Privacy Policy

About us

The UK Savings Week website is operated and run by the Building Societies Association (BSA).

The Building Societies Association (BSA) is a trade association. Our members are all UK building societies and some of the largest UK credit Unions. Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand how we treat your personal data that we collect through the UK Savings Week website.

We promise to respect your privacy and look after the personal data you share with us.

We will keep it safe and will not share it with third parties unless they provide services for us in connection with the website, we have your consent to do so, or we are legally required to do so. Third parties that provide services to us in connection with the website include:

  • MailChimp (https://mailchimp.com), which collects, stores and processes personal data you provide by signing up to #takethesavingschallenge; and
  • Tall (https://tall.agency/), our website design agency, which hosts any personal data you submit through the contact form on the UK Savings Week website.

The BSA is the data controller of personal data that we collect through the UK Savings Week website. This means that we are responsible for ensuring that your personal data is handled fairly and in accordance with the relevant legal requirements. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (the ICO) under registration number Z6542797.

Our data protection officer can be contacted at [email protected]. If you have any questions or would like to discuss further, you can call us on: 020 7520 5900 or write to us at 6th Floor, York House, 23 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6UJ.

What we collect

We collect and process the following information provided by you:

  • When you sign up to #takethesavingschallenge, we collect your email address.
  • If you use the contact form on the UK Savings Week website to contact us, we collect:
    • your name;
    • your email address;
    • any other contact details you provide; and
    • any other personal data that you provide in the contact form, for example as part of your query. You should bear this in mind and make sure you only provide personal data that you are happy for us to handle.
  • If you engage with us via social media, for example by using the #takethesavingschallenge hashtag or by sending us a message, we will be able to see any personal data you provide as part of that communication and we will process it through that social media platform.

We take all reasonable steps to ensure that the information we hold about you is accurate and you should contact us if any personal data we hold about you is inaccurate (for example you should let us know if you get a new email address).

There is no statutory or contractual requirement to provide personal data to us. However, we only collect personal data when you voluntarily give it to us because you either want to receive our monthly savings emails, or you contact us through the website. If you don’t give us your personal data, we won’t be able to provide these service for you.

We will never ask you to provide your bank details, account information or any other sensitive information. If you receive any communication purporting to be from UK Savings Week or the BSA requesting such information, please do not give up your information and let us know by emailing [email protected].

What we do with the information we collect

When you sign up to #takethesavingschallenge, we will use your email address to:

  • send you a monthly newsletter with selected content relating to UK Savings Week;
  • invite you to participate in online polls. When you participate in a poll, we will be able to see your response, but we only use these responses to collect aggregated information about how people are participating in the challenge; and
  • contact you at the end of the savings challenge to ask you for views on the newsletter and UK Savings Week.

If you contact us using the contact form on the UK Savings Week website, we will use the personal data you provide to:

  • deal with your query; and
  • contact you in connection with your query.

Our legal basis for processing your personal data

Data protection law says that we have to have a “lawful basis” in place to process your personal data. There is a specific list of lawful bases that we can rely on. The lawful bases that we use to process your personal data are:

  • When you sign up to #takethesavingschallenge and we contact you in connection with the challenge, we do this on the basis that it is in our legitimate interests. We have an interest in promoting UK Savings Week and engaging with as many people as possible to ensure that savings information and tips can be accessed by a broad pool of people. When you sign up to #takethesavingschallenge, you are telling us that you are happy to receive these communications, but you can opt out of them at any time.
  • When you submit information through our contact form and we use that information to handle your query and contact you in relation to it, we also do this on the basis that it is in our legitimate interest. In this case, our interest is making sure that any queries or issues are appropriately dealt with, to maintain our relationships with members of the public who engage with us through the website.

Third parties

We will never sell or licence your personal data to any third party.

We use certain suppliers who will have access to your personal data as required in order for them to provide their services and ensure that the UK Savings Week website and #takethesavingschallenge can run smoothly and efficiently. These suppliers are:

  • MailChimp, an email marketing company that we use to store your email address and send our monthly emails out to you if you sign up to #takethesavingschallenge;
  • Tall, a website design agency which hosts our website and any personal data you submit to our contact form.

We use a communications agency to create our monthly emails, but they do not have access to your personal data.

We may disclose your personal data to other third parties:

  • if we are under a specific legal or regulatory duty to do so;
  • if we have your consent to do so;
  • if required for the purposes of fraud reduction, prevention or detection; or
  • if our members decide that the BSA should merge, in whole or part, with a third party/alternative trade association, in which case any personal data that the BSA holds will be one of the transferred assets.

Security

Please be aware that the transmission of information via the internet cannot be completely secure. Although we will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy, we cannot totally guarantee the security of your data transmitted on the website, via email or via social media.

The website may contain links to and from other websites. If you follow a link to any other website, please note that that these websites will have their own privacy policies and you should check them before providing any personal data. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.

Where we store your data

The BSA uses MailChimp as a “data processor” to send our monthly emails out to you if you sign up to #takethesavingschallenge. This means that MailChimp collects, stores and processes your data on our behalf and we remain responsible for ensuring that MailChimp handles your personal data appropriately.

MailChimp’s headquarters are in the United States and its servers are also located in the United States. This means data it processes will be stored and processed in the United States.

Personal data protection laws in the United States are not as strong as they are in the UK. However, MailChimp has put in place some safeguards to make sure that your personal data is protected to a similar standard when it is processed by MailChimp in the United States. These include:

  • MailChimp is registered with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which means it commits to certain principles of protection of personal data which the European Commission considers are appropriate.
  • MailChimp contractually commits to transfer and process all data about UK individuals in compliance with the UK’s International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU’s Standard Contractual Clauses. This means that MailChimp has signed up to contractual obligations requiring it to protect your personal data in a similar way to the UK legal requirements.
  • MailChimp has strong security measures in place, including encryption and processes to restrict and control third-party access to data it processes.

How long we keep your data

We will retain your personal data for the duration of the #takethesavingschallenge campaign, and any future campaigns or activities that you’d like to be involved with. We keep the responses to any polls that you submit for 30 days before deleting or anonymising them, and we keep any personal data you submit through our contact form for 30 days.  

Your rights

You have a number of rights in relation to your personal data. You can exercise any of these rights by contacting our data protection officer at [email protected]. Further information and guidance about your rights can be found on the ICO’s website, under the heading “Your rights”: https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/. Some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances, or are subject to exceptions. If you ask us to exercise one of these rights, and we are not able to comply for any reason, we will let you know and tell you why this is. Otherwise, we will respond to your request within one month, unless your request is complex or you have made several different requests, in which case we are allowed to extend this to three months.

The rights you have are:

  • The right to be informed – You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your information and your rights. This is why we are providing you with the information in this policy.
  • The right of access – You have a right to ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
  • The right to rectification – You have the right to have your information corrected if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • The right to erasure – This is also called the right to be forgotten. It enables you to request the deletion or removal of your personal data, in certain circumstances, where there is no compelling reason for us to keep it.
  • The right to restrict processing – You have the right to block or supress further use of your information, in certain circumstances. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further. We will keep a list of people who have asked for further use of their information to be blocked to make sure the restriction is respected.
  • The right to data portability – You have the right to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services. This right applies when we are processing your personal data based on consent or on a contract and the processing is carried out electronically.
  • The right to object – You have the right to object to certain types of processing, including where we process your data for direct marketing purposes.
  • The right to withdraw consent – If you have given the BSA consent to use your personal data (including consent to receive monthly emails from us) you may withdraw that consent at any time by:
  • clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email we send to you; or
  • contacting us at [email protected].

You also have the right to complain or raise any concerns you have with the ICO who can be contacted by telephoning 0303 123 113 or writing to Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. If you do have any concerns about our processing of your personal data, we would be grateful if you would raise these with us first, so that we can work with you to resolve them.

Cookies

The UK Savings Week website uses cookies to improve and customise your experience of using it. For detailed information on the cookies we use and the purpose for which we use them see our Cookie Policy.

Contacting us

You can get in contact with us by emailing us at [email protected] or writing to us at BSA, 6th Floor, York House, 23 Kingsway, London, WC2B 6UJ.

Changes to our privacy policy

This privacy policy is subject to review and may be updated from time to time in which case we will publish the amended version on the UK Savings Week website. We will tell you if we make any changes to the purposes for which we use your personal data.