Mountaineering Scotland and ClimbScotland members' privacy notice

Mountaineering Scotland is the membership organisation for hillwalkers, climbers and snowsports tourers in Scotland. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a “controller” of the personal information that you provide to us. We take your privacy seriously and this privacy notice sets out how we will use your data, who we will share it with, how we keep it secure and your rights as a data subject.

What we need from you

When you register as a member of Mountaineering Scotland or renew your membership (including if you are registering or renewing on behalf of a young person aged 16 or under), we will ask you for the following personal information:

• Contact details – name, address, email address and phone number.
  
• Date of birth – to calculate membership category and eligibility for events and courses.
  
• Payment details – bank account number, sort code, card details.
  
• Participation details – club, Mountain Training candidate.
  
• Equality information – sex, gender, disability, ethnic group and religion.
  
• Extra information for event bookings including next of kin, relevant health conditions, etc.
  

If you do not provide us with all of the personal information that we need this may affect our ability to offer you our membership services and benefits.

Why we need your personal information 

Contractual purposes

• We need to collect our members’ personal information so that we can manage your membership. We will use our members’ personal information to:
  
• Provide you with core member services, including an annual welcome pack and membership card, insurance registration, and end of year renewal communications.
• Set up your online membership account enabling you to manage your membership and communication preferences.
• Organise activities and manage risk and safety if you book a place with us on a mountain skills course, climbing workshops, competitions and other training events.

Legitimate purposes

We also process our members’ personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:

• Send our quarterly magazine subscription and monthly members’ newsletter.
  
• Engage with you on subjects relevant to our representative role, including obtaining your views in surveys for research purposes, providing special offers and discounts, informing you of events and requesting your involvement in our campaign activity.
  
• Promote performance and participation in mountaineering by offering mountain skills courses, climbing workshops, competitions and other training events.
  
• Raise awareness of mountaineering by capturing photos, videos and live-streaming at events. We will use this for promotion, education and development purposes.
  
• Celebrate achievement in our sport by nominating members for awards, shortlisting such individuals to select the winners, and publishing the results of our competitions.
  
• Respond to your questions, comments, support needs, complaints or concerns.
  

Legal obligations

We are under a legal obligation to process certain personal information relating to our members for the purposes of complying with obligations under:

• The Companies Act 2006 to maintain a register of our members, which includes name, address, date admitted to membership and date on which membership ceased, and hold general meetings, including issuing notices and AGM voting arrangements.
  
• The Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 to check that our coaches and volunteers are able to undertake regulated work with children and vulnerable adults.
  
• The Equality Act 2010, which requires us to process personal information to make reasonable adjustments where necessary.
  

Equality monitoring

We use aggregated and anonymised reports of personal information relating to sex, gender, disability, ethnic group, religion for equality monitoring purposes, enabling us to evaluate and promote equality of opportunity within our sport.

Other uses of your personal information

We may ask you if we can process your personal information for other purposes. Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice explaining how we will use your information for these purposes.

Club members’ personal data

Affiliated clubs provide us with personal information about their members in order to register them for insurance and other member benefits. By storing and using this personal data, we become “controllers” of this personal data. Clubs have a responsibility to provide their members with both our and their privacy notices.

Who we share your personal information with

We may be required to share personal information with statutory or regulatory authorities to comply with statutory obligations. Such organisations include the Health & Safety Executive, Disclosure Scotland, and Police Scotland for the purposes of safeguarding children, and UK Anti-Doping for the purpose of eliminating doping in our sport.

We may also share personal information with professional and legal advisors for the purpose of obtaining advice.

Third party suppliers with access to members’ personal data

Mountaineering Scotland employs third party suppliers to provide services. These suppliers may process personal information on our behalf as “processors” and are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal information under our instructions and protect it.

In the event that we share personal information with external third parties, we only share such information strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure recipients shall only process the disclosed personal information in accordance with those purposes.

• Azolve Ltd. operate our membership database, including course and competition bookings. Azolve contracts third party payment providers, GoCardless and Stripe, to process payment transactions securely on our behalf.
  
• Equiom (Scotland) process additional Direct Debit payment transactions securely on our behalf.
  
• The Herald & Times Group distribute Scottish Mountaineer magazine to members by post and email, and our monthly members newsletter by email. They share postal addresses with their magazine distribution contractor.
  
• Mountain Training UK confirm candidates’ membership via an automated electronic checking process through their candidate management system.
  
• Our instructors, coaches and event organisers receive details of course and competition participants.
  
• Image Logistics provide and maintain our IT servers and email accounts.
  
• Mailchimp distribute some of our email communications. Their servers are based in the US and they uphold the EU Privacy Shield to certify their data security.
  

How we protect your personal information

Your personal information is stored in our membership database which is protected in a secure environment on Azolve servers based in the EU. Our own servers and email accounts are based in the UK. Your data is accessed by our staff and volunteers only for the purposes set out above.

How long we keep your personal information

We only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to provide you with membership services. Unless you ask us not to, we will review and delete your personal information where you have not renewed your membership with us for four years.

We keep certain personal information for longer in order to confirm your identity, when you were a member and for how long. We do this to comply with the Companies Act 2006, which requires us to keep a register of members, and in the event of a claim against Mountaineering Scotland.

You have the right to:

• Change your communication preferences or restrict the processing of your personal data for specific purposes.
  
• Request that we correct your personal data if you believe it is inaccurate or incomplete.
  
• Access the personal data that we hold about you through a “subject access request”.
• Request that we delete your personal information - there are some exceptions to your right to have your personal information erased.