JNCC is the public body that advises the UK Government and devolved administrations on UK-wide and international nature conservation.
Purpose
This privacy notice tells you what to expect when the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) collects and uses personal information. We collect personal data as part of the work we carry out, notably:
- Using our website and contacting us
- Working with us
- Events and webcasts
- Public consultations
- Provision of advice on fisheries management
- Provision of advice to Animal and Plant Health Agency on applications for licensing under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
- Biodiversity recording schemes, shared data and open data
- Staff emergency contact details/next of kin
- If you have entered into a contract with us, for us to provide a service to you.
At the bottom of this privacy statement, you will find our contact details and links to additional privacy notices.
Please note if you go to another website from this one, read the privacy policy on that website to find out what it does with your information.
How we use your information
Using our website and contacting us
Queries, comments and requests – We store your contact details when you get in touch with us and the details of any query, comment or complaint you send, in order to respond. We are doing this in line with our legal obligation or public task (if relating to our statutory functions), or our legitimate interests (if relating to the other services we provide). This includes Freedom of Information requests, Environmental Information Regulations requests, requests for information relating to you (Subject Access Requests), and general enquiries. We will keep details of such communications for three years and will not share this information with others unless you ask us to.
Mailing lists – We have a number of mailing lists which individuals or organisations can sign up to, to stay informed on our activities; with consent, in line with our public task, or legitimate interests. We use Mailchimp for most of our mailing lists. We usually process mailing lists with consent, however, some will be based on public task/legitimate interests if we have contacted you about similar projects previously; this will usually be the case with business contacts. We will keep your information on the mailing lists until you tell us otherwise or we receive a bounce-back and will not use these mailing lists for any other purpose. Examples of our mailing lists include:
- For press releases where we have a duty to inform media outlets of many of our core activities. Members of the public can also sign up by contacting us.
- For updates on our Marine Protected Sites datasets or the work that we undertake on Marine Protected Areas. In particular, for formal notifications on updates to UK offshore MPAs and JNCC’s formal advice on these.
- For information on the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) as well as other Multilateral Environmental Agreements and related opportunities; sign-up up by joining the UK IPBES Stakeholder Network.
- For updates relating to our work on natural capital including opportunities to submit case studies. Sign-up by contacting us.
- The 'Nitrogen Futures' project mailing list – see below.
Website performance – We store and process your IP address when you visit our website for performance and security purposes in line with our public task and legitimate interests. We will store this information for six months, after which time it will be destroyed automatically.
Recruitment – For details of the information we collect when you apply for a job vacancy or placement with us please read our Recruitment Privacy Notice.
EMODnet – You can read about the information we collect if you use the EMODnet website in our EMODnet Privacy Notice.
Nitrogen Futures – The 'Nitrogen Futures' project will consider the available data on nitrogen emissions to develop scenarios for modelling different spatial targeting approaches for nitrogen mitigation measures. We may hold your name, the organisation you work for and your email address to send you information about the Nitrogen Futures project. We got your name and email address either from previous projects' participant lists, or organisations' websites which are publicly accessible sources. Some names/emails were suggested by other stakeholders as people that would be interested in the topic. We are processing this data under our public task working in the public interest.
Cookies – You can read more about how we use cookies on our Cookies webpage.
Working with us
Contributions – We will add your name on reports which may be publicly available where appropriate, if you have contributed to our work, in line with our public task or legitimate interests.
Sharing contacts – We collect and keep contact details of people who we work with and who we might work with in the future in order to progress our projects and fulfil our role. A key part of our work is to create links and share knowledge across projects, governments, statutory nature conservation bodies and industry. We may contact you about future work or share your contact details where we see benefit from you and the recipient in doing so and within our mission to improve decision-making for biodiversity and environmental sustainability, in line with our public task or legitimate interests.
Stakeholder mapping – We hold a database of stakeholders’ names, organisations, and email addresses. These were gathered from publicly available information and networking. This is to target stakeholders with appropriate information on JNCC's work, projects and/or bids. We do this in line with our legitimate interests and public task, working in the public’s interest to generate income and develop our work.
Bidding for work – If you are working with us, for example as a partner or contractor, we will collect your contact details, and may also collect your CV or biography. We use this information to bid for work as agreed with you, in line with our public task or legitimate interests depending on the nature of the work. Your personal data may be shared with other partners or funding bodies as needed and agreed within the project agreements or contract. Where the funding body is outside of the EU your personal data will only be shared where there are 'compelling legitimate interests' for us as partners. If we are unsure we will seek your consent before making the transfer. It may also be shared where we are required to under a legal obligation. Any information we have collected relating to unsuccessful funding bids will be destroyed within six months. Any information relating to a successful contract will be kept for 10 years after the contract ends; financial information will be deleted after seven years.
Evaluations and audit trail – Where we are contracting you, we may also create and hold evaluation forms in line with our public task or legitimate interests: to review the service provided to inform future procurement decisions. We will delete these after seven years in line with other contractual information. Where we have contracted you, or are working with you to create a report or product, we will retain audit trail documentation and may make this available to the public where needed and in line with the contract or agreement. Such information will be reviewed on a regular basis and will be retained until no longer needed.
Financial information – We collect and store details such as names, addresses and bank details of our suppliers, volunteers & delegates in order to make payments for expenses incurred and for goods and services received.
Arranging meetings – We use Doodlepoll to find suitable dates for meetings.
Events and Webcasts
We organise regular workshops, conferences, training and other events to bring stakeholders together to share knowledge, in line with our public task or legitimate interests depending on the nature of the event. We collect the contact details of delegates in order to organise the event and will share the delegate list with the event host as needed. We will collect information on any access requirements you may have and on dietary requirements (where providing catering) and will share this with the event host with your consent only. We will often share the delegate list in line with the purposes of the event but will not publish this online. We often take photographs to publish and promote the event. We have mailing lists for future events which you can sign up to should you choose to do so. We will destroy all personal data we hold relating to delegate attendees for the purposes of organising the event within one year of the event. If you sign up to our mailing list we will keep your details on there until you tell us otherwise or we receive a bounce-back. Note we sometimes use Eventbrite to manage the registration for our events.
We run a webcast series 'JNCC Science Talks'. For this we collect the personal data of presenters and attendees in order to run the event and provide information on forthcoming events (run on a twice-monthly basis) in line with our public task. Personal data will not be shared with any other organisation except as a legal requirement and will not be transferred outside of the EU. However a recording of the webinar may be published, along with the name and contact details of presenters where consent has been given. JNCC uses GoToWebinar and may use the analytics generated by GoToWebinar to develop future events.
Public consultations
We sometimes undertake public consultations in order to support our work and functions (i.e. our public task; for example public consultation on the JNCC guidelines for minimising the risk of injury to marine mammals from geophysical surveys). If you respond to these consultations we will keep your contact details and response in order to assess the proposal and will contact you if we have any queries. In some cases, we may need to share your response with a government department or organisation or other partner. Where this will be necessary we will make it clear in advance. If we are running the consultation on behalf of another organisation we will retain the data for as long as instructed. If it is a JNCC consultation we will keep your data for one year after the consultation has closed. In some cases, it may be necessary to keep your personal data on our systems for a longer period of time.
Provision of advice on fisheries management
We provide advice on fisheries management under the EU Regulation 2017/1004. We receive Fisheries Vessel Monitoring Data from the Marine Management Organisation for this purpose. We will review the data regularly, will delete it when no longer required, will not use it for any other purpose, and will not share it with any other organisation.
Provision of advice to Animal and Plant Health Agency on applications for licensing under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
We provide advice on CITES licensing applications to APHA under contract. We receive information relating to licence applications both from APHA and any supporting information directly from applicants. We may need to share any supporting information you provide with APHA for the purposes of the application but will not share it with any other organisation. We will keep this information in line with APHA retention schedules and as instructed.
Biodiversity recording schemes, shared data and open data
We lead on, and partner on, a number of biodiversity recording schemes in line with our public task. If you volunteer to join one of our schemes we will store your contact details to send you information on the scheme and to put you in contact with other volunteers as needed. We will delete your contact details within six months of the scheme ending unless you have asked us to sign you up to a mailing list for future contact. We will store any survey forms and other data you send us for as long as they are needed and will likely archive them thereafter. Where we are likely to need to share your data with our partners we will make this clear in advance.
We use biological data, human activities data and other environmental data in pursuit of our mission, both closed data (i.e. under a specific licence or agreement) and 'open data' downloaded from the public domain. We will remove any personal data from open datasets in the event we decide to re-publish and will uphold any licence conditions for closed datasets.
Staff emergency contact details/next of kin
We are legally obliged to keep emergency contact details for our staff and sometimes next of kin. We will notify you where this is the case and will delete the data within six months of the staff member leaving JNCC.
Please be aware: as a public body, JNCC is subject to the Environmental Information Regulations and the Freedom of Information Act 2000, and may be required to release information upon request, including personal data and commercial information. However, JNCC will not permit any breach of confidentiality or act in contravention of its obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 (or General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2018).
JNCC-led services
If you enter into a contract with us, for example via the Discretionary Advice Service, we will process your personal data (name, email address, address and phone number) in order to fulfil our obligations set out in the contract, under the contractual legal basis. These details will not be shared outside of JNCC and will be held for 7 years.
Your rights and our contact details
Your rights
You can obtain a copy of your data on request by contacting us with the details of what you would like to be provided. You can ask us to change incorrect or incomplete data, or delete or stop processing your data. Where we have previously relied on consent for us to use your data, you can withdraw your consent. You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You also have the right to an effective judicial remedy against decisions of the Information Commissioner’s Office, or against JNCC. Further information on your individual rights can be found on the ICO website.
Please note you have the right to object to processing if we are able to process your information because the process forms part of our public tasks, or is in our legitimate interests. You can read more about your right to object to the use of your data on the ICO website.
Our contact details
If you have any questions or concerns about how your personal data is being used, or to progress any of your rights please contact our Data Protection Manager:
Email: dataprotection@jncc.gov.uk
Address: Data Protection Manager, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Monkstone House, City Road, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, PE1 1JY
The contact details for the Data Protection Officer responsible for monitoring that JNCC is meeting the requirements of Data Protection legislation are as follows:
Email: Defra Group Data Protection Officer
Address: Defra Group Data Protection Officer, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, SW Quarter, 2nd floor, Seacole Block, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF
Complaints
We will endeavour to answer any queries you have about how we use personal information and to address any concerns. If you wish to make a complaint, full details on how to do this can be found on our Complaints webpage.
Changes to this privacy notice
We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 24 April 2020.
Other JNCC Privacy Notices for specific activities or events
Published: .