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Privacy Policy

This policy explains how Sobell House Hospice Charity Ltd collects and uses the personal information you provide to us whether online or via phone, mobile, email, letter or other correspondence, and the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By providing us with your personal information or by using our website, you are agreeing to your information being used and disclosed in the ways described in this policy.

If you have any questions about this policy and our privacy practices please get in touch. You can email us at [email protected], call us on 01865 857007, or write to us at Sobell House Hospice Charity, Churchill hospital, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LJ.

Who are we?

Sobell House Hospice Charity raises money to provide end of life and palliative care to patients and their families at home, in the Oxford hospitals, and in our purpose-built hospice on the Churchill Hospital site. Sobell House is part of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Sobell House Hospice Charity Ltd is registered as a charity in England and Wales (registered charity number 1118646) and we are also registered as a company limited by guarantee (company number 05989017).

What personal information do we collect?

Personal information we collect can include your name, contact details, date of birth, bank account details, credit/debit card details, information about your contact with and support of Sobell House hospice, and whether you are a UK tax payer so that we can claim Gift Aid. We may collect personal information about you when you make a donation to us, register for an event, purchase from us, sign up for communications, enquire about our activities, or otherwise give us personal information.

We may gather information about how you use our website, such as which pages are most visited. Wherever possible, this information will be aggregated or anonymised, that is, it will not identify you as an individual visitor to our website.

We do not usually collect sensitive personal information about you unless there is a clear reason for doing so, such as participation in an event where we need this information to ensure we provide appropriate facilities for you. We may collect health information if you tell us about your experiences of the hospice (for example, if you act as a case study for us); however, we will make it clear to you when collecting this information as to what we are collecting and why. We may keep a record of your relationships so we can improve our communication to you, for example details of your spouse if you both support us, so we do not send separate postal mailings to both of you.

How do we collect your personal information?

We collect information in the following ways:

  • When you give it to us directly. You may give us your information in order to sign up for one of our events, tell us your story, make a donation, purchase our products or communicate with us.
  • When you give it to us indirectly. Your information may be shared by independent third parties, or third parties working on our behalf when you support us and with your consent. For example, it may be shared by independent event organisers like the London Marathon, by fundraising sites like Just Giving or Virgin Money Giving, by fundraising organisations like Local Hospice Lottery, or by funeral directors collecting in memory donations for Sobell House. You should check their Privacy Policy when you provide your information to understand fully how they will process your data.
  • When you give permission to other organisations to share it or it is available publicly. We may combine information you provide to us, with information given to us by other organisations or that is publicly available from external sources in order to gain a better understanding of our supporters to improve our fundraising methods, products and services, or to ensure that the information we hold on you is correct (for example we may use information from the fundraising preference service to update whether we communicate with you). The information we get from other organisations may depend on your privacy settings, so you should regularly check them.
  • When we collect it as you use our website. Like most websites, we use “cookies” to help us make our site – and the way you use it – better. Cookies mean that a website will remember you. They’re small text files that sites transfer to your computer (or phone or tablet). They make interacting with a website faster and easier – for example by automatically filling your name and address in text fields. You can read more about our use of cookies below.
Legal basis for data processing

We will only process your personal data if our requirements meet the specified legal basis defined by the GDPR. These include legitimate interest, consent, legal obligation and contract.

  • If you make a donation or set up a direct debit on our website, or via one of our printed donation forms, we will process your data under legitimate interest. This data might include bank details, name and contact details.
  • If you tick any of the contact preference boxes on our donation forms, or on our website, you are giving consent for us to use your personal data to get in contact with you about fundraising and other information, and also in ways outlined in this privacy notice.
  • If you agree to Gift Aid a donation you have made, we will use the personal data you have provided under legal obligation to claim Gift Aid.
  • We may contact you by post if we feel you may be interested in supporting our work in some way, based on a consideration of a balance of legitimate interest. We ensure you are informed of this at the point at which you provide your data and give you the option to opt out of receiving post.
  • If you make a purchase from our website or our shops, we may use your personal data under contract to you to complete the purchase or deliver your goods to you.

The full definitions of these specified legal bases can be found here.

How do we use your information?

We may use your information to:

  • process a donation that you have made
  • to claim gift aid on your donations
  • process orders that you have submitted and supply goods or services you have purchased
  • to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us
  • deal with entries into a competition
  • seek your views or comments on the services we provide
  • notify you of changes to our services
  • send you communications in relation to your support or enquiry, or in relation to processing a grant, legacy or job application
  • administer the website and improve your browsing experience by personalising the website

If you have given us your consent to do so we may contact you for marketing purposes by mail, email, telephone, mobile telephone, and text. These communications may include information about appeals, events and other fundraising activities, and our shops. We will aim to refresh your consent every 3 years.

We may also send you communications we believe will be of interest to you – for example, if you are a new supporter, we might get in touch to find out if you would like to receive marketing communications from us in the future, and if we believe you have a connection to the hospice we might send you information about hospice events like our Lights of Love ceremony, or if you are an organisation who has previously supported us we may contact you to ask you to do so again. Our legal basis for doing this is legitimate interest.

To comply with our obligations as a charity, we must take reasonable and appropriate steps to know who our donors are, particularly where significant sums are being donated. This means there maybe occasions where we conduct research to ensure it would be right for us to accept support whether that is from an individual or organisation to give assurance that the donation is not from an inappropriate source and to safeguard our reputation. Any information we do collect for this purpose will only consist of what is necessary for us to meet these requirements and will be processed in line with your rights.

How we keep your data safe and who has access to it

We promise to never sell your information to third parties, and when you give us personal information we always take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely.

We have steps in place to ensure that your information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors, and promise to regularly review this. We may pass your information to our third-party suppliers who are working on our behalf, for example in order to process donations and send you mailings. However, we will only disclose the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract or agreement in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. In addition, we use third party websites who process payments on our behalf, for example Paypal. They provide secure payment gateways to receive your payment and pass it on to us.

Some of our suppliers run their operations outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Although they may not be subject to same data protection laws as companies based in the UK, we will take steps to make sure they provide an adequate level of protection in accordance with UK data protection law. By submitting your personal information to us you agree to this transfer, storing or processing at a location outside the EEA.

We may need to disclose your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors.

When you give us personal information, we will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password- and firewall- protected) servers. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted using SSL technology. No method of transmission over the Internet or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. When using our website, you are responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential. We will not ask you for your password.

How long will we hold your information?

If we hold your personal information we will only keep it for as long as is required for legal and audit purposes or so that we can keep in touch with you if you have consented for us to do so. When we no longer need to retain your information, we will ensure it is securely disposed of.

To comply with the law we will keep full details of your donation or support, for example a copy of the donation form you completed, for six years from the end of the financial year in which the donation or support occurred. In addition, if you have told us we can claim Gift Aid on your donations then we will keep details of your Gift Aid pledge for six years from the end of the financial year since we last claimed Gift Aid on a donation you have made to Sobell House.

If you have told us that you plan to leave a legacy to Sobell House we may keep your information indefinitely in order to carry out legacy administration, unless you ask us not to. We may also keep your data if the total amount you have given is of greater value than £2,000.

Otherwise we will delete all personal information we hold about you such as your contact details, how you have supported us and any other information you may have given us after six years from the end of the financial year when you last supported us or got in touch.

If you give us permission to use your story or a photograph of you we may use it for up to four years, after which time we will store it in a secure archive facility. If you would like us to delete it at any point please just let us know.

Keeping your information up to date

The accuracy of your information is important to us. We aim to ensure that all information we hold about you is accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date. If you change your contact details, or if any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please let us know and we will ensure it’s updated as soon as possible.

Your right to know what we know about you, to make changes, or to ask us to stop using your data

You have the right to:

  • request a copy of the information we hold about you
  • update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong
  • change your communication preferences at any time
  • ask us to remove your personal information from our records
  • object to the processing of your information for marketing purpose
  • raise a concern or complaint about the way in which your information is being used

If you wish to find out more about these rights, or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please email us at [email protected], call us on 01865 857007, or write to us at Sobell House Hospice Charity, Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LJ.

Under 16s and vulnerable circumstances

If you are aged 16 or under, and would like to participate in an event, make a donation or get involved with us, please make sure that you have your parent/guardian’s permission before giving us your personal information.

We recognise the importance of protecting our vulnerable supporters and follow the guidance issued by the Institute of Fundraising on treating donors fairly. We believe this helps to support our staff and fundraisers who come into contact with supporters in providing high quality customer care, ensuring anyone donating to the charity is in a position to make a free and informed decision.

Access the Institute of Fundraising’s website for more guidance.

Third-party websites

The Sobell House website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of third-party websites.

Changes to this policy and our contact details

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in January 2022.

If you have any questions please get in touch.

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 01865 857007
Post: Sobell House Hospice Charity, Churchill hospital, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LJ

Use of 'cookies' on our website

Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.

Our cookies help us:

  • Make our website work as you’d expect
  • Remember your settings during and between visits
  • Improve the speed/security of the site
  • Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook
  • Continuously improve our website for you
  • Make our marketing more efficient (ultimately helping us to offer the service we do at the price we do)

We do not use cookies to:

  • Collect any personally identifiable information (without your express permission)
  • Collect any sensitive information (without your express permission)
  • Pass data to advertising networks
  • Pass personally identifiable data to third parties
  • Pay sales commissions

You can learn more about all the cookies we use below.

Granting us permission to use cookies

If the settings on your software that you are using to view this website (your browser) are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you are fine with this. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can learn how to do this below, however doing so will likely mean that our site will not work as you would expect.

More about our cookies

Website function cookies

Our own cookies

We use cookies to make our website work, including:

  • Making our shopping basket and checkout work
  • Remembering your search settings
  • Remembering if we have already asked you certain questions (e.g. you declined to use our app or take our survey)

There is no way to prevent these cookies being set other than to not use our site.

Third party functions

Our site, like most websites, includes functionality provided by third parties. A common example is an embedded YouTube video. Our site includes the following which use cookies:

Disabling these cookies will likely break the functions offered by these third parties.

Social website cookies

So you can easily “Like” or share our content on the likes of Facebook and Twitter we have included sharing buttons on our site.

Cookies are set by:

The privacy implications on this will vary from social network to social network and will be dependent on the privacy settings you have chosen on these networks.

Site improvement cookies

We regularly test new designs or site features on our site. We do this by showing slightly different versions of our website to different people and anonymously monitoring how our site visitors respond to these different versions. Ultimately this helps us to offer you a better website.

We use:

Visitor statistics cookies

We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using (e.g. Mac or Windows which helps to identify when our site isn’t working as it should for particular technologies), how long they spend on the site, what page they look at etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These so called “analytics” programs also tell us if how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before helping us to put more money into developing our services for you instead of marketing spend.

We use: Google Analytics

Turning cookies off

You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies (learn how here). Doing so however will likely limit the functionality of our’s, and a large proportion of the world’s websites, as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.

It may be that your concerns around cookies relate to so called “spyware”. Rather than switching off cookies in your browser you may find that anti-spyware software achieves the same objective by automatically deleting cookies considered to be invasive. Learn more about managing cookies with antispyware software.

The cookie information text on this site was derived from content provided by Attacat Internet Marketing, a marketing agency based in Edinburgh.