Privacy policy

Brighton & Lewes Downs Biosphere Programme

Who are we?

The Living Coast is a shared local environment programme of the Brighton & Lewes Downs Biosphere Partnership, a collective of more than forty organisations led and hosted by Brighton & Hove City Council. Our mission is to connect people and nature to inspire a positive future, today, as part of a global network of UNESCO World Biosphere Regions since our designation in 2014.

We can be contacted by email to info@thelivingcoast.org.uk or biosphere@brighton-hove.gov.uk, or by post to: The Living Coast – Brighton & Lewes Downs Biosphere Programme, c/o Brighton & Hove City Council, Hove Town Hall, Norton Road, Hove BN3 3BQ.

What personal data do we collect and why?

Personal data refers to information which relates to a living individual who can be identified from the data held. The information may be held in paper files, electronically or both. This may include, but is not limited to: computer entries, emails, letters, files, photographs and video recordings.

If you register(-ed) with us as a ‘Friend of The Living Coast’ (formerly ‘Biosphere’) then we hold your name and email address, as well as your postcode and the organisation you represent if you choose to provide this optional information. We hold your personal data based upon your ‘explicit consent’ as the legal basis for processing it under GDPR. This is for the purpose of sending you by email a regular e-newsletter (typically each month) of news, events and opportunities in The Living Coast, as well as occasional other communications about specific subjects related to The Living Coast. The optional information further provides us with an insight about where our ‘Friends’ are located and who they may represent. You may unsubscribe at any time from this through the provider Mailchimp.

When you engage with our e-newsletter, browse our website, or interact with our social media channels of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, then we may automatically collect information on your engagement activities. We do this to assess the usefulness and effectiveness of our communications to inform and improve our communication and marketing activity to users. Data we may collect includes:

technical information, including a part only of the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet (part is deliberately anonymised by us), browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform;
information about your visit, including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) click-streamed to, through and from the site/application (including date and time); page response times, download errors, timing of your responses, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

Where do we keep the personal data we collect?

When you sign up (online or in person) and access our e-newsletters, your personal data is stored by the email platform that we use at MailChimp – find out more about MailChimp’s Privacy Policy. We also keep it in computer file versions of your personal data that is held at Brighton & Hove City Council – find out more about Brighton & Hove City Council’s Privacy Policy.

When you browse our website, information on your browsing activity is recorded through the use of ‘cookies’, and held on Google Analytics and used by the Biosphere programme (staff and contractors). Find out how Google uses data when you use their partners’ sites or apps, and see also Google’s Privacy Policy.

Similarly, information on your usage and interactions with our social media channels is collected and held according to the individual privacy policies of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and is accessible to the Biosphere programme.

We will never share your personal data with third parties, including other individual Biosphere partner organisations, without gaining your permission first.

We will hold your personal data on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity.

If you contact us to request that we stop communicating with you, then we will keep a record of your contact details and related information to enable us to ensure that you are no longer contacted by us.

How do we ensure personal data is kept accurate and safe?

We invite you to get in touch to let us know if your contact details change so that we may keep your information up to date.

We at the Brighton & Lewes Downs Biosphere Programme, working within Brighton & Hove City Council, are committed to protecting your personal information and we take our responsibilities under the Data Protection Act 1998 and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seriously. We aim to ensure that we have adequate controls in place to keep your personal data safe.

As part of Brighton & Hove City Council, we make sure that if we ask another organisation to provide a service for us, that they have appropriate security measures.

Brighton & Hove City Council maintains information security systems, personnel and policies, and has adopted procedures that will be followed in the event of a breach of personal information – including ensuring that all data breaches will be reported within 72 hours as required under GDPR.

Your information rights

The Council is the data controller for purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation as of May 2018 and is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number Z5840053.

Brighton and Hove City Council are committed to protecting your personal information. As a data controller it has a responsibility to make sure you know why and how your personal information is being collected in accordance with relevant data protection law.

When processing your personal information we will ensure that we always have a legal basis for doing so. We will only collect and hold your personal data if we have obtained your ‘explicit consent’ to do this.

We will make sure that any personal information collected and used is done so in line with data protection principles. Your personal information will be:

Processed fairly and lawfully
Only used for specific purposes
Adequate, relevant and not excessive
Accurate and up to date
Kept for an appropriate amount of time
Protected using appropriate security safeguards

As a data controller Brighton and Hove City Council has a duty to inform you of not only why your personal information is being processed but what rights you have around your personal information too. You have the right to:

Be informed of how your personal information is being used
Have access to information held about you, this is commonly known as a Subject Access Request (SAR)
Have your personal information deleted in certain circumstances
Have inaccuracies within your personal information corrected
Restrict processing of your personal information until inaccuracies are corrected or if there is a dispute around legal basis for processing the personal information
Object to processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
Have your personal data transferred to another provider
Be informed of where automated decision making (ADM) takes place and be given an option to opt out of ADM.

Further information

You can request more information, including details of the personal information that we hold about you, by emailing us at info@thelivingcoast.org.uk or biosphere@brighton-hove.gov.uk, or by post to: The Living Coast – Brighton & Lewes Downs Biosphere Programme, c/o Brighton & Hove City Council, Hove Town Hall, Norton Road, Hove BN3 3BQ.

Further information on Brighton and Hove City Council’s information governance policies is available from the Information Governance Team on 01273 295959 or data.protection@brighton-hove.gov.uk. If you wish to raise a complaint then please contact BHCC’s Data Protection Officer on gdpr@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

We at the Brighton & Lewes Downs Biosphere Programme are continuously reviewing our privacy policy, and when updates are made we will notify you of this on our website home page.

Privacy Policy last reviewed: 1st September 2021

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