Privacy

PRIVACY POLICY

1. ABOUT BALANCE

Reduce My Risk is a campaign managed by Balance.

Balance is the dedicated alcohol office for the North East of England. We are hosted by County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and commissioned by seven North East local authorities.

In line with *General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) we have a duty to protect personal information we collect about you and this privacy statement explains how we do this.

For any queries about Balance or this privacy statement, please contact us at:

Balance
Salvus House
Aykley Heads
Durham
DH1 5TS
  • E: info@fresh-balance.co.uk
  • T: 0191 333 715

2. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

We do not store personal data on our website.

This website may collect the following personal information about you:

  • Online identifiers – identifying you ‘pseudonymously’ online – by for example, obtaining your IP address or the operating system of your device, through cookies. Cookies are text files that are placed on your computer to collect internet log and visitor behaviour information, if you agree to them by clicking on the pop up Cookie message on our homepage. This enables us to track how people are using our website, disseminate our health campaign advertisements and improve functionality. If you prefer, you can modify your web browser to decline cookies. Visit our Cookie Policy for more details about how we use Cookies and how to disable these.
  • Photographs/media/PR. Personal information, such as a person’s photograph or their name and age, are used on our website and in our campaigns and PR activity but only after explicit consent is obtained from the persons involved. Consent is requested through a consent form issued by us or our approved media agencies **.

Whilst we have a survey on our website inviting people to see whether they could benefit from a few days off drinking, this is anonymous.

3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use information provided through cookies to understand how you are using the site to enable us to ensure it is designed and functioning in the best way possible, as aforementioned in section 2.

We also use cookies to serve to serve you our health campaign advertisements on social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). For more details about cookies, and how to set your web browser to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our website, click on our cookie policy.

From time to time, and only when relevant and with consent, we share personal information of people who contact us with our approved **media agencies to help us develop and deliver campaigns and media services on our behalf. An example would be a person who contacts us wanting to share their personal story about smoking to encourage people to quit. We have a separate process around this to gather consent. We only ever use information offered to us with full permission and we will always request explicit consent from an individual to use this personal data and before sharing it with our media agencies, by issuing a consent form. The information will only be used for the purposes agreed to by the individual.

We will never sell or trade personal information to third parties.

4. LINKS TO OTHER SITES

Our website may contain hyperlinks to other third party websites.

This privacy statement covers this website only so if you link to other websites, you should read the website’s own privacy statement.

5. COMMUNICATIONS

This website is not used for direct marketing or direct communications.

If you would like to receive communications about this website and/or Balance, please email info@fresh-balance.co.uk

6. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION SAFE?

We look after any personal information carefully and undertake several robust security measures:

  • We prevent unauthorised access to, or use or disclosure of it, by restricting who has access to it
  • Our staff receives regular data protection training
  • We have a set of detailed data protection procedures which staff are required to follow when handling personal data
  • We only store personal information so long as it is required for the purpose(s) we collected it for and we regularly review what information we store and appropriately dispose of that which is no longer necessary
  • We regularly update our computers and electronic systems with appropriate fire-wall protection and anti-virus software

We cannot absolutely guarantee the security of the internet or external networks of a user’s own device.

7. YOUR RIGHTS

We want our website users to remain in control of their personal information and to ensure this is accurate and up to date.

  • You can inform us if any information we have for you is incorrect or incomplete and you also have the right to request a copy of your information at any time.
  • You also have the right for any information we hold to be deleted.
  • You can request any of the above by contacting us at info@fresh-balance.co.uk

For further details about data protection or privacy rights, you can view the following websites or contact the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees data protection compliance in the UK:

8. UPDATES TO THIS STATEMENT

We regularly review this privacy statement. When we do, we will post a notification on the main page of our website and revise the date shown. We encourage users to check this page regularly to stay informed of any changes and how we are helping to protect the personal information we collect.

This policy was last updated on 13 July 2022

*From 25 May 2018, GDPR replaces the former EU data protection law. For further details please see https://www.eugdpr.org/

** Gardiner Richardson and Story UK are approved and contracted media agencies to Fresh and Balance. These organisations provide media and campaigns services on our behalf and in doing so, we will from time to time share personal data with them in order for us to carry out our business and provide services. However, we will only do so with your consent.

Gardiner Richardson
Generator Studios,
Trafalgar Street,
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 2LA