Privacy policy

Protecting your privacy is very important to us. So that you can feel in control of your personal information, we want to be clear with you about the information we collect and how it is used..

Collecting personal information

The Royal College of Nursing is a membership organisation, trade union and professional body. Together with the RCN Foundation, an independent charitable Foundation and RCN Publishing Co Ltd (RCNi) our media company providing up-to-date health care information for the whole nursing workforce, we are the RCN Group.

To help us provide a service to our members, customers and employees, the RCN Group collects and processes certain personal information as described below:

• RCN: To help us provide our services including administering membership records, balloting members, organising activities, promoting what we do, or supporting and managing our employees.
• RCNi: To enable us to create, produce and distribute digital and printed material, to provide digital products and services, and promote our events, products and services; to maintain our accounts and records; to support and manage our employees.
• RCN Foundation - To enable us to provide a voluntary service for the benefit of the national public as specified in our constitution; to fundraise and promote the interests of the charity; manage our employees and volunteers; maintain our own accounts and records.

Some of this information is provided by, and personally identifies you. For example your name, email address, home address and bank details.

We also collect information from the RCN Group services you’ve used. For example, searching our websites, signing up to an event or clicking an online advert. This helps us to find out what information is important to you so that we can improve the services we offer.

Using your personal information

We use the information provided by you to contact you in our role as a trade union for example, for campaigns or ballots. We use the information you provide us to deliver, tailor and improve our services.

We only keep your information for as long as you have a relationship with us and where there is a legitimate reason to do so.

• We retain casefiles for 7 years from closure date
• Full current Member data for the lifetime of the membership
• Former Member Data - Due to providing support services to any current and former member, for events which happened during their paid membership, we have to retain minimal data to identify former members and live membership dates

We may contact applicants who are successful in applying for one of our grants about opportunities to participate in marketing activity to promote the RCN Foundation grants.

We may contact you to invite you to participate in market research. By getting your views and feedback, it helps us improve our services and participation will always be voluntary.

If you provide your consent, we may send you direct marketing messages via email or share your information with third parties we work with. You can withdraw your consent through your membership preferences or by contacting dataprotection@rcn.org.uk.

We may use cookies to tailor your experience on our website and for analytical purposes. Cookie banners will appear, and you are able to choose whether you want to allow performance, functional and targeting cookies. You can change your cookie preference through our website at any time.

Who we can share your information with

We may share your information with other RCN Group companies, and any subcontractors, agents, or service providers who work for us or other RCN Group companies. We may also share your information with others outside of the RCN Group, such as regulators, or solicitors and barristers who may be supporting your case. With your permission, we may contact you on behalf of selected third parties.

Transferring your information overseas

We don’t often transfer your data outside of the United Kingdom. In instances where your information may be transferred and stored in countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA), including some that may not have laws that provide the same level of protection for personal information. When we do this, we’ll ensure your information has the appropriate level of protection, such as encryption.

Your rights

You have a number of rights in relation to the information that we hold about you. These rights include:

• the right to access information we hold about you and to obtain information about how we process it;
• in some circumstances, the right to withdraw your consent to our processing of your information, which you can do at any time. We may continue to process your information if we have another legitimate reason for doing so;
• in some circumstances, the right to receive certain information you have provided to us in an electronic format and/or request that we transmit it to a third party;
  the right to request that we rectify your information if it’s inaccurate or incomplete;
• in some circumstances, the right to request that we erase your information. We may continue to retain your information if we’re entitled or required to retain it;
• the right to object to, and to request that we restrict, our processing of your information in some circumstances. Again, there may be situations where you object to, or ask us to restrict, our processing of your information but we’re entitled to continue processing your information and/or to refuse that request.

All requests regarding the RCN’s data protection and privacy policy, including requests for access, should be sent by email to dataprotection@rcn.org.uk. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office by visiting www.ico.org.uk, or to the data protection regulator in the country where you live or work.