Privacy Policy

Who We Are

Academy Swim Team is a volunteer-led swimming club based in Burnham-On-Sea. For the purposes of UK data protection law, the club is the data controller for the personal information it collects and uses.

If you have any questions about this policy or how your information is handled, please contact the club secretary at [email protected] or use the details on our contact page. For billing questions, contact [email protected]. For welfare or safeguarding concerns, contact [email protected].

Short Summary For Members And Parents

We use personal information to run the swimming club safely and fairly. This includes managing membership, training, squads, meet entries, results, invoices, Direct Debit payments, members portal access, emergency contacts, welfare information, and club communications. Club forms are submitted on our own website and stored in our club systems. We only give access to people who need it for their club role or to trusted service providers who help us run the club.

Information We Collect

Depending on your relationship with the club, we may collect and use:

• Names, dates of birth, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and emergency contact details.
• Parent or guardian contact details for junior swimmers.
• Swimming information, such as squad, attendance, competition entries, results, personal bests, and training progress.
• Medical, allergy, access, disability, ethnicity (where collected on membership forms), or welfare information needed to support safe participation and inclusion.
• Membership, payment, direct debit, fee, invoice, and account administration information.
• Volunteer, official, coach, committee, safeguarding, qualification, DBS, training, and compliance document information.
• Messages, website form submissions, enquiries, trial requests, membership applications, and staff-only accident, near miss, and welfare concern reports.
• Club event responses, attendance notes, and related billing information.
• Photos, videos, photo consent choices, and event reports where these are used for club records, news, promotion, or celebration of achievements.
• Members portal account details, login status, linked family or swimmer access permissions, change requests, invoice views, meet entries, schedules, results, volunteering progress, and account preferences.
• Visiting club contact and swimmer entry information submitted for hosted meets.
• Admin portal activity, email sending logs, payment processing records, security logs, and audit records needed to manage the site and protect accounts.
• Basic technical information about website use, such as IP address (often stored in hashed form for security), browser type, and device information, where this is collected by our hosting or security controls.

Where Information Comes From

We may collect information directly from you, from parents or guardians, from swimmers, from club volunteers and staff, and from systems used to run the club. These may include our website forms, the members portal, membership and medical records, meet files, results files, attendance records, payment systems, email communications, and governing body or competition systems.

How We Use Your Information

We use personal information to:

• Run club membership, squads, training sessions, competitions, events, and trials.
• Communicate with members, parents, guardians, coaches, volunteers, and officials.
• Manage safeguarding, welfare, health and safety, attendance, emergency contact, and inclusion needs.
• Receive and review website form submissions, including contact, trial, membership, and staff welfare or incident reports.
• Administer fees, payments, refunds, records, and club accounts.
• Submit competition entries, record results, and meet governing body requirements.
• Recruit, organise, and support volunteers, officials, committee members, coaches, and teachers.
• Maintain club records, respond to enquiries, and deal with complaints or disciplinary matters.
• Publish appropriate club news, achievements, photos, and updates where we have a lawful reason to do so.
• Provide members portal access for families to view linked swimmers, training schedules, invoices, results, meet entries, club events, volunteering information, and account details.
• Handle member change requests for contact, medical, photo consent, and related details, subject to club review.
• Send club emails through authorised club sender addresses and keep an audit trail of important communications.
• Process Direct Debit mandates, payments, subscriptions, failed payments, refunds, invoice status, donation payments, and payment reconciliation.
• Keep the website and club systems secure and working properly.

Our Lawful Bases

We only use personal information where we have a lawful basis under UK data protection law. These may include:

• Contract: to provide membership, training, events, and related club services.
• Legal obligation: to meet accounting, safeguarding, health and safety, or governing body obligations.
• Legitimate interests: to manage and develop the club, communicate with members, keep records, and promote club activities in a fair and proportionate way.
• Consent: where we ask for clear permission, such as for certain photos, marketing, or optional communications.
• Vital interests: where information is needed in an emergency.

Where we process special category information, such as medical, disability, ethnicity, or welfare information, we do so only where an additional condition applies, including explicit consent, safeguarding, health and safety, or substantial public interest reasons.

Children's Information

Many of our members are children, so we take extra care with junior swimmer information. We normally collect children's personal information through a parent or guardian and use it only where needed to run the club safely and appropriately.

We expect parents and guardians to help junior swimmers understand how their information is used. Where a child is old enough to understand, we will also take their views into account, particularly around photos, welfare matters, and participation information.

Who We Share Information With

We may share relevant information with:

• Swim England, county, regional, and competition organisers where required for membership, governance, entries, licensing, or results.
• Coaches, teachers, team managers, welfare officers, officials, and committee members who need the information for their club role.
• Payment, communication, website hosting, email, cloud storage, and administration service providers used by the club.
• Schools, leisure centres, pool operators, or event venues where needed for safe access or event management.
• Safeguarding bodies, emergency services, insurers, professional advisers, or legal authorities where required or appropriate.

We do not sell personal information.

Key Systems And Service Providers

The club uses a small number of systems to operate the website and club administration. These may include:

• Academy Swim Team website and database: for public pages, first-party website forms, members portal accounts, membership records, meet entries, results, attendance, invoices, volunteering records, and related club administration.
• Microsoft 365: for club email, mailbox access, and some administration workflows. Form notifications may be sent by email through Microsoft 365.
• GoCardless: for Direct Debit mandates, subscriptions, payment collection, Instant Bank Pay donations, payment status updates, and webhook notifications.
• SumUp: for card donation payments and related transaction records used in club finance reconciliation.
• Swim England, county, regional, and meet organiser systems: for membership numbers, competition entries, results, rankings exports, and governance where relevant. Some historic membership or results information may also be imported from previous club systems.
• Website hosting and content delivery services: for hosting the site, loading fonts, icons, scripts, logs, and security tooling.

These providers may process personal information only as needed to provide their services to the club, or as described in their own privacy information where you interact with them directly.

International Processing

Some of the service providers used by the club, such as Microsoft, payment providers, hosting providers, or content delivery networks, may process information outside the UK. Where this happens, we expect those providers to use appropriate safeguards such as UK adequacy regulations, approved contractual protections, or equivalent transfer safeguards.

Photos, Videos, and Results

Swimming clubs often use photos, videos, names, age groups, event results, and achievement stories to celebrate swimmers and promote the club. We will follow club safeguarding expectations and any relevant permissions or objections recorded with us.

If you have a concern about a photo, video, or named result on the website or club channels, please contact us and we will review it promptly.

How Long We Keep Information

We keep personal information only for as long as needed for club purposes, legal requirements, safeguarding, insurance, accounting, and record keeping. Some records, such as safeguarding, incident, financial, qualification, competition, or historical club records, may need to be kept for longer than active membership records.

• Active membership and portal records: kept while you are connected with the club and for a reasonable period afterwards.
• Website form submissions: kept while needed to process the enquiry, application, or incident report, and for a reasonable audit or safeguarding period afterwards.
• Financial, invoice, Direct Debit, donation, and accounting records: normally kept for at least six years where needed for accounting, audit, tax, or payment dispute purposes.
• Safeguarding, welfare, medical, accident, near miss, and incident records: may be kept for longer where this is necessary for safeguarding, insurance, legal, or governing body reasons.
• Competition entries, results, awards, and club records: may be kept as part of the club's sporting and historical records.
• Volunteer, coach, official, qualification, DBS, and compliance records: kept while relevant to the role and for a reasonable period afterwards.
• Website, admin, login, email, and security logs: kept for as long as needed to operate the site, investigate problems, protect accounts, and maintain an audit trail.

How We Protect Information

We use reasonable organisational and technical measures to protect personal information, including limiting access to people who need it for their club role. No online system can be guaranteed completely secure, but we aim to keep information accurate, protected, and used responsibly.

The members portal and admin portal use account login controls, session cookies, CSRF protection, rate limiting, and feature-based admin permissions. Administrators should only access information they need for their club role. Where an administrator uses “view as member” or similar support tools, this is limited to authorised club roles and recorded where appropriate.

Your Rights

Under UK data protection law, you may have the right to ask for access to your personal information, correction of inaccurate information, deletion, restriction, objection, portability, or withdrawal of consent where consent is the lawful basis.

Some rights may be limited where the club has another lawful reason to keep or use the information, such as safeguarding, legal, accounting, or insurance requirements.

To exercise your rights or withdraw consent where consent is the lawful basis, contact the club secretary at [email protected]. If your request relates to welfare or safeguarding, you may also contact [email protected].

Automated Decisions

We do not use the website or members portal to make solely automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects on members. Some systems may automatically calculate statuses, totals, alerts, eligibility checks, or payment states, but important club decisions remain subject to appropriate human review.

Cookies and Website Services

Our website uses essential cookies for site security, member/admin sessions, and remembering privacy or interface choices. These are needed for the website to work properly and are not controlled by the optional analytics setting.

The site may also use browser storage, such as local storage, to remember simple interface choices. For example, the members portal may remember that you have dismissed a notice on your own device, and the cookie banner records whether you accepted or rejected analytics so that the site can respect that choice. You can reopen Cookie settings from the footer and change your choice at any time.

If you accept analytics, ordinary public pages load Google Analytics using measurement ID G-7LSEBSSG29. It helps the club understand aggregate page use, referrals, devices, browsers, approximate location, and website performance. Google Analytics is not loaded on member or admin portal pages, payment confirmation pages, welfare or medical forms, meet-entry upload, or invitation-response pages. We do not send form answers, member names, swimmer identifiers, invoice details, medical information, or welfare information as analytics events.

Analytics storage is denied by default. The Google Analytics script is requested only after you select Accept analytics. Google advertising storage, Google Signals, and advertising-personalisation signals remain disabled. If you later reject analytics, the site denies further analytics storage, removes accessible Google Analytics cookies for this site, and reloads the page when needed so the analytics script is no longer active. Google processes analytics information under its own Privacy Policy.

Some pages load externally hosted fonts, icons, scripts, or other technical assets from content delivery networks. Those providers may receive technical information about your visit, such as your IP address, browser, device, and the page you visited, according to their own privacy terms.

Club forms are provided on our own website. We do not currently embed Microsoft Forms or Google Calendar widgets on the active public pages. The public calendar is served from our own systems.

We do not use advertising pixels or behavioural marketing trackers on the active website. Google Analytics is used only for consented measurement of public-site use and is not used to build advertising audiences.

Complaints

Please contact us first if you are concerned about how we handle personal information, and we will try to resolve the issue. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes To This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version will be published on this page.