Our privacy policy

We want you to feel assured that any information you give us is held securely and safely, whether you are working for us, supporting us through membership, campaigning, donations, volunteering, fundraising or events.

This policy outlines what data we collect, how we may use it and how we keep your data safe. ‘We’ or ‘us’ means Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), 15-21 Provost Street, London, N1 7NH. Registered Charity 1089685, registered company number 04302973, ICO registration Z1843836. This includes CPRE Durham and CPRE Northumberland but not our other CPREs, which are set up as separate charities (see Data sharing within the CPRE network below). You can find out more about our network of local CPREs here.

This privacy and cookie policy seeks to comprehensively cover the key areas relating to personal data held by CPRE, but in the interests of clarity it is not an exhaustive list of all our policies and practices in these areas.

This policy will change from time to time, as we keep up to date with legislation and regulation and to remain aligned with any relevant changes in our programmes and operations. If material changes are made, we will notify you by placing a prominent notice on the website. You can keep up to date by visiting these pages.

This text was last updated in December 2025.

Need to see our privacy policy for volunteers? You can find everything you need to know here.

Getting in touch

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in your information corrected. You also have the right to ask us to delete any personal information we hold about you. In some cases, we may be unable to delete data, such as if it is required for tax or Gift Aid purposes. In these cases, we will ensure that you are removed from future communications and processing. We are committed to ensuring you receive only those communications you choose.

You can access your personal data held by us or request to receive your information in part or its entirety in machine readable format.

For all questions or concerns regarding our privacy policy or the processing of your personal information, please do get in touch. You can write to:

Data protection lead
Campaign to Protect Rural England
15-21 Provost Street
London
N1 7NH

You can email dataprotection@cpre.org.uk, or contact our supporter care team at supportercare@cpre.org.uk or call 020 7981 2870.

Cookie consent

By using our website, joining or donating to us, you agree that, unless you have set your computer’s browser to reject them, we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy.

For more information about how we use cookies on this site, please review our cookie policy below.

Why and how we collect your data

When you give it to us directly

The vast majority of personal data we hold is given to us directly by our campaigners, supporters and volunteers in the course of them interacting with our services, websites or fundraising activities.

When we are working with a third party

We may work with events, such as the Great North Run or London Marathon, or fundraising sites such as Just Giving. These independent third parties will only share your data with us when you have given permission for CPRE to contact you.

When your information is available publicly

We may combine information that we already have about you with information available publicly or information available from external sources to gain a better understanding of you. This includes the use of profiling and screening techniques to ensure communications are relevant and timely, and to provide an improved experience for our supporters. Profiling also allows us to target our resources effectively, which supporters consistently tell us is a key priority for them. We do this because it allows us to understand the background of the people who support us and helps us to make appropriate requests to supporters who may be able and willing to give more than they already do. Importantly, it enables us to raise more funds, sooner, and more cost-effectively, than we otherwise would.

When building a profile, we may analyse geographic, demographic and other information relating to you in order to better understand your interests and preferences in order to contact you with the most relevant communications. In doing this, we may use additional information from third party sources when it is available. Such information is compiled using publicly available data about you, such as Companies House, the Land Registry website or information that is published in articles and newspapers.

In some situations, we may update our supporters, clients and volunteers’ personal information using partners, for example, to check we have a valid and deliverable postal address, or to check if you are registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or Fundraising Preference Service (FPS).

Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media and messaging services like Facebook or Twitter, you might give us permission to access information from those accounts or services.

You can opt out of your data being used in any of the above-mentioned ways at any time by contacting us at supportercare@cpre.org.uk or calling 020 7981 2870.

What data we collect

Personal information is any data that can be used to identify you. It can include, but is not limited to, any of the data listed below.

Data protection law recognises that there are sensitive categories of personal information, such as health information, racial or ethnic origin, or religious beliefs or other beliefs. We would only collect sensitive personal information where there is a clear need to do so such as health information to enable participation in a challenge event. Before we collect any sensitive personal information, we will make it clear what information we are collecting and the purpose we are collecting it for.

Information we collect from you directly or from third parties with whom we work, may include:
• name
• address
• email address
• telephone number
• contact preferences
• bank account details for setting up a regular direct debit
• credit card details for processing credit card payments
• employer details for processing a payroll gift
• taxpayer status for claiming Gift Aid
• National Insurance number
• marital status
• health history
• date of birth, age, and/or gender

We do not use cookies to collect this type of information.

We may also collect and process information about your interactions with us, including details about our contacts with you through email, SMS, post, on the phone or in person. This might include the date, time, and method of contact, details about donations you make to us, events or activities that you register for or attend or any request for support.

We may also collect and record other relevant information you share with us about yourself, such as your interests or your affiliations with other charities, your local CPRE network group, community or campaign groups, your council or planning team.

Children’s data

We are committed to protecting the privacy of children and young people who volunteer with us, fundraise for us, attend events organised by us or engage on our website. Where necessary we will obtain the consent of a parent or guardian in order to collect and use personal data of children.

If you are a child and would like to get involved with CPRE, please obtain your parent or guardian’s consent before sending any personal information to any website or CPRE. Where we have activities for those under 18 we will ask your age. Please ensure you speak to your parent or guardian before taking part in these activities.

How we use your data

Campaigning for a beautiful, resilient countryside is something we cannot do without the help of people who share our passion. Raising funds, running campaigns and involving as wide a range of people as we can in our activities is hugely important to us.

We try to offer diverse ways to support and get involved, and use a range of channels to suit supporter preferences, such as our website, postal, email and telephone appeals, and postal and email newsletters and information publications. We may create profiles and database segmentation to ensure communications are relevant and timely and to provide the best possible experience for our supporters. We may also invite supporters to participate in research occasionally. We will always ensure we have your consent before contacting you by email or text for marketing purposes. We may telephone you provided you have given us your permission to do so, with campaign updates, membership renewal requests and occasional appeals. If you have not given us your permission we will not contact you for these marketing purposes.

The law allows personal data to be legally collected and used by an organisation if it is necessary for a legitimate business interest of the organisation – as long as its use is fair and balanced and does not unduly impact the rights and freedoms of the individual concerned. We will send relevant marketing by post on the basis that it is within our legitimate interests to do so. If you feel you would like to reduce the amount of post you receive from us or prefer not to receive postal marketing at all, simply contact our supporter care team at supportercare@cpre.org.uk or call 020 7981 2870.

If you are a member of CPRE and request not to receive post, please note that we will continue to post legally required membership documents such as voting papers and AGM notifications, and membership renewal notices but you will not receive information materials such as Countryside Voices magazine or local CPRE updates.

Data sharing within the CPRE network

We will share membership data supplied by you (or collected about you) with relevant part of the CPRE network . There are 42 local groups, two of which form part of the national charity. More information about our local groups can be found here.

The CPRE network is supported by the national office and together we deliver CPRE’s charitable objectives to protect and regenerative the countryside and promote sustainable land use decisions.

When you become a member of CPRE, you join both national CPRE and your local CPRE group. The group will be automatically allocated according to your place of residence – or you can specify a preference at any time during your membership (see contact details below). We will share your contact details with your chosen local group so that they can keep you informed of news and events, and invite you to their Annual General Meeting. You can choose not to receive certain communications from your local group at any time by contacting our supporter care team at supportercare@cpre.org.uk or call 020 7981 2870.

This policy applies to only your interactions with national CPRE and our two branches: CPRE Durham and CPRE Northumberland. The independently registered local groups each have their own privacy policy.

Data sharing with third parties

We do not share, sell or swap your information with other organisations for their own marketing purposes. We will share membership data within the CPRE Network as described above.

There are a number of legitimate situations where we may share your information with third parties whom we have contracted to fulfil specific services for us. This will include organisations such as mail fulfilment houses and email broadcasters who will send out our marketing materials on our behalf. In all of these situations we set up a written contractual agreement that will ensure that those organisations can only use the data provided for the specific purposes we direct them to do, and that they have in place strict security requirements in order to protect your personal information.

We may disclose your personal information if we are requested or required to do so by a regulator or law enforcement or to enforce or apply our terms and conditions, for example in relation to our website, or to protect CPRE, for example in cases of suspected fraud or defamation, or to comply with any other applicable legal obligation.

Where you have agreed to receive email marketing communications from us, we may provide your email address or mobile phone number in an encrypted format to social media companies, such as Facebook or Twitter, or to digital advertising networks that are providing services to us by displaying our advertising to you on those social media platforms and other websites, as well as identifying audiences with interests similar to yours. You can opt out of your data being used to display advertising to you by contacting our data protection lead as described above. However, this will not prevent our advertisements being shown to you on a randomised basis or based on cookie data and may mean that you stop receiving more general marketing communications from us.

Keeping your personal information safe

We take appropriate physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your information secure, accurate and up to date.

Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal information, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure. We do our best to protect personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to our website, so any transmission is at the user’s own risk. However, any payment card details (such as credit or debit cards) we receive on our website are passed securely to our payment processing provider according to the Payment Card Industry Security Standards.

How long we will keep your data

We remove personal data from our systems in line with our data retention policy. The length of time each category of data will be retained will vary on how long we need to process it, the reason it is collected, and in line with any statutory requirements.

After this point the data will either be deleted or rendered anonymous. In certain specific situations, for example where a supporter has kindly pledged a legacy to CPRE in their will, we will maintain their details up to the time when we need to carry out the legacy administration and communicate effectively with their family.

Some of the reasons why we may contact you

• To set up or renew your membership
• Process membership subscriptions, donations or other payments
• Set up or alter a direct debit payment
• Notify you of opportunities to get involved in your local area e.g. volunteering opportunities
• Ask you to support one of our campaigns e.g. signing a petition or lobbying your MP
• Ask you to donate to one of our appeals
• Reclaim tax on your donations by claiming Gift Aid
• Send you publications such as Countryside Voices or Fieldwork
• Update you on campaigns through email newsletters
• Invite you to take part in a raffle or other gaming opportunity
• Participate in fundraising events
• Making or changing your will
• For market research
• To notify you of local CPRE activity in your area via your local group newsletter.

If at any time you wish to change the information you receive from us or how you are contacted for marketing purposes you can let us know, by calling supporter care team on 020 7981 2870, emailing supportercare@cpre.org.uk or writing to our data protection lead at the address above.

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How to find out more or make a complaint

To make a formal complaint about CPRE’s approach to data protection or your privacy rights please contact:

Data protection lead
CPRE The countryside charity
15-21 Provost Street
London
N1 7NH

Or call 020 7981 2870. 

We will acknowledge your complaint within 2 working days and aim to provide a full response within 10 working days. If you are not happy with our response, or you believe that your data protection or privacy rights have been infringed, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) which regulates and enforces data protection law in the UK. 

The ICO contact details are:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number. Registration number: Z1843836. 

If you would like more information, or have any questions about this policy, please contact CPRE supporter care team by email at supportercare@cpre.org.uk or write to our supporter care team at our address above.