Skip to content

Privacy and cookies

This privacy notice tells you what to expect us to do with your personal information when you make contact with us or use one of our services.

Summary of how we use your data

The Sports Grounds Safety Authority uses your personal data to allow you to use the features on our website, to administer your online and offline relationships with us, to comply with our legal obligations and to communicate with you. Some of this information will be provided by you, and others will be generated by the SGSA or provided by third parties.

  • Our websites may provide interactive features that engage with social media sites, such as Twitter. If you use these features, these sites will send us personal data about you.
  • We may use cookies and other tracking technologies to make our content function better.
  • Where we rely on your consent, such as sending you our newsletter, you can withdraw this consent at any time.
  • Our privacy notice sets out more details of this processing, including details of your data protection rights, including your right to object to certain processing.

What information do we collect?

We collect and process personal data about you when you interact with us and our websites and social media pages, when you purchase any products or training from us or attend any event hosted by us, when you subscribe to our newsletter, when we carry out market research and when you deal with us as a supplier or an employee of a supplier or stakeholder. This will typically be provided directly by you, and may include information you provide in a form or an email, or any registration. The details being provided by you will be made clear in any forms you complete or will usually be chosen by directly by you in volunteering information in communications or content you provide us.

How do we use this information, and what is the legal basis for this use?

We process this personal data for the following purposes:

To fulfil a contract with you, or take steps linked to such a contract: this is relevant where you make a purchase of goods or services from the SGSA or where you are a supplier of the SGSA. This includes:

  • communicating with you;
  • administering our contractual relationship; and
  • providing any services we may have agreed to offer you. We do not make any further use of this information for our own purposes.

As required by the SGSA to pursue and exercise our public interest functions:

  • we will use your information to provide communications or services that fall within our statutory remit or that you have requested and to respond to any comments or complaints you may send us;
  • we monitor use of our websites, and use your information to help us improve and protect our services, content, and websites;
  • we use information you provide as well as information which we have collected about you to investigate any complaints received from you or from others, about our website or services.

As required by the SGSA to carry out processing data for its legitimate interests, in particular:

  • we may carry out market research activities

Where you give us consent, including to Subscribe to Product Update E-mails on products purchased through our website:

  • we will send you the SGSA newsletter which may include promotional communications about relevant services, content or events that the SGSA offers;
  • we place cookies and use similar technologies in accordance with our Cookies Policy and the information provided to you when those technologies are used; and
  • on other occasions where we ask you for consent, we will use the data for the purpose which we explain at that time.

For purposes which are required by law:

  • where we are required to hold or collect personal data to meet legal requirements on us; and
  • where in response to requests by government or law enforcement authorities conducting an investigation.

Withdrawing consent or otherwise objecting to direct marketing

Wherever we rely on your consent, you will always be able to withdraw that consent, although we may have other legal grounds for processing your data for other purposes, such as those set out above.  You have an absolute right to opt-out of direct marketing at any time. You can do this by following the instructions in the communication where this is an electronic message, or by contacting us using the details set out below.

Cookies

A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

Our site uses three cookies, all of which are used for the site analytics provided by Google Analytics which are used to collect usage data and provide reports to us:

_ga
This is a tracking cookie used as part of Google Analytics.
Duration: 2 years

_gat_gtag
This cookie is also part of Google Analytics and is used to limit requests (throttle request rate).
Duration: 90 days

_gid
This cookie is also part of Google Analytics.
Duration: 24 hours

Most browsers allow you to refuse to accept cookies and to delete cookies. The methods for doing so vary from browser to browser, and from version to version. You can obtain up-to-date information about blocking and deleting cookies via the support pages made available by your browser operator.

Who will we share this data with, where and when?

We will share your data with relevant third parties for the purposes set out above, in particular we may share information, under our public interest function, with relevant local authorities and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

Personal data may be shared with government authorities and/or law enforcement officials if required for the purposes above, if mandated by law or if required for the legal protection of our legitimate interests in compliance with applicable laws.

Personal data will also be shared with third party service providers, who will process it on behalf of SGSA for the purposes identified above. Such third parties include providers of website hosting, security services, and software hosting and support. Some of our suppliers may be separate data controllers, such as our payroll provider. Some of these may provide you with their own privacy notice where appropriate.

What rights do I have?

You have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal data; to correct, delete or restrict (stop any active) processing of your personal data.

In addition, you can object to the processing of your personal data in some circumstances (in particular, where we don’t have to process the data to meet a contractual or other legal requirement, or where we are using the data for direct marketing).

These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person, where it would infringe the rights of a third party (including our rights) or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping. Relevant exemptions are included in both the GDPR and in the Data Protection Act 2018. We will inform you of relevant exemptions we rely upon when responding to any request you make.

To exercise any of these rights, you can get in touch with us – or our data protection officer – using the details set out below.

If you have any concerns about how your data is processed by the SGSA, you can get in touch with our Data Protection Officer at info@sgsa.org.uk or by writing to SGSA, 10 South Colonnade
London, E14 4PU.