Privacy Policy

Upper Nar Gardeners' Privacy Policy

Last updated: 20 October 2026

Who we are

Upper Nar Gardeners (UNG) is an informal, not-for-profit gardening group based around the upper River Nar in Norfolk. It is run by two volunteer organisers. We are an unincorporated association, not a company or registered charity.

UNG is the "controller" of the personal information described below, under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

If you have any question about this notice or your information, contact the group's administrator:

• Email: admin@uppernargardeners.uk

• Telephone: 0330 102 7467 (select option 3)

• Online: our Contact form

What information we hold

We keep only what we need to run the group.

Members (our mailing list). Your name and email address, and your phone number if you have given it to us. Couples may share a single entry.

Open Gardens participants. If you open your garden for one of our Open Gardens events, we also hold the postal address of your garden. With your agreement, the garden's address or location may be published in the event programme, map and website.

Event attendance. We ask members to tell us if they plan to attend an event, so we can plan numbers. We note this against your entry on the mailing list, so that further details about the event go only to people who are attending. For some visits, we print a list of attendees to tick off as people arrive and pay, and destroy it after the visit. Payments for talks and visits are in cash. We do not record payers' names in our accounts, and we do not hold any bank or card details.

Speakers, garden owners and hosts. We hold contact details for the people we arrange talks and visits with.

Photos and articles. With the permission of the people concerned, we sometimes publish photos of members' gardens, together with a first name or name, on our website.

We do not collect sensitive information (for example about health, religion or political views), and our activities are not aimed at children.

How and why we use it

Who can see your information

The only people with access are our two organisers. We use the following services to store information and send email:

• Google Workspace (email, the membership spreadsheet and our website, which runs on Google Sites). Google may process data outside the UK, protected by the safeguards in its terms of service.

• Our telephone provider, for calls and messages to our 0330 number.

We never sell your information. We do not share it with anyone else, including the suppliers who offer discount codes, unless you have asked us to or the law requires us to.

How long we keep it

• Mailing list: until you ask to be removed. [Every two years] we also remove addresses that no longer work.

• Open Gardens garden addresses: until the end of that event. If you are happy for us to contact you about future Open Gardens, we keep them until you tell us otherwise.

• Event attendance: the attending column on the mailing list is [cleared before the next event]. Paper check-in lists are destroyed after the visit.

• Speaker and host contact details: for as long as we are likely to work with them again.

How we keep it safe

Information is held in a Google Workspace account protected by 2-step verification, and only the two organisers can reach it. Our monthly emails are sent individually, so members cannot see each other's email addresses.

Your rights

You have the right to:

• ask for a copy of the information we hold about you;

• ask us to correct it;

• ask us to delete it;

• object to how we use it, or ask us to restrict how we use it;

• withdraw your consent at any time;

• receive your information in a portable format.

To use any of these rights, contact us using the details above. We may need to confirm your identity. We will make a reasonable search for your information and respond within one month.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please tell us first, by email or through our Contact form. Please say that it is a data protection complaint. We will:

• acknowledge your complaint within 30 days;

• look into it and reply to you without undue delay;

• tell you what we have done, and the outcome.

If you are still not satisfied, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

• Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

• Helpline: 0303 123 1113

Data protection fee

Small not-for-profit groups that only process information about their members and supporters do not have to pay the ICO's data protection fee. We last checked this using the ICO's self-assessment tool on 20 Oct 2026. Being exempt from the fee does not exempt us from data protection law, and we follow it in full.

Changes to this notice

If we change this notice in a way that affects how we use your information, we will tell members by email.