Privacy Policy
In a Nutshell...
Our website has an online form for membership applications and provides email addresses where you can contact us. This means we have to publish a Privacy Policy, explaining what data we may collect, what we need it for and what we do with it.
Lymm Runners collects only the data we need to conduct a running club. We follow best practice on handling and storing it, and we don’t share it with anyone other than England Athletics – unless we are obliged to, or permitted to by law.
Introduction
The website is maintained by Lymm Runners. For the purposes of data protection legislation, Lymm Runners is the data controller. When your data is shared with England Athletics, Lymm Runners and England Athletics become Joint Controllers.
Lymm Runners is the owner of www.lymmrunners.org and we are committed to protecting your privacy and processing your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This Policy explains what information we collect about you, why, and how it is used and kept securely. It also explains your privacy choices when using our website as well as your right to access your information under GDPR.
Our Social Media Policy includes important advice about protecting privacy, and the use of photographs taken during club training sessions.
The information we collect about you
As a new or existing club member we collect the following information about you via our online membership form:
- Your name, date of birth, gender, email address, address, telephone number, emergency contact data nominated by you, and (for our coaches, leaders and club officials), details of any coaching or officiating licences you hold. Collectively, this is referred to as your Athletics Data.
We may collect photographs of you as a participant in our races, events and training sessions.
How we use your information
Depending upon the nature of your request to us, we may use your personal information for a number of purposes, including:
If you email us with an enquiry we use your personal information to:
- Contact you with a response to your enquiry.
If you apply for club membership, we use your personal information to:
- Process your membership request and payments.
- Share required data with relevant committee members (Club Officials) and with England Athletics.
- Provide you with information about club sessions, competitions, activities, membership renewals, social events and key policy or overnance changes.
- Share and publish race and competition results.
- Invite you to join the Lymm Runners closed Facebook group.
If you participate in club events (training and/or races, fun runs etc) we use your personal information to:
- Record your race performance (finish time and/or position). See also Race Photography below.
- Share relevant data with club coaches or officials to administer training sessions / events.
- Share anonymised data with a funding partner as condition of grant funding e.g Local Authority, County Sports Partnership.
- Analyse anonymised data to monitor club trends.
If you participate in club team events e.g. cross-country league we may use your personal information to:
- Share data with club captain / team managers to enter events.
- Share data with leagues, county associations and other competition providers for entry in their events.
If you submit an Accident Report Form, we may use your personal information to:
- Follow-up on possible health and safety or welfare issues.
- Record (anonymised/statistical) accident data experienced during club activities.
Event Marketing Communication (where separate consent is provided) we may use your personal information to:
- Send you information about our organised race events.
Race & event photography
Photographs and/or video will be recorded at our Races and club events.
The intended purpose of the photographs is to commemorate your participation in the event and provide a lasting record of your achievement. However, in making images available for review and download, the images are published in the public domain.
By entering our events you grant us the right to make such media available for download from our website. Lymm Runners may also use appropriate images in press releases and printed publicity.
Note: Please be aware that, when coupled with the published results, bib numbers visible in photographs can be used to identify you personally.
Why we need your personal data
Your Athletics Data is required so we can administer your membership and provide the services you are registering for (i.e. your participation within an EA affiliated running club).
For training and competition entry
- To share your personal data with club coaches or officials to administer training sessions and events.
- To share your personal data with club team managers to enter events.
For funding and reporting purposes
- To share anonymised data with a funding partner as condition of grant funding e.g. Active Cheshire or regional partners to Sport England etc.
- To analyse anonymised data to monitor club trends.
- To invite your views on our club offering and your experience as a club member. Periodically we will seek your views using Google Forms.
For membership and club management
- To process membership forms and payments; respond to any queries you may raise, and generally manage our relationship with you.
- To administer club activities and fulfill our duty of care and legal responsibilities.
- To keep you informed of club events, activities and any changes in our policies newsletters and emails are distributed via the club database within EA.
- To publish race and competition results.
Any personal and sensitive data provided by you (e.g. fitness/ health/ medical data) is processed on the lawful basis of consent. Therefore, we require your explicit consent to process this data to be granted at the point of collecting it.
Social media groups
The club has various social media accounts that enable club news and activities to be shared with members - and in some cases, with a wider public. All members are encouraged to join the private groups as they enable the club to communicate important announcements and updates quickly.
Closed groups (for club members only) include:
- Lymm Runners – Group for Current Members Facebook group
- Lymm Runners Community WhatsApp groups
Note - only group administrators can post to the Lymm Runners Community WhatsApp groups.
The club has a Social Media Policy which outlines acceptable use of our groups.
Meta (owner of Facebook and WhatsApp) publish their own privacy policies: Facebook Privacy Statement, and WhatsApp Privacy Policy UK. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data on the club social media pages.
Protecting your data
- The Internet is not generally a secure medium for communication and therefore we cannot guarantee the security of any information you send to us over the Internet.
- As a local club managed entirely by volunteers, the data that we collect from you is transferred via email. This means it will be held on various email file servers used by the club committee, officials and key club communicators.
- Your data is held in protected folders within the cloud (Google Drive). This storage has inbuilt security and access is restricted to – and controlled by – the Club Committee.
- Where practicable, we protect your data via password-protection of file attachments and/or file encryption.
- The club social media channels are used to promote the club; inform our members of events and competitions; share club news, and to celebrate members’ achievements. Such promotion includes press releases to print publishers (Lymm Life, Warrington Guardian etc); posts to our club website and social media pages; and interviews on local radio. Once in the public domain, the privacy of data cannot be easily managed.
- By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing.
- We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.
- A PII (Person-Identifiable Information) data map and risk assessment is available on request from Compliance@lymmrunners.org.uk.
Data retention
Data that we collect from you will be deleted in accordance with timescales set out below:
- Athletics Data: Four years after an individual has not renewed their membership
- Personal and Sensitive Data (e.g. emergency contacts or medical information): as short a time as possible.
Note, we store this data securely,
limit access to it to only relevant officials,
and delete it when it is no longer required.
- Accident Report Data: Accident Report Data is made available only to club Welfare Officers and is held for as short a time as possible. Anonymised records of accidents are held indefinitely to enable the monitoring of club safety.
- Published race results and Club Records: Indefinitely but please note that race results are freely available online from many sources. Lymm Runners cannot manage data controlled by third-parties.
Data privacy & England Athletics
Lymm Runners is affiliated to England Athletics (EA). As an affiliated club, we provide your Athletics Data to EA and this enables access to an online portal for you (called myAthletics). EA will contact you to invite you to sign into and update your MyAthletics portal (which, amongst other things, allows you to set and amend your privacy settings).
The user terms and conditions of the myAthletics portal includes advice on privacy dos and don’ts.
Refer to https://myathleticsportal.englandathletics.org/Home/Terms
If you have any questions about the sharing of your personal data with EA and its continuing privacy, please contact dataprotection@englandathletics.org
Other third parties
GoCardless Ltd
From 2020, we have used GoCardless for the processing of membership fees. GoCardless is a third-party online payment service that enables individual payers (club members) to make an online payment of membership fees. Payments are processed by GoCardless on behalf of the merchant (Lymm Runners), and paid directly into the Lymm Runners account.
In line with other digital payment processing services, GoCardless use personal data including: identification, contact, financial, transaction and connection data to provide their payment services, prevent fraud and to provide essential communication. The privacy statement for payers using GoCardless can be found on the GoCardless website.
Eventbrite
Some Lymm Runners events, including the Annual General Meeting, may be promoted and booked using Eventbrite. This is a third-party service that is not owned or managed by Lymm Runners.
Eventbrite have their own terms and conditions, and privacy policies. They are committed to ensuring compliance with European data protection requirements. For further details, please refer to the Privacy Policy available from the Eventbrite website.
Website cookies
What are cookies?
A cookie is a piece of text that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk in order to remember who you are. Cookies interact with your computer and our website faster and easier by remembering the registration details and preferences from previous visits. Typically, a cookie will contain the name of the website from which the cookie has come, the lifetime of the cookie and a value. The use of cookies does not give us access to the rest of your computer and only the site that created the cookie can read it.
The Lymm Runners website is created and published via WordPress and certain cookies are an essential requirement of using the WordPress platform. The WordPress Privacy Policy is available online: https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/
Lymm Runners will not use cookies to collect personally identifiable information about you. The cookies used do not track your Internet usage after leaving our website and do not store your personal information.
They will not be used in connection with any other information to identify you in any way.
By continuing to use this site you consent to the relevant cookies being set on your device.
Automatically collected access information
- Essential technical information: identification of the page or service you are requesting, type of browser and operating system you are using; and the date and time of access.
- Nonessential technical information: the Internet address of the web site from which you linked directly to our web site, and the “cookie information” described below
This website uses the following types of cookies:
- Session cookies – these are temporary cookies that remain in the internet browser’s folder of your computer until you close the browser. Our website uses a session cookie which is stored in your browser until you close it to ensure connections to our servers are distributed evenly to provide optimal performance.
- Persistent/Permanent cookies – these remain in the internet browser’s folder of your computer for longer than the time you are visiting this website. We need to use a cookie to remember your refusal of our use of cookies. This cookie does not store any other information and is not used for any other purposes. If you delete your browsing history including cookies you will delete this cookie and will therefore need to readjust your browser setting again.
- Analytical cookies – Lymm Runners WordPress website uses Google Analytics (third party cookie). They are used for the following purposes:
- a cookie to record the time of your: first visit to website; most recent visit and your current visit
- a cookie to record how long you stayed on the website
- a cookie to manage the number of requests from the current page to other site resources.
Can I opt out of cookies?
Yes you can restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, and you can do so by accessing your Internet browser settings. The ’Help’ function within your browser should tell you how.
For general information about cookies and how to disable them, please visit: http://www.allaboutcookies.org
However, please be aware that restricting cookies may impact on the functionality of the websites you visit. For information on how to manage cookies on a mobile phone, games console or internet-enabled television, you should refer to the operations manual specific to each device. To opt out of any third-parties using cookies where data about your interaction with our website is collected, please refer to their website for this information.
Data legislation compliance
You have the following rights under data protection legislation:
- To access a copy of your personal data the club holds;
- To object to processing of your personal data that is likely to cause or is causing damage or distress;
- To prevent processing for direct marketing;
- To object to decisions being taken by automated means;
- In certain circumstances, to have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed
- To claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of data protection legislation.
Complaints
If you are currently receiving unwanted communications from Lymm Runners, or if you have any concerns or complaints in relation to how we collect or process your data, please let us know! Contact Compliance@lymmrunners.org.uk in the first instance.
If you are dissatisfied with how your concern/complaint is dealt with by Lymm Runners, you have the right to report your concern/complaint to the Information Commissioners Office (www.ico.org.uk).
Finding out what information Lymm Runners holds about you
Under Data Protection Legislation, you can ask to see any personal information that we hold about you. Such requests are called subject access requests. If you would like to make a subject access request, please email: Compliance@lymmrunners.org.uk.
You will also need to provide two forms of identification, for example, driving licence, utility bill or passport and, if appropriate, any particulars about the source or location of the information you are requesting.
Policy updates
We regularly review our Privacy Policy and updates will appear on this page when necessary. All members must accept the terms of this policy and permit us to process their data as described in it. Explicit consent for this is sought at membership application and at renewal.
This Privacy Policy was last updated in February 2025.