Last updated: 18 September 2026

1. Who We Are

Sheffield Walkers is a voluntary, not-for-profit membership group whose purpose is to enable members and guests to participate in safe and enjoyable hiking and social activities.

Our website address is https://sheffieldwalkers.org.

We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information. This policy explains what information we collect, how we use and protect it, how long we keep it and your rights under UK data protection law.

We will never sell your personal information. We will only share it where necessary to organise our activities, protect participants, meet a legal or insurance requirement, or where you have given your consent.

2. Why We Collect Your Information

We collect and use personal information to:

• Manage membership and communicate with members about walks, events and group matters.
• Register members and guests for walks and other events.
• Send booking confirmations, event information and cancellation notices.
• Manage event capacity and attendance.
• Enable people to participate in our activities safely.
• Hold In Case of Emergency (ICE) contact details and relevant health information where these are provided.
• Administer guest and trial-walk arrangements.
• Respond to enquiries and provide support.
• Maintain records needed for insurance, incident management, safety, security, audit and legal purposes.
• Send information about Sheffield Walkers’ activities or membership where the recipient has agreed to receive it.

3. What Personal Information We Collect

We may collect the following information:

Category	Examples	Purpose
Membership details	Name, email address, telephone number and membership status	Membership administration and communications
Activity participation	Walks and events registered for or attended, attendance status and related dates	Organising activities, managing capacity and maintaining participation records
ICE details	Emergency contact name and telephone number, and relevant health information a participant chooses to provide	Supporting the participant and assisting authorised walk leaders in an emergency
Guest registration details	Guest’s name, email address, contact information where required, type of guest registration, sponsoring member where applicable, event registration, attendance, booking status and cancellation information	Registering the guest, managing attendance and capacity, sending operational communications and supporting the booking
Guest trial-walk history	Previous public guest or trial-walk registrations and attendance	Administering guest eligibility and applying any limit on free trial walks
Communication preferences	Whether someone has agreed to receive information about Sheffield Walkers and any subsequent withdrawal or opt-out	Ensuring we send optional communications only where permitted
Incident reports	Information about an accident, safety matter, complaint or other incident during an activity	Safety management, insurance and legal compliance
Photographs	Group photographs taken during walks and events	Website, newsletters and promotional material, with consent where appropriate for recognisable close-ups
Website and enquiry information	Information submitted through forms, together with relevant technical and security records	Responding to enquiries, operating the website and protecting it from misuse

We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18 years old.

Information about guests

A guest may be:

• Registered by a Sheffield Walkers member who is sponsoring and accompanying them; or
• Registered directly through a Sheffield Walkers public guest or trial-walk process.

Where a member registers a guest, the member must confirm that the guest has agreed to the registration and to their information being supplied to Sheffield Walkers.

We use guest information to:

• Check eligibility for a guest or trial place.
• Create and manage the guest’s event place.
• Send registration confirmations and relevant event details.
• Provide a secure way to cancel the booking.
• Notify the sponsoring member, where applicable, and relevant walk leader that a guest place has been added or cancelled.
• Manage attendance and restore event capacity when a guest place is cancelled.
• Record previous public guest or trial-walk participation where necessary to administer trial-walk limits.
• Resolve booking problems and maintain an appropriate audit trail.
• Contact the guest about changes, cancellations or safety information affecting the event.
• Send information about Sheffield Walkers’ activities or membership only where the guest has specifically agreed to receive it.

A guest’s name may be shown to their sponsoring member, where applicable, authorised coordinators and the relevant walk leader where needed to manage the event. Guest email addresses are not included in general walk-leader registration notifications or ordinary attendance lists.

Member-sponsored guests are not normally asked to provide ICE or medical information and remain the responsibility of their sponsoring member during the activity.

A public guest may be offered the option of providing ICE contact details and relevant medical information for a particular walk. Providing this information is optional. Where supplied, it will be available only to appropriately authorised people for safety or emergency purposes.

4. How We Use Your Information

We only process personal information where we have an appropriate lawful basis. Depending on the circumstances, this may include:

• Consent – for example, sending optional promotional emails, using certain photographs or processing optional health information.
• Contract – for example, administering paid membership and providing membership services.
• Legal obligation – where we must keep or disclose information to comply with the law.
• Legitimate interests – for example, organising walks and events, managing attendance, administering trial-walk limits, contacting participants about changes or cancellations, maintaining system security and handling operational enquiries.
• Vital interests – where information needs to be used in a genuine emergency to protect someone’s life.

Operational emails concerning a booking, event change, safety matter or cancellation are separate from optional promotional communications.

We may send guests occasional information about Sheffield Walkers, including group activities or membership, only where we have a lawful basis to do so. Where we rely on consent, the guest can withdraw that consent at any time. Promotional emails will provide a straightforward way to unsubscribe.

5. Sharing Your Information

We may share relevant personal information:

• With Committee Members and authorised coordinators where needed to administer membership, guest bookings or group activities.
• With the relevant Walk Leader where needed to organise an event, manage attendance or respond to a safety concern.
• With a sponsoring member in relation to the guest place they created.
• With service providers that host or support our website, email or membership systems, subject to appropriate security and data-protection arrangements.
• With insurers, medical services or other appropriate organisations following an accident or incident.
• With law enforcement bodies, regulators or other authorities where disclosure is required by law or necessary to protect someone.

Walk leaders are only given access to ICE or medical information for participants in activities they are leading and only where that information is needed for safety purposes.

Guest email addresses are not disclosed to walk leaders merely because they are leading an event.

We will never sell personal information or share it with third parties for their own marketing.

6. How We Store and Protect Your Information

• Paper records are kept securely by the relevant authorised Committee Member.
• Electronic records are stored using password-protected systems or secure cloud services.
• Sensitive guest identity, contact and optional ICE information is encrypted within the guest registration system.
• Access is restricted according to a person’s role and operational need.
• Access to guest information and important guest-booking actions may be recorded in an audit log.
• Guest email addresses and sensitive information are excluded from general communication logs wherever practicable.
• ICE and medical information is subject to additional access restrictions and is only available to authorised people for safety purposes.

We take reasonable organisational and technical measures to prevent unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or disclosure.

7. How Long We Keep Your Information

We keep personal information only for as long as it is needed for the purpose for which it was collected.

Guest registration, trial-walk and contact records will normally be retained for up to two years after the relevant event or the guest’s most recent booking. They will then be securely deleted or anonymised unless there is a valid reason to retain them for longer.

Guest trial-walk history may be retained during this period to determine whether someone remains eligible for a free trial walk.

Optional guest ICE and medical information will not be retained for longer than necessary for the walk and any related safety or incident-management requirement.

We may retain particular records for longer where:

• They relate to an accident, incident, safeguarding matter or complaint.
• They may be needed for an insurance or legal claim.
• We are required to retain them by law.
• A temporary hold is needed to protect the integrity of an investigation or audit.

When someone asks not to receive promotional communications, we may retain the minimum information needed to record and respect that preference.

Membership, financial, incident and audit records may have different retention periods according to their purpose and any legal or insurance requirements.

8. Your Rights

Under UK data protection law, depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Ask us to erase your information.
• Ask us to restrict how we use your information.
• Object to certain processing.
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent.
• Ask for certain information to be transferred to you or another organisation.
• Complain about how we have handled your information.

These rights are not absolute. For example, we may need to retain information connected with an incident, insurance matter, legal obligation or the suppression of unwanted marketing.

Members and guests can request deletion of their information by writing to us using the Sheffield Walkers contact form. Please provide enough information for us to identify the relevant record.

Requests should be addressed to the Chairperson. We will normally respond within one month.

Guests can also use the contact form to:

• Correct their details.
• Withdraw consent to optional communications.
• Ask not to receive further information about the group.
• Ask what information Sheffield Walkers holds about them.

9. Cookies, Media and Third-Party Content

• If you submit a message on our website, you may be offered the option of saving your name and email address in cookies for convenience. These cookies may last for one year.
• If you upload an image, you should remove embedded location information such as EXIF or GPS data.
• Embedded content from another website behaves as if you visited that website directly. The third-party website may collect information, use cookies or track your interaction according to its own privacy policy.
• Our website may use essential security and operational cookies needed for it to function correctly.

10. Complaints

If you have concerns about how we handle your information, please contact our Membership Secretary or Chairperson using the Sheffield Walkers contact form.

We will investigate your concern and respond as soon as reasonably possible.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

www.ico.org.uk

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes to our activities, systems or legal obligations.

The latest version will be published on our website and will show the date it was last updated. Material changes will take effect when the revised policy is published unless otherwise stated.