Your Privacy

Visit Northumberland Ltd (“we and us” means Visit Northumberland Ltd, a company limited by guarantee (company registration number 05771216) with their registered office at Northumberland County Council, County Hall, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 2EF and the term “our” shall be interpreted accordingly) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. 

This policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure. We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy. For the purpose of The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the data controller is Visit Northumberland, Northumberland County Council, County Hall, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 2EF.

1. Who are we?

Visit Northumberland is the Destination Management Organisation for Northumberland. We have a clear vision for Northumberland: "To be THE destination where Independent Spirit comes to life" and work closely with Northumberland County Council and tourism businesses to achieve the vision together.

Our website www.visitnorthumberland.com is the official tourist information website for Northumberland. The aim of the website is to ensure you experience the very best Northumberland has to offer.

Our corporate website www.northumberlandtourism.org.uk has more information about who we are and what we do. If you are a business that works or is interested in working within the tourism industry, please visit our site to see how we can work together.

This policy explains how we handle consumer data within Visit Northumberland Ltd and on www.visitnorthumberland.com.

2. Information we collect and how we use it

We may collect information about you on this website in the following ways:

2.1 Subscribing to our monthly newsletter. 

We send the following newsletters:

o Visit Northumberland - inspiration, news, surveys, events, offers, things to do and competitions. 
We occasionally send bespoke emails from carefully selected partners. We do not share your details with these partners or third parties without your consent.

o Group Travel - a bespoke newsletter to help travel companies plan a group visit to Northumberland

We request the following contact details: Name, Email address, Postal Address, Postcode, County and Country.

We only collect this data when we have your consent. Your data will be stored securely by our third party service provider (see section 6 - 'Who has access to your information') for five years after your last communication with us, unless you withdraw consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time via our newsletter communications, which can be found in the email footer or by contacting [email protected].  

2.2 Entry to one of our competitions

We request the following contact details when you enter a competition: Name, Email address, Postal Address, Postcode, County, Country and Phone Number. You are also given the option to consent to future marketing from us and our named partners. We process this data as part of our contract with you and we retain it for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

However, if you consent to future marketing we will continue to process your data on that basis (see sections 2.1 & 6). 

If you consent to marketing from our named partners, we will share your data with them.

2.3 Ordering a brochure

You can request a brochure to be sent to you by post at any time on our website. In order to process this, we require your name, postal address, email address and the brochure requested. Our legal basis for processing is a contract and we will retain it for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity.

By ordering a copy of our brochure you agree that our third party service provider (see section 6 - 'Who has access to your information') can act as a Data Processor and hold your data for the purpose of dispatching the brochure to you for as long as is deemed necessary to ensure your brochure order is fully processed.

However, if you consent to future marketing we will continue to process your data on that basis (see sections 2.1 & 6).

2.4 When you provide feedback

You do not need to include your name or contact details when you provide general feedback or information about any technical problems on this site. You will however need to include an email address if you want us to respond to you. You may need to provide contact details to help us with your enquiry.

We will only use any personal information provided to deal with your request and will not share it with any third parties. This data is stored for 12 months after we respond to your feedback, in case you ask for more detail or have other feedback you would like to make.

We reserve, however the right to use non-personal information for business, research and marketing purposes. Our legal basis for processing this data is legal obligation.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We recommend you check this policy every time you submit personal information to our website.

3. IP Addresses

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information for our marketing team to improve their activities. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

4. Cookie Information

Our website uses cookies to improve its content and ease of use. Cookies are small files of letters and numbers that we put on your computer if you agree.

We use session cookies that allow you to be remembered within the website, so any page changes or item or data selection you do is recalled from page to page. This means that you do not get asked the same information that you’ve already given to the site. These cookies are temporary and are erased when you close your browser at the end of your surfing session.

We use tracking cookies. These help us to remember your information and settings when you visit our website in the future. This results in a faster and more convenient access and may enhance your experience of services or functions we offer. These cookies remain on your hard drive until you delete them or they expire (they have varying expiry dates, going up to two years).

We also use web analytics cookies to help us understand what content is most useful to our visitors. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example by making sure that users are finding what they need easily.

Our cookies do not keep personally identifiable information. None of the data we get from cookies will contain information that will enable anyone to contact you via telephone, email, or any other means.

You can block cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies, you may not be able to access all, or parts of our site, and might not be able to shop on the website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon you visit our site.

Please visit www.aboutcookies.org to find out more about cookies.

5. Where we store your personal data

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the fulfilment of your order and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. Visit Northumberland will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

6. Who has access to your information?

We only share your data with carefully selected third party service providers when it is necessary for the processing of the data:

6.1 We use Spotler for our email marketing and data storage, details of their Data Protection Policy can be found in a downloadable PDF document at https://spotler.co.uk/privacy-policy  

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes without your consent.

7. Using Social Media

If you engage with us via a social media platform or visit one of our pages that contains embedded content, details about how your personal information is processed will be within the relevant social media policy. We currently have accounts with the following:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Pinterest
• Linkedin
• Google+

Any direct messages received via the above platforms will be held securely in those systems for 12 months. We are legally obligated to hold messages for a longer period if an issue is ongoing.

8. Your choice

You have a choice about whether or not you wish to receive information from us. If you do not want to receive direct marketing communications from us about the work we do to raise the profile of Northumberland and our exciting products and services, then you can select your choices by ticking the relevant boxes situated on the form on which we collect your information.
We will not contact you for marketing purposes by email, phone or text message unless you have given your prior consent. We will not contact you for marketing purposes by post if you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted. You can change your marketing preferences at any time by using our preference centre, which can be found in all of our email communications or by contacting us at [email protected]. 

9. When we contact you

9.1 Email
We only send emails to you promoting Northumberland where we have your consent. However, if you subscribed to regular information via email before May 25th 2018, you have not asked to be removed from our database and you have engaged with the content within the last 12 months we will continue to contact you. The legal basis for this is legitimate interest.

We store your personal information in a secure database for five years after your last communication with us, unless you withdraw consent. If you withdraw consent, we will delete your data within a month. 

We use a third party service provider (See section: ‘Who has access to your information’) to manage our email marketing therefore your data will be stored with them so that we can carry out the necessary steps to provide you with the subscription you have signed up for.

10. Your Rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulations, you have rights as an individual which you can exercise in relation to the information we hold about you.

Read more about your individual rights on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

11. How you can access and update your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us. You can update your information with us at any time by using our preference centre, which can be accessed via our email communications. You can also contact us at [email protected] if any of your information is inaccurate or out of date. 

You have the right to ask for a copy of the information Visit Northumberland Ltd holds about you, please write to Visit Northumberland, Northumberland County Council, County Hall, Morpeth, Northumberland, NE61 2EF. We will endeavour to respond to your request within 30 days from the date of receipt.

12. Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to and from other internet sites. Please note that this privacy policy only covers this website. Any other website which is linked to or from this website will have their own privacy policies and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

13. Review of this Policy

This policy was last updated on 31st March 2022.

This policy is under regular review, we recommend you check this every time you submit personal information to our website. You can access this policy at any time via the link at the bottom of our website and from our e-newsletters.

14. How to contact us

Visit Northumberland aims to meet the highest standards when collecting and processing your data. We take any complaints very seriously and encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate.

Email us at: [email protected] 

Or write to:

Visit Northumberland
Northumberland County Council,
County Hall,
Morpeth,
Northumberland,
NE61 2EF