RHS Green skills

Issued: 3rd February 2023

Privacy Notice (How we use your personal data).

1. What is an information privacy notice?

It explains how the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) uses your personal information. This Privacy Notice should be read by you and your parent or guardian.

2. Introduction

The RHS is a charity registered in England and Wales (reg. no. 222879) and Scotland (SC038262). We are the United Kingdom’s leading gardening charity. You can find out more about the RHS at www.rhs.org.uk.  

We have created this Privacy Notice to let you know what information we will collect about you, why, what we will do with that information, how we share and keep your information safe, how you can access the information and how to contact us.

This notice is for anyone making a request for a work experience placement at any RHS garden, and anyone who is successful and offered a work experience placement. We respect your privacy rights as individuals, and we will use your personal data responsibly and in accordance with the Data Protection law.

If you are unsure about the contents of this Privacy Notice, or you have any questions, please contact the New Shoots team newshoots@rhs.org.uk or the RHS Data Protection Officer dataprotectionoffice@rhs.org.uk.

3. What personal information do we collect?

We use your information when it is submitted to request work experience at one of our gardens, and if successful to complete a work experience placement. We collect the following personal information:

When you apply will collect the following information-

• Your personal details: Your name, email address, postal address and date of birth;
• School/college information: Address, contact name and e-mail so we can make sure we complete any information your school needs for you to complete work experience.

If you are offered work experience, then we will also collect the following information:

• Disability or health information (optional): Information about any disabilities or your health where it would be necessary for us to make reasonable adjustments for you. We have a legal obligation to ensure that we make reasonable adjustments for applicants with disabilities.
• Diversity information (optional): This information will be collected anonymously and will be Information about you, your needs and things that are important to you, and includes your ethnicity, your religion and any disabilities you may have;
• Parent/guardian information: Their name, phone number, email address and postal address, so we can contact them if there is an emergency.
• Other information: Information about you may also be collected and recorded during your work experience placements such as feedback from team hosts on your performance whilst working with us that can be shared with your school or parents, and your feedback on how well we provided you useful work experience. 

4. Why do we use this information?

We use this information to review applications to work experience placements, offer a placement to individuals, and ensure that placements are safe and suitable and to monitor the diversity of individuals who undertake work experience at RHS gardens. Our role is to:

• Safeguard and protect you;
• Provide a useful placement that gives you a good understanding of what work at the RHS and in horticulture is like;
• Make sure we provide accessible work experience to individuals of all backgrounds fairly;

We use anonymised diversity information to better understand diversity in our work and make sure we comply with equality laws. We collect diversity information directly from you or your parents/guardians by asking you to complete an anonymous online survey. It is your choice (and their choice) to decide what information to share with us. 

We also may use your personal information where we consider it necessary for complying with the law (for example; health and safety, anti-discrimination laws).

5. Where do we collect your information from?

We collect this information:

• Directly from you from the information you submit on this application form and after you have been offered a work experience placement or during face-to-face meetings when you start a work experience at one of our gardens. This will include confirming emergency contact details (if not already provided) and sizes for the purposes of providing protective clothing such as safety boots;
• during meetings with your school/college to organise work experience;
• from your parent/guardians in telephone calls or face-to-face meetings;

6. What will we use your information for?

We will use the information you, your parents/guardians and your school/college provide to:

• Make sure you are the minimum age to complete work experience at one of our gardens;
• decide, based on your application and available spaces, if we can offer you work experience;
• if you are offered work experience, we will use the information you provide to plan for your placement considering what you want to achieve, what team we can place you with and how we can safeguard to protect you while you are with us;
• keep an anonymous record of feedback and diversity of individuals who complete work experience at RHS gardens to improve the work experience we provide and monitor progress in making work experience accessible to all, no matter what your background.

7. Who will we share your personal information with?

The information you provide may be shared with:

• Your parents/guardians
• Your school/college

Certain information, including your name and disability or health information may be shared with your RHS team host, where we need to make additional plans for your work experience to keep you safe.  No access to your information will be provided to anyone else in the RHS unless there is an emergency (for example we need to share some information with an RHS First Aider).

Anonymous diversity information will be shared in the RHS and at an overall level with external organisations, for example those providing support or funding for our work.

We may also disclose personal information to third parties if required by the law, for example in response to lawful requests by public authorities such as the Police.

8. Legal basis for processing your personal information

Our legal basis for collecting and using your personal information will depend on the specific context in which we collect and use it. However, we will normally collect personal information from you only where we have consent from you or your parent/guardian (if you are under 16) to do so, where we need it to grant or arrange work experience for you.

If you have questions about the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact the New Shoots team or the Data Protection Officer.

9. How long do we keep your personal information for?

We will keep your personal information for the following periods of time:

• If you have applied for work experience, but we were unable to give you work experience, we will remove your personal information within four weeks from the time we tell you your application has not been successful.
• If we can offer you work experience, we will remove your personal information within four weeks of the last day of your work experience.
• Any time after applying, if you would like us to remove that application and your personal details you can request this from the New Shoots team, who will delete your information within four weeks.
• We will keep anonymous information about the diversity (where you provide it) of individuals who complete work experience for up to three years.

Any time after being told your application was unsuccessful, or after completing work experience, you can submit a new application and your information will be kept again as described above.

10. Can we correct your information?

If you think any information, we hold about you is wrong, you can ask us to correct it;

• You can contact the New Shoots team at newshoots@rhs.org.uk;   
• We will correct the information if it is wrong. If there is some information that you believe is wrong, but we think it is right, we will record what you told us about this information.

11. Can you have a copy of your information?

Yes you can get a copy of the information that the RHS holds about you – please contact the New Shoots team at newshoots@rhs.org.uk and a member of the team will help.

12. How do we keep your information safe?

Your information will be kept in our secure online work experience system (Better Impact). Only members of the New Shoots team and the system administrators in our People Services team will have access to this information.

13. How can you contact us?

You can contact the New Shoots team any time by e-mailing newshoots@rhs.org.uk. If you are not happy with the response (or do not receive a response) from the New Shoots team, then you can contact our Data Protection Officer at:

The Data Protection Officer

Royal Horticultural Society

80 Vincent Square

London

SW1P 2PE

dataprotectionofficer@rhs.org.uk

Tel: 020 7821 3644

If you are concerned about how we use your information, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/contact-us-public/, who ensure organisations comply with data protection laws.

14. Updates to this Privacy Notice

This notice may be updated periodically to reflect any necessary changes. If (or when) that happens and we still hold personal information about you, we will inform you. The notice will show when it was most recently updated.