Your Shout, together with the Thorncliffe, communityUK, YES! and Local Councils, is committed to protecting your privacy when you use this website. This Privacy Notice explains how we use information about you and how we protect your privacy.

If you have any concerns or questions about how we look after your personal information, please contact Deborah Paterson who is the person responsible for managing how we look after personal information, at [email protected].  

Data is held by Your Shout. By volunteering data or information on this website you are giving your consent for us to process your data regarding this project.

You are also confirming you are aged 16 or over.

You can withdraw consent for us to use your data at any time by emailing us at [email protected]. You have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at any time if you feel there is a problem with the way we are handling your data.

1. Your personal information

Personal information is anything that directly or indirectly identifies and relates to a living person, such as a name, address, telephone number, date of birth, unique identification number, photographs, video recordings (including CCTV) etc.

Some personal information is ‘special category data’ and needs more protection due to its sensitivity. This includes any information about an identifiable individual that can reveal their sexuality and sexual health, religious or philosophical beliefs, racial origin, ethnicity, physical or mental health, trade union membership, political opinion, genetic/biometric data. Personal information relating to criminal offences and convictions, although not ‘special category data’, is still sensitive in nature and merits higher protection.

2. Why do we need your personal information?

We may need to use some information about you to:

  to provide our services where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and your interests and where fundamental rights do not override those interests;

  to undertake consultation and surveys, for statutory consultation and formal planning applications, and send communications to people who have indicated they wish to receive updates on specific projects;

  to help communities plan their local area, analyse the social impact of new developments and design solutions;

  to measure campaigns on our clients, local residents and local authorities;

  to carry out verification checks, for example in relation to anti money laundering and know your client procedures;

  to comply with our legal obligations, including reporting obligations;

  to send business or marketing communications which we think may be of interest (we provide a simple mechanism to unsubscribe from such communications);

  to organise and hold marketing events in connection with the promotion of our business affairs.

  for recruitment purposes, in order to ensure that we are recruiting employees who have the appropriate skills, qualification, experience and suitability for each role, and have the right to work in the UK. We may also process health information in order to comply with our duty to make reasonable adjustments.

3. How the law allows us to use your personal information

There are a number of legal reasons why we will need to collect and use your personal information in different circumstances.

Generally, we collect and use personal information where:

  when you provide it to us. When you sign up for the services, you provide us with information such as your name and email address. We may also collect information from your public social media accounts and use it to better provide you with products and services that may be relevant to you.

  automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses and information collected through cookies, web beacons and other tracking technologies.

  from research, if your information is already in the public domain;

  from third parties, for example, our business partners;

  you, or your legal representative, have given consent;

  you have entered into a contract with us;

  it is necessary to perform our statutory duties or other legitimate purposes

  it is necessary to protect someone in an emergency;

  it is required by law;

  it is necessary for employment purposes;

  it is necessary to deliver health or social care services;

  you have made your information publicly available;

  it is necessary for legal cases;

  it is to the benefit of society as a whole;

  it is necessary to protect public health;

  it is necessary for archiving, research, or statistical purposes. 

4. Consent

If we have consent to use your personal information for any particular reason, you have the right to remove your consent at any time. If you want to remove your consent, contact Deborah Paterson who is the person responsible for managing how we look after personal information, at [email protected]

5. Your rights regarding your personal information

The law gives you a number of rights in relation to what personal information is used by us, and how it is used. 

5. Your rights regarding your personal information

The law gives you a number of rights in relation to what personal information is used by us, and how it is used. These rights are listed below:

You can ask us to:

  provide you with a copy of the personal information that we hold about you

  correct personal information about you which you think is inaccurate

  delete personal information about you if you think we no longer should be using it

  stop using your personal information if you think it is wrong, until it is corrected

  transfer your personal information to another provider in a commonly used format

  not use automated decision-making processes to make decisions about you 

You can:

  withdraw your consent to our processing your personal information, where our processing is based on your consent;

  complain to the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk if you think that we aren't complying with our obligations regarding your personal information.

6. With whom do we share your personal information?

In some circumstances, we use other organisations to either store personal information or use it to help deliver our services to you. Where we have these arrangements, there is always an agreement in in place to make sure that the organisation complies with data protection law.

Sometimes we have a legal duty to provide personal information to other organisations.

We may disclose personal information to appropriate persons, such as:

  Our clients, for instance developers and councils;

  Other users of the site, if you share your comments on the site;

  Regulators, such as HMRC and other authorities;

  The local planning authority, as part of a planning application;

  Our IT service providers, for instance Nationbuilder, Google Analytics and others.

We may also share your personal information when we consider/believe that there is a good reason to do so, which is more important than protecting your privacy. This doesn’t happen often, but in these circumstances we may share your information:

  to find and stop crime and fraud; or

  if there are serious risks to the public, our staff or to other professionals

  to protect a child; or

  to protect adults who are thought to be at risk, for example if they are frail, confused or cannot understand what is happening to them

For all these reasons, the risk must be serious before we can override your right to privacy.

If we are worried about your physical safety or feel we need to take action to protect you from being harmed in other ways, we will discuss this with you and, if possible, get your permission to tell others about your situation before doing so.

We may still share your information if we believe the risk to others is serious enough to do so.

If this is the case, we will make sure that we record what information we share and our reasons for doing so. We will let you know what we have done and why, if we think it is safe to do so.

7. How do we protect your personal information?

We have a legal duty to make sure we hold your personal information (on paper and electronically) in a secure way, and to only make it available to those who have a right to see them. Examples of our security include:

  Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password)

  Pseudonymisation, meaning that we will use a different name or identifier to hide parts of your personal information from view. This means that someone outside of Your Shout could work on your information for us without ever knowing it was yours

  Controlling access to systems and networks allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it

  Training of colleagues allows us to make them aware of how to handle personal information, and how and when to report when something goes wrong

  Regular testing of our technology and ways of working, including keeping up to date on the latest security updates (commonly called patches)

8. Information outside of the European Union

The majority of personal information is stored on systems in the UK. However, there are some occasions where your information may leave the UK either to get to another organisation, or where it is stored in a system outside of the UK.

We have additional protections on your personal information if it leaves the UK ranging from secure ways of transferring data to ensuring we have a robust contract in place with that third party.

9. How long do we keep your personal information?

We will only hold your personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfil our legal duties or business purposes.

There’s often a legal reason for keeping your personal information for a set period of time.

10. Further advice?

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at:

Information Commissioner's Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF

0303 123 1113 (local rate) 01625 545745 (national rate number) Information Commissioner's Office website

11. About us

Your Shout is a trading name of Thorncliffe Communications Ltd. The data controller in respect of personal information we may hold about you is Thorncliffe Communications Ltd – under Information Commissioner’s Office reference number Z7642207.

11. Individuals under the age of 16

We do not knowingly collect, solicit or maintain personal information from anyone under the age of 16 or knowingly allow such persons to register for our Services, with the exception of children who have permission from a parent or guardian who has agreed to our terms on the child's behalf. If you are under 16, please do not send any personal information about yourself (such as your name, address, telephone number, or email address) to us. In the event that we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 16 without verification of parental consent, we will use commercially reasonable efforts to delete that information from our database. Please contact us if you have any concerns.

12. Cookie policy

As is common practice with almost all websites, this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience.

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

Account related cookies

If you create an account with us then we will use cookies for the management of the signup process and general administration. These cookies will usually be deleted when you log out; however in some cases they may remain afterwards to remember your site preferences when logged out.

Login related cookies

We use cookies when you are logged in so that we can remember this fact. This prevents you from having to log in every single time you visit a new page. These cookies are typically removed or cleared when you log out to ensure that you can only access restricted features and areas when logged in.

Survey related cookies

From time to time we offer user surveys and questionnaires to provide you with interesting insights, helpful tools, or to understand our user base more accurately. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already taken part in a survey or to provide you with accurate results after you change pages.

Forms related cookies

When you submit data through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms, cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.

Site preferences cookies

In order to provide you with a great experience on this site, we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page which is affected by your preferences.

If you choose to turn cookies off, all modern browsers allow you to do so, usually in their settings page.

Cookie settings in Internet Explorer

Cookie settings in Firefox

Cookie settings in Chrome

Cookie settings in Safari web and iOS

Social Media Plugins

We integrate social media interfaces or plug-ins from social networks, including Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and other companies, into the website. In order to register as a user with us, you may have the option to sign in using your Facebook or other social media site login.

If you do so, you authorize us to access certain social media account information, such as your public social media profile (consistent with your privacy settings in social media), your email address, interests, likes, gender, birthday, education history, relationship interests, current city, photos, personal description, friend list, and information about and photos of your social media friends who might be common social media friends with other users. Plug-ins may transfer information about you to the Plug-in’s respective platform without action by you. This information may include your platform user identification number, which website you are on, and more. Interacting with a Plug-in will transmit information directly to that Plug-in’s social network and that information may be visible by others on that platform. Plug-ins are controlled by the respective platform’s privacy policy, and not by our privacy policy. You can find the privacy policy for a platform on their website.