Personal information and what we do with it

As an educational charity, Yorchestra needs to collect some personal information in order to be able to further its charitable purposes by organising and promoting its courses and other activities. This information may relate to:

• players attending our courses (including student support players)
• parents / carers / guardians (referred to in this notice as ‘parents’) who have applied for a place for their child or who want to know more about our courses
• players’ instrumental teachers
• tutors and conductors who help to deliver courses
• members of the volunteer committee who organise Yorchestra courses
• trustees of the Yorchestra Trust (the legal charity which exists to run the courses)

In legal terms, the Yorchestra Committee are ‘data controllers’ in respect of this information. This means that we need to tell you some things about the personal information we hold and what your rights are in relation to it.

What personal information do we have?

Typically, we hold the following kinds of personal information:

	Types of information usually held
Players	Name Age at start of course Home postcode Instrument(s) played Current playing standard (eg. most recent exam passed) Current school Other experience of playing in ensembles Previous attendance at Yorchestra courses We may also have information about a player’s health where this is significant and relevant to their participation on the course (eg. serious allergies; disabilities which may need special adjustments to be made).
Parents	Name Email address Home postcode (and address, in some cases) Telephone contact details (home / emergency phone numbers) Availability to help during the course Where an application has been made for bursary funding, we will also hold personal information provided in support of that application, which is likely to include information about the financial circumstances of the parent concerned. It may also include health information which is relevant to those financial circumstances. If we need to make a refund of course fees for any reason, we may also hold bank account details, to enable the refund to be paid by bank transfer.
Players’ instrumental teachers	Name Contact details (email or telephone) We only request contact details where we may need to get in touch with the teacher to discuss the suitability of the player for the Yorchestra ensemble applied for (eg. where no formal instrumental exams have been taken).
Tutors / conductors	Name Contact details (email and/or telephone) Instrument(s) played (for tutors) Previous experience Bank account details (to enable payment of fees)
Committee members / Trustees	Name Contact details (email and/or telephone) Date of birth (for trustees) In some cases further personal information will be required in order to meet legal or regulatory requirements (eg. where required by the Charity Commission or our bank).

Where do we get personal information from?

Most of the information we have comes directly from the individual to whom it relates or, in the case of younger players’ information, from their parents, usually by email or through our online course application forms.   Some personal information is also collected where visitors to our website choose to use the “Contact us” and “Comments” forms.

Occasionally, we may get information from other sources: for example, we may get contact details for players’ instrumental teachers from parents, or from publicly accessible sources such as www.musicteachers.co.uk or teachers’ own websites.

If we ask you for further personal information in the future, in addition to the kinds of information described above, we will explain whether you have a choice about providing it and what happens if you do not provide it.

 

Why do we need to hold personal information and how do we use it?

We are subject to certain legal obligations in relation to the running of Yorchestra which may require us to collect personal information. For instance, as a registered charity we are obliged to provide certain information about trustees to the Charity Commission; or we may be required by our bank to provide proof of identity for one or more Committee members in order to satisfy anti-money laundering legislation.

We will use personal information where necessary to comply with these legal obligations, to establish and defend Yorchestra’s legal rights as a charitable trust, and to prevent and detect crimes such as fraud. We may need to share personal information with other people for this reason, such as the Charity Commission, courts and law enforcement agencies.

We also have a legitimate interest in furthering the charitable purposes for which Yorchestra exists – namely, to provide opportunities for young people to rehearse and perform together in a range of orchestral settings, whilst receiving quality tuition, organised by parents and taking place during main school holidays.

Most of the data we collect is directly related to our charitable activities, since it is required for us to be able to run Yorchestra courses successfully. We also collect a limited set of data (eg. age, home postcode, current school) to allow us to assess the overall effectiveness of our outreach efforts as a charity.

When we need to use information about health or other very personal information, we may ask for consent (in the case of younger players, this will be the consent of their parents). However, sometimes there may be reasons which enable us to use this information without consent (for instance, where someone’s life would otherwise be placed at risk), and we will do so where that is necessary to run Yorchestra’s activities in a sensible way. Where consent is requested and given, it can be withdrawn at any time by contacting us using the contact details given below. However, if you withdraw consent, this may affect what services we are able to offer to you or your child, unless we have another lawful reason for using that information.

Who do we share personal information with?

In order to further our charitable purposes, we may at times need to share personal information with various people who are not Yorchestra trustees or committee members. For instance:

• information about players’ current playing level and previous experience will be shared with course directors and tutors;
• information about a medical condition which could present a significant risk to the health and safety of a player or other participants on a Yorchestra course (eg. epilepsy, severe allergies, asthma) will be shared confidentially with course directors, tutors and relevant volunteer helpers such as first-aiders;
• limited information about players (name and instrument) will be passed to the printers engaged to produce concert programmes;
• all information is collected and stored electronically, and therefore as part of this process will be passed to our IT and data storage providers to be held on our behalf.

Our service providers and all others with whom we need to share personal information are required to take appropriate security measures to protect that information. We do not give any third party permission to use that personal information for their own purposes. We only allow them to process it for the specific purposes for which we have shared it with them, and in accordance with our instructions.

How long do we keep personal information for?

We may be legally required to keep some personal information for specific periods in order to be able to meet our legal obligations under charity or tax law (for instance, information on Gift Aided donations must be kept for at least 6 years).

Subject to these legal minimum requirements, most personal information which is collected about players and parents is kept only for the duration of the course for which they have applied, and will be deleted shortly after the course ends. Although we keep certain demographic information (eg. age, current school, home postcode) for longer, this is only kept in an anonymised form, which does not identify individuals.

Some personal information about players and parents may be kept in an identifiable form for longer. For instance, we will keep email addresses for parents on our mailing list for future courses and events where you request this: addresses are deleted on request or where no further bookings are made for future courses during an extended period (currently 2 years). We also keep a list of players’ names in order to be able to identify whether any applicant for a place on our courses is a first-time attender (since we operate certain discounts in respect of first-time applications).

Information for tutors and conductors will be kept for as long as we anticipate that we are likely to wish to engage their services again for future courses.

Your rights in relation to your personal information

You have rights in relation to the personal information we have about you. You have the right to:

• make a request to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate, and completed if it is incomplete;
• in particular circumstances, restrict the processing of your information;
• in particular circumstances, ask to have your information erased;
• request access to your information and to obtain information about how we process it;
• in particular circumstances, move, copy or transfer your information;
• in particular circumstances, object to us processing your information;
• not be subject to automated decision-making including profiling where it produces legal or other significant effects on you. (Yorchestra does not currently make or intend to make any use of automated decision-making or profiling.)

You can exercise all of these rights free of charge except in some very limited circumstances, and we will explain these to you where they are relevant. In the case of information relating to a younger player, the parent may be entitled to exercise these rights on behalf of their child.

To exercise these rights, please get in touch with us using the contact details set out below. We can also supply more information about these rights to you, on request.

Keeping personal information safe

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent personal information being accidentally lost or altered, or being used, accessed or disclosed in an unauthorised way. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those individuals (both within Yorchestra and third parties) who have a genuine need to have that access in order to provide Yorchestra’s activities. When we pass your information to a third party, we seek to ensure that they have appropriate security measures in place to keep your information safe and to comply with general principles in relation to data protection.

Some of the people we share your information with (such as our IT providers) may process it overseas. This means that your personal information might on occasion be transferred outside the UK and the European Economic Area. We have confirmed that these third party service providers have put in place (or are in the process of putting in place) appropriate safeguards for your information which meet or exceed the minimum requirements under data protection law where personal information is to be transferred outside the EEA.

You can contact us if you want more information about the safeguards which are in place to ensure that your personal information is adequately protected in these circumstances.

Queries and further information

If you want more information about what we do with your information and what your rights are, please contact us by email (yorchestracourses@gmail.com) or through the contact form on our website (www.yorchestra.org/contact).

If you have concerns about the way we handle your personal information, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office by email (https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/ ) or post (Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire. SK9 5AF), or raise a complaint at www.ico.org.uk/concerns, or call its helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Last updated: April 2018