Privacy policy

Who we are

The Witham Hall Ltd is a registered charity and runs The Witham.  Our income comes from grants, ticket sales, sale of refreshments, sponsorships and individual donations.

The Charity Registered in England and Wales number 1146726, and a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales number 06959661.

We aim to be clear when we collect your data and not do anything you wouldn’t reasonably expect. Developing a better understanding of our customers and supporters through their personal data helps us programme arts and cultural activities that we hope our customers are going to enjoy.  

This privacy policy sets out the ways in which we use your data and how you can hold us accountable for that.

Read The Witham Privacy Policy.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

You give us your information when you buy a ticket over the counter, by phone or online via our website; by donating; or by communicating with us. We also keep your details when you sign up to receive emails from us.

When we ask you to provide your personal information, we will let you know why we are asking and how we will use your data, by directing you towards this notice.

The information we hold about you may include:

  • Your name
  • Postal Address
  • Telephone Number
  • Email Address
  • Ticketing history
  • Billing information
  • Donation history
  • Your preferences for how we communicate with you about our activities
  • Preferences and interests
  • Information that is available publicly

We maintain a record of your transaction history, but we never store your payment card number.

We keep a record of the emails we send you via MailChimp, and we may track whether you receive or open them, so we can make sure we are sending you the most relevant information. We may then track any subsequent actions online, such as buying a ticket.

Legal Basis

There are three bases under which we may process your data:

  • Contract purposes

When you make a purchase from us or donate to us, you are entering into a contract with us. To execute this contract, we need to process and store your data. For example, we may need to contact you by email or telephone in the case of cancellation of a show, or in the case of problems with your payment, we will also send confirmation by email for orders you make online.

  • Legitimate business interests

In certain situations, we collect and process your personal data for purposes that are in our legitimate organisational interests. However, we only do this if there is no overriding prejudice to you by using your personal information in this way. We describe below all situations where we may use this basis for processing in the Other Processing Activities section.

  • With your explicit consent

For any situations where the two bases above are not appropriate, we will instead ask for your explicit consent before using your personal information in that specific situation.

When visitors leave comments on our site, we automatically collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string. This helps to detect and prevent spam.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Other ways we collect data include:

1. Media

To enhance your privacy, if you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. This is so that visitors to the website will not be able to download and extract location data from your images.

2. Cookies

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

3. Embedded content from other websites

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Who we share your data with

We will not share any of your personal details with any other third parties without your agreement, unless required to fulfil our contract with you or allowed by law. You will be asked if you consent to the data sharing when booking a ticket.

In general, the third-party organisations are those we use to provide services and will only be to the extent necessary to allow them to perform the services they provide to us. These providers include our Ticketing System provider (Ticket Source) and email distribution service (Mailchimp) and credit card company and payment clearing houses. We have agreements in place with each to ensure that your data is secure and cannot be accessed or used for any other purpose. Some of these third parties may be intermediaries that act solely as links in the distribution chain, and do not store, retain, or use the information given to them.

We may share anonymous ticket information with other organisations, particularly The Audience Agency and The Arts Council. These organisations use this information to analyse tickets sales for national and regional research into Arts attendance in England (for instance, comparison sales trends over time and geographical comparisons). Undertaking this analysis and review the data assists us with reporting to funders and to undertake strategic planning. Your personal data is never sold onto any other agencies or companies.

When booking a ticket, you may be given the choice to also hear from the management or promoter of the show or the artistic company themselves. Under these circumstances and only with you consent we will pass your data to the relevant company and they will be in touch with you to communicate their own Privacy and Data Policy. Should you then wish not to hear from them, please get in touch with them direct.

How long we retain your data

We understand that your personal information and privacy are important to you. We make every effort to ensure that the information you share with us is recorded accurately, retained securely and used only according to your wishes. We protect your personal information and adhere to all current data protection act legislation with respect to protecting privacy. We do not give out, sell or trade our mailing list data with third parties.

The information you provide will be used to primarily to protect your purchases and attendance at events and keep you informed about our activities. The information we share with funders is always anonymous and enables us to demonstrate the impacts of our work the difference that the funding has made.

We will hold personal data on our internal systems indefinitely. We undertake data management reviews on a regular basis. Automatic database cleansing will also take place through Mail Chimp’s management of our e-communications system and specifically if you unsubscribe to the Newsletter. Mail Chimp is the electronic system we use for storing and managing personal data of those wishing to receive e-newsletters from us. The ticketing system updates Mail Chimp based on a data subjects consent to receive information and vice-versa if you unsubscribe on receipt of a newsletter.

You can sign up to e-communications (newsletter emails) on our website, by e-mailing us or by completing a postcard/form to keep you in touch with news, events, fundraising activities and current opportunities. You can opt out of receiving information at any time by following the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email.

If you are booking onto an event over the telephone or in person, we will tell you that your personal data is being held for us to manage the event for which you are buying tickets. We will direct you to our privacy policy for more information. We will also ask you for consent to receive updates via email regarding our products and services and as appropriate information from a named third party. When you attend a workshop or activity you may be asked to complete a registration form or be asked for your contact details for a register. Information about opting in will be clearly stated at the top of the registration form and register. By completing the forms and registers, you are giving us permission to hold the personal information given for monitoring and reporting purposes. We may also contact you during the activity for administrative reasons e.g. if there is a change to time or date. We may share this data with the workshop leader but you will be asked to consent to receiving further information from them in the future, if applicable

What rights you have over your data

You have the following rights related to your personal data:

  • The right to request a copy of personal information held about you
  • The right to request that inaccuracies be corrected
  • The right to request us to stop processing your personal data
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office or Fundraising Regulator

How we protect your data

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order, to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

Your personal data will be held and processed The Witham in conjunction with our external suppliers of data processing e.g. Ticket Source and Mail Chimp. Where possible we aim to keep a single record for each customer.

Your data is always held securely. Access to customer information is strictly controlled. It is held in the UK and the processes are EU compliant.

We may need to disclose your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies or legal advisors.