1 September 2025

1. Who We Are

Sheffield Walkers is a voluntary, not-for-profit membership group whose purpose is to enable members to participate in safe and enjoyable hiking activities. Our website address is: https://training.sheffieldwalkers.org.uk.

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This policy explains what data we collect, how we use it, and your rights under UK data protection law.

We will never sell your personal data, and we will only share it when necessary to provide our services, where we are legally required to, or where you have given consent.

2. Why We Collect Your Information

We collect personal information to:

• Manage your membership and communicate with you about walks, events, and group matters.
• Enable you to participate in our activities safely.
• Keep an In Case of Emergency (ICE) contact and relevant health information to assist walk leaders if needed during an event.
• Maintain records required for insurance, safety, and legal purposes.

3. What Personal Data We Collect

When you join Sheffield Walkers, we may collect:

Category	Examples	Purpose
Membership details	Name, email address, telephone number	Membership administration, communications
Activity participation	Walks and events you attend	Organising walks, tracking participation
In Case of Emergency (ICE) details	Name and contact number of an emergency contact, relevant health information you choose to share	Shared with walk leaders for safety purposes
Incident reports	Information about any accident or incident during a walk	Safety, insurance, and legal compliance
Photographs	Group photos from walks	Website, newsletters, promotional material (with consent for recognisable close-ups)

We do not knowingly collect data from individuals under 18 years old.

4. How We Use Your Information

We will only process your personal data where we have a lawful basis, such as:

• Consent – e.g. sending you email updates, using photographs of you.
• Contract – e.g. managing your membership.
• Legal obligation – e.g. keeping incident reports for insurance purposes.
• Legitimate interests – e.g. contacting you about a change or cancellation of a walk.

5. Sharing Your Information

We may share your personal data:

• With Committee Members and Walk Leaders to organise walks and events.
• With Walk Leaders, your ICE details if you are taking part in a walk they are leading.
• With insurers, if required, following an incident.
• With law enforcement or regulators if required by law.

We will never share your personal data for marketing by third parties.

6. How We Store Your Information

• Paper membership forms are kept securely by our Membership Secretary.
• Electronic records (e.g. email lists) are stored on password-protected computers or secure cloud services.
• Access to personal data is restricted to Committee Members who need it.
• We keep your data only for as long as necessary, and we delete or destroy it securely when you leave the group or your membership lapses.

7. Your Rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Have inaccurate data corrected.
• Have your data erased (subject to legal requirements).
• Restrict or object to certain processing.
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.

Requests should be made to our Chairperson via the contact form. We will respond within one month.

8. Cookies, Media, And Third-Party Content

• If you submit a message on our website, you may opt in to saving your name and email in cookies for convenience (lasts one year).
• If you upload images, please remove location data (EXIF, GPS).
• Embedded content from other websites behaves as if you visit those sites directly – they may collect data about you and use cookies.

9. Complaints

If you have concerns about how we handle your data, please contact our Membership Secretary via the contact form.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

Website: www.ico.org.uk

10. Changes To This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on our website and will take effect immediately upon publication.