information transferred internationally?

Our servers are located in the United Kingdom. If you are accessing our Services from outside the United Kingdom, then your data will be protected according to United Kingdom Data Protection Regulation. We do not transfer your data internationally.

8. How long do we keep your information?

In Short: We keep your information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this privacy notice unless otherwise required by law.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this privacy notice, unless a longer retention period is required by law (such as tax, accounting, or other legal requirements). No purpose in this notice will require us keeping your personal information for longer than an inactive period of 6 months.

When we have no ongoing legitimate need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise such information.

9. How do we keep your information safe?

In Short: We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organizational and technical security measures.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organizational security measures designed to protect the security of any personal information we process. However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the Internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, transmission of personal information to and from our Services is at your own risk. You should only access the Services within a secure environment.

10. Do we collect information from minors?

In Short: We do not knowingly collect data from or market to children under 18 years of age.

We do not knowingly solicit data from children under 18 years of age. Children under the age of 18 may engage with our Services and provide data. We follow the data regulations stipulated by the United Kingdom’s Age Appropriate Design Code to protect children who use our Services.

11. What are your privacy rights?

In Short: In some regions, such as the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom (UK), and Canada, you have rights that allow you greater access to and control over your personal information. You may review, change, or terminate your account at any time.

In some regions (like the EEA, UK, and Canada), you have certain rights under applicable data protection laws. These may include the right (i) to request access and obtain a copy of your personal information, (ii) to request rectification or erasure; (iii) to restrict the processing of your personal information; and (iv) if applicable, to data portability. In certain circumstances, you may also have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. You can make such a request by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section “HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?” below.

We will consider and act upon any request in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

If you are located in the EEA or UK and you believe we are unlawfully processing your personal information, you also have the right to complain to your local data protection supervisory authority. You can find their contact details here: https://edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en.

Withdrawing your consent

We rely on your consent to process your personal information, which may be express and/or implied consent depending on the applicable law, and you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us by using the contact details provided in the section “HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?” below or updating your preferences.

However, please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before its withdrawal, nor when applicable law allows, will it affect the processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

12. Controls for do-not-track features

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (“DNT”) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. At this stage no uniform technology standard for recognizing and implementing DNT signals has been finalised. As such, we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals or any other mechanism that automatically communicates your choice not to be tracked online. If a standard for online tracking is adopted that we must follow in the future, we will inform you about that practice in a revised version of this privacy notice.

13. Do we make updates to this notice?

In Short: Yes, we will update this notice as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws.

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated “Revised” date and the updated version will be effective as soon as it is accessible. If we make material changes to this privacy notice, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by directly sending you a notification. We encourage you to review this privacy notice frequently to be informed of how we are protecting your information.

14. How can you contact us about this notice?

If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may contact us by email at info@bluecarbontrust.org.uk.

15. How can you review, update, or delete the data we collect from you?

You may contact us to request to review, update, or delete any personal data that we hold. Please contact us at info@bluecarbontrust.org.uk