Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice for Our Members

At the National Association of Civic Officers (NACO), we are committed to respecting and protecting your privacy.

This notice explains how we collect, use, and store personal information before, during, and after your membership with us. It applies to anyone who has registered to become, or is currently, a member of our Association. It also covers people who register for the NACO Discussion Forum only, organisations that submit job vacancies to us, and visitors to our website.

We outline here how we comply with data protection laws (the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018), what your rights are, and how we manage your information. For the purposes of data protection, NACO is the data controller of your personal information.

We have not appointed a formal Data Protection Officer, as we are not legally required to do so. However, our Data Protection Compliance Secretary holds overall responsibility for ensuring compliance with data protection legislation.

If you have any questions or concerns about how your information is handled, please see the "Contact Us" section at the end of this notice for full contact details.

1. PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT FROM YOU

As part of your membership with us, you may initially provide us with, or we may obtain personal information about you, such as information regarding your:

  • personal contact details that allow us to contact you directly such as name, title, email addresses and telephone numbers;
  • professional details, such as your job title, grade, authority or organisation, type of authority and geographical region;
  • age range (optional);
  • gender (optional);
  • membership start date and membership status;
  • your website and forum account details, including your forum username. Your password is stored in encrypted form and cannot be seen by us;
  • any credit/debit card and other payment details you provide so that we can receive payments from you and details of the financial transactions with you;
  • records of your attendance at any events hosted by us;
  • images in video and/or photographic form and voice recordings;
  • your marketing preferences, including whether you would like to receive job vacancy alerts, so that we know whether and how we should contact you.

If you use the NACO Discussion Forum, we also hold your forum profile and the posts and messages you write. If you submit a job vacancy, we hold the contact details and organisation details you provide.

When you visit our website, we collect anonymous statistics using Fathom Analytics, which does not use cookies or collect personal information. Our servers keep short-term technical logs, including IP addresses, to keep the website secure. Please see our Cookie Policy for more information.

2. WHERE WE COLLECT YOUR INFORMATION

We typically collect personal information about our members when you apply to become a member of the Association through our website, when you use the members' area of our website or the Discussion Forum, when you make a query and/or complaint or when you correspond with us by phone, e-mail or in some other way.

3. USES MADE OF THE INFORMATION

The list below describes the main purposes for which we process your personal information, the categories of your information involved and our lawful basis for being able to do this.

To administer any membership you have with us and manage our relationship with you, including dealing with payments and any enquiries made by you.

  • All contact and membership details, transaction and payment information, records of your interactions with us, and marketing preferences.
  • This is necessary to enable us to properly manage and administer your membership contract with us.

To keep members informed about NACO, its events and training by email

  • Your name and email address.
  • We have a legitimate interest in keeping our members informed. You can ask us to stop sending these emails at any time by contacting us using the details in the "Contact Us" section below.

To email you when a new job vacancy is posted on our website

  • Your name and email address.
  • Only where you have asked to receive vacancy alerts. You can unsubscribe using the link in any alert, or in My Account on our website.

To let appropriate training and product or service providers inform you of relevant events and offers

  • Your name and professional details.
  • Only where you have given your consent by ticking the box on our membership form. Retired members' personal details are not shared with any third party.

Retention of records

  • All the personal information we collect.
  • We have a legitimate interest in retaining records whilst they may be required in relation to membership. We need to retain records in order to properly administer and manage your membership and run our Association and in some cases, we may have legal or regulatory obligations to retain records.

The security of our IT systems

  • Your usage of our IT systems and online portals.
  • We have a legitimate interest to ensure that our IT systems are secure.

To conduct data analytics studies to better understand event attendance and trends within the Association

  • Records of your attendance at any events hosted by us.
  • We have a legitimate interest in doing so to ensure that our membership is targeted and relevant.

For the purposes of promoting the Association and our events.

  • Images in video and/or photographic form.
  • Where you have given us your explicit consent to do so.

Where you have given us your consent to use your personal information in a particular manner, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time, which you may do by contacting us as described in the "Contact Us" section below.

Please note however that the withdrawal of your consent will not affect any use of the data made before you withdrew your consent and we may still be entitled to hold and process the relevant personal information to the extent that we are entitled to do so on bases other than your consent. Withdrawing consent may also have the same effects as not providing the information in the first place, for example, we may no longer be able to provide certain member benefits to you.

4. DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We do not sell your personal information. We share personal information with the following parties:

  • Any party approved by you, including training and product or service providers where you have consented to this (see above).
  • Other forum users: your forum username, profile and posts are visible to other users of the NACO Discussion Forum.
  • Companies that provide services to us, who may only use your information to provide those services:
    • Purple Spider Web Design, which builds, hosts and maintains our website, forum and mailing list;
    • UpCloud, which provides the servers our website and forum run on, in its London data centre;
    • Cloudflare, which protects and speeds up our website and forum;
    • Postmark, which delivers emails sent by our website, such as password resets and vacancy alerts;
    • Fastmail, which provides NACO's email accounts;
    • Fathom Analytics, which provides anonymous website statistics.
  • The Government: where we are required to do so by law or to assist with their investigations or initiatives.
  • Police, law enforcement and security services: to assist with the investigation and prevention of crime and the protection of national security.

5. TRANSFERRING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION INTERNATIONALLY

Our website, forum and mailing list are hosted in the UK. Some of our service providers (Cloudflare, Postmark and Fastmail) process information in the United States, so your personal information may be transferred there. Where this happens, it is protected by the safeguards required by UK data protection law, such as the UK-US Data Bridge or the International Data Transfer Agreement.

6. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP PERSONAL INFORMATION FOR?

The duration for which we retain your personal information will differ depending on the type of information and the reason why we collected it from you. However, in some cases personal information may be retained on a long-term basis: for example, personal information that we need to retain for legal purposes will normally be retained in accordance with usual commercial practice and regulatory requirements. Generally, where there is no legal requirement we retain all physical and electronic records for a period of 6 years after your last contact with us or the end of your membership. Exceptions to this rule are:

Details regarding unsuccessful membership applicants where we hold records for a period of not more than 12 months;

It is important to ensure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up-to-date, and you should let us know if anything changes, for example if you change your phone number or email address. Members can update most of their details themselves in My Account on our website, or you can contact us by using the details set out in the "Contact Us" section below.

7. YOUR RIGHTS IN RELATION TO PERSONAL INFORMATION

You have the following rights in relation to your personal information:

  • the right to be informed about how your personal information is being used;
  • the right to access the personal information we hold about you;
  • the right to request the correction of inaccurate personal information we hold about you;
  • the right to request the erasure of your personal information in certain limited circumstances;
  • the right to restrict processing of your personal information where certain requirements are met;
  • the right to object to the processing of your personal information;
  • the right to request that we transfer elements of your data either to you or another service provider; and
  • the right to object to certain automated decision-making processes using your personal information.

You should note that some of these rights, for example the right to require us to transfer your data to another service provider or the right to object to automated decision making, may not apply as they have specific requirements and exemptions which apply to them and they may not apply to personal information recorded and stored by us. For example, we do not use automated decision making in relation to your personal data. However, some have no conditions attached, so your right to withdraw consent or object to processing for direct marketing are absolute rights.

Whilst this privacy notice sets out a general summary of your legal rights in respect of personal information, this is a very complex area of law. More information about your legal rights can be found on the Information Commissioner's website at ico.org.uk/for-the-public.

To exercise any of the above rights, or if you have any questions relating to your rights, please contact us by using the details set out in the "Contact Us" section below. We will respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with the way we are using your personal information you can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, telephone 0303 123 1113). We are here to help and encourage you to contact us to resolve your complaint first.

8. CHANGES TO THIS NOTICE

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. When we change this notice in a material way, we will update the version date at the bottom of this page. For significant changes to this notice we will try to give you reasonable notice unless we are prevented from doing so. Where required by law we will seek your consent to changes in the way we use your personal information.

9. CONTACT US

In the event of any query or complaint in connection with the information we hold about you, please email our Data Protection Compliance Secretary, Lynda McElligott, on lynda.mcelligott@north-norfolk.gov.uk or write to her at National Association of Civic Officers c/o Council Offices, Holt Road, Cromer, NR27 9EN

Dated June 2018 - Revised Oct 2026