1Important information and who we are
Privacy policy
This privacy policy gives you information about how the Federation of Polish Student Societies in the UK collects and uses your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide when you register for one of our events, sign up to our newsletter, or contact us.
This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.
Controller
The Federation of Polish Student Societies in the UK, a registered charity (number 1166785) whose registered office is at the Polish Social & Cultural Association (POSK), 238-246 King Street, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF, is the controller of and responsible for your personal data (referred to as “the Federation”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy policy).
If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any request to exercise your legal rights (paragraph 9), please contact us using the information set out in the contact details section (paragraph 10).
2The types of personal data we collect about you
Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:
- Identity Data includes first name, last name, any previous names, username or similar identifier, title, date of birth and gender.
- Contact Data includes billing address, email address and telephone numbers.
- Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details, for example where we reimburse your travel or expenses.
- Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of events you have attended or for which you have purchased tickets.
- Image Data includes photographs and audio-visual recordings taken at our events.
- Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and your communication preferences.
We also collect, use and share aggregated data such as statistical or demographic data which is not personal data as it does not directly (or indirectly) reveal your identity.
3How is your personal data collected?
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
- Your interactions with us. You may give us your personal data by filling in online forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- register for one of our events;
- subscribe to our newsletter; or
- give us feedback or contact us.
- Third parties. We may receive Contact, Financial and Transaction Data about you from our ticketing or payment provider.
4How we use your personal data
Legal basis
The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:
- Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
- Legitimate interests: We may use your personal data where it is necessary to run our activities and pursue our legitimate interests. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
- Legal obligation: We may use your personal data where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
- Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement to use your personal data for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.
Purposes for which we will use your personal data
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal data, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so.
| Purpose/Use | Type of data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Register you for and run an event |
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| Take payment and reimburse travel and expenses |
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| Take and use photographs and recordings of our events for documentation and promotion |
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| Share attendee lists and event photographs with our grant funder for audit of public funding |
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| Send you our newsletter |
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| Maintain our membership and relationship with member societies, including keeping a register of societies and their committee contacts, emailing those contacts to run the relationship and administer our cooperation agreements, and inviting societies to Federation meetings, elections and events |
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Newsletter and marketing
If you have subscribed to our newsletter, we will send you news and information about our activities. You can ask us to stop at any time by following the unsubscribe link in any message or by contacting us.
Third-party marketing
We do not share your personal data with any third party for their own marketing.
5Disclosures of your personal data
We may share your personal data where necessary with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table Purposes for which we will use your personal data above.
- Our funders. Some of our events and activities are supported by public grants. Where they are, we share the personal data needed for the funder to audit how the grant was spent, typically attendee lists and event photographs, with the body funding that activity and, where different, the public authority behind it. Sharing this data is a condition of taking part in a grant-funded activity.
- Service providers who process data on our behalf and on our instructions, such as our email, video-conferencing and file-storage providers and our ticketing or payment provider.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes.
6International transfers
Some of our funders are based outside the UK. Whenever we transfer your personal data outside the UK, whether to a funder or to a service provider, we make sure it receives an equivalent level of protection. We do this either because the destination is covered by UK adequacy regulations (which include the European Economic Area) or because we rely on the safeguards approved under UK data protection law.
7Data security
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
8Data retention
How long will you use my personal data for?
We will only retain your personal data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements.
We keep event registration data for up to 12 months after the event. We keep financial and grant-related records for six years for tax purposes, and we keep documentation relating to a public grant for five years from the beginning of the year following the year in which the funded activity took place, as required by our grant agreements.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see paragraph 9 below for further information.
9Your legal rights
You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. You have the right to:
- Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
- Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
- Request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
- Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party). In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your right to object.
- Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in certain scenarios, for example where you want us to establish its accuracy.
- Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
- Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data (see the table in section 4 for details of when we rely on your consent as the legal basis for using your data). However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us (see Contact details, paragraph 10).
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we could refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.
What we may need from you
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
Time limit to respond
We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
10Contact details
If you have any questions about this privacy policy or about the use of your personal data or you want to exercise your privacy rights, please contact us in the following ways:
Email address
contact@polsocfederation.pl
Postal address
Federation of Polish Student Societies in the UK
POSK, 238-246 King Street
Hammersmith, London W6 0RF
11Complaints
You have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commission (formerly the Information Commissioner’s Office), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). However, before doing so please make sure you have first made your complaint to us, as the regulator will expect you to have done this before reviewing your complaint.
12Changes to the privacy policy and your duty to inform us of changes
We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 23 September 2026.
It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.
13Third-party links
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications, including our social media profiles. Clicking on those links may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.