This privacy policy explains how we use any information we collect about you, how you can tell us if you prefer to limit the use of that information, and procedures that we have in place to safeguard your privacy.

For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) the Data Controller is The United Road Transport Union (URTU) of Almond House, Oak Green, Stanley Green Business Park, Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire SK8 6QL, United Kingdom.

Summary of our Privacy Policy

Your privacy is extremely important to us. We only use the information you provide about yourself for the purposes of your trade union membership, when using this website to answer your enquiries or to help us to improve our service to you.

We do not share this information with any third party, unless such a transfer forms a necessary part of the Union’s activities, or is required by operation of the law. We may use return email addresses to answer any email we receive. We may also communicate with you using any method of communication you have given us as part of your membership record.

You may change your communication preferences at any time, by contacting Head Office.

Purposes of the processing and your consent to it

By completing an application to join the Union, you consent to formally ‘opt in’ to your personal data being used in accordance with the legitimate activities of the Union. We would, by accepting your application as a member, be fulfilling our obligations, as an association with a Trade Union aim, to you as our Member. These legitimate trade union activities include (but are not exclusively) the following:

• Administration and maintenance of your membership record, updating your record, dealing with queries, and recording communications with you.
• Activities in keeping with the membership of an association with a Trade Union aim, as detailed in our Union’s Rule Book and Diary, including (but not exclusively) the following:
  • Representation.
  • Legal support.
  • Ballots.
  • Personal Injury Benefit/Legal Assistance (Third Party Claims).
  • Incapacity/Accidental Death Benefit.
  • Legal Helpline Benefit.
  • Victimised Members’ Benefit.
  • Strike and Lock-out benefit.
  • Collective Bargaining.
  • Paying Union contributions.
  • Communication to all members through the medium of ‘Wheels’ magazine.
  • Training and Education.
  • Availability of a website, including secure member areas for you to access when you choose.

Marketing

By completing an application to join the Union, you do not give consent to your data being used for marketing purposes. You would need to give us your consent for us to do this. We will accordingly not knowingly pass your personal data on to any organisation for marketing purposes.

The information we collect

We may collect and process the following data about you:

• Information that you provide by completing an application on our site at www.urtu.com (our “Website”), on paper, by email and by telephone. This typically includes your name, your organisation’s name, your position, email address, business address and contact telephone number. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our site.
• If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
• Details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, web server statistics, traffic data, location data and details of the web pages and resources that you access.

The period for which personal data will be stored

We obtain data for a variety of purposes, commensurate with our legitimate union activities. There is no specific timescale which we could possibly adopt which would cover all data eventualities and scenarios. We have internal policies for document retention, which depend on the nature and circumstances of the data.

As a general principle, we endeavour to keep data only as long as is necessary. However, we are required by law to retain certain information for a specified time. In addition, some information is required for the purposes of maintaining an appropriate membership history, including both current and historical data. Finally, some information is held because the right balance has to be achieved between our obligations as a Data Processor and your rights as an individual.

Should you require further details of our document retention policies, please contact Head Office.

Our use of IP addresses and cookies

We may collect information about your computer, including (where available) your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to analyse aggregate information. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive. They help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us:

• To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.
• To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to user needs.
• To speed up your searches.
• To recognise you when you return to our site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

How we protect your information

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we make every effort to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of data that you transmit to our site over the internet; any transmission is therefore at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict internal procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

We also keep your information confidential. The internal policies and procedures of The United Road Transport Union (URTU) cover the storage, access and disclosure of your information.

Third parties – website links

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our clients and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

When we might legitimately disclose your data to third parties

We may disclose your personal information to third parties in a very limited number of circumstances:

• In the course of our legitimate activities as an association with a Trade Union aim, as described earlier in this Privacy Policy. We use preferred service providers in support of some of our activities, for example covering the benefits conferred by membership of our Union, and our IT management. We have taken steps to ensure these third party data processors manage the data responsibly and with the utmost respect for confidentiality and your privacy. Any third parties we use are strictly prohibited from using your personal data for any other purposes.
• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
• If The United Road Transport Union (URTU) or substantially all of its assets are acquired by a third party, in which case personal data held by it about its customers will be one of the transferred assets.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of The United Road Transport Union (URTU), our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Subject Access Requests

The GDPR gives you the right to access information held about you. When making a Subject Access Request, we would request that you specify in writing what type of information you require. We have thirty days from the date of your request to supply the information, unless the complexity and amount of information requested would clearly involve more time. We will always be as helpful as possible in providing what we can, and we undertake to provide the information free of charge whenever possible.

We reserve the right to exempt any information from disclosure following legal advice. We also reserve the right to decline any request if it is unreasonably vague, excessive or leads to a disproportionate use of resources. Depending on the complexity and volume of information requested, we may also levy a reasonable fee to cover administrative costs.

Data transfers abroad

Owing to the global nature of the Internet infrastructure, the information you provide may inadvertently be transferred in transit to countries which do not have similar protections in place regarding your data and its use as set out in this policy. However, we have taken the steps outlined earlier to try to maintain the security of your information, and we do not knowingly transfer data.

Contact Details

We welcome your views about our website and our privacy policy. If you have any queries or comments, or if any of the information that you have provided to The United Road Transport Union (URTU) changes, please contact us at Head Office.

Effective date of this Privacy Policy

This policy document is effective from 25 May 2018. We undertake to review it on a regular basis and update it if appropriate. Any updated versions will include the effective date of update.

Second revision dated 25 July 2022.