PitchPower - Privacy Statement

PitchPower is an online application designed and operated by The Football Foundation (UK registered charity number 1079309) (the “Foundation”, “we”, “us”). The Foundation is committed to protecting your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal information you share with us, or that we receive from others, and keep it safe. This Privacy Statement (“Statement”) sets out our data processing practices and your rights and options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used and collected (including through our dedicated PitchPower website – www.PitchPower.org.uk/).

This Statement contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal information.

The provision of your personal information to us is voluntary. However, without providing us with your personal information, your use of our services or your interaction with us may be impaired. For example, your organisation will be unable to sign up for use of the PitchPower application and we will be unable to provide you with technical assistance. 

1. How do we collect personal information about you?  
2. What personal information do we use?  
3. How and why will we use your personal information?  
4. Lawful bases  
5. Communications for marketing/promotional purposes  
6. Children’s personal information  
7. How long do we keep your personal information?  
8. Will we share your personal information?  
9. Security/ storage of and access to your personal information  
10. International transfers of your personal information  
11. Exercising your Rights  
12. Changes to this Statement  
13. Links and third parties  
14. How to contact us 

When you give it to us directly 
For example, personal information that you submit through the PitchPower website when you sign up to use the application or personal information that you give to us when you communicate with us by email or phone. 
 
When we obtain it indirectly
For example, your personal information may be shared with us by third parties including, for example, third party service providers (such as software developers who assist us with the operation of PitchPower), funding partners (such as The FA and the Premier League) or other sporting National Governing Bodies that we partner with (such as the Rugby Football Union, Rugby League and England and Wales Cricket Board). To the extent we have not done so already, we will notify you when we receive personal information about you from them and tell you how and why we intend to use that personal information. 

When it is available publicly
Your personal information may be available to us from external publicly available sources. For example, depending on your privacy settings for social media services, we may access information from those accounts or services (for example when you choose to interact with us via Facebook or Twitter).

When you visit our website 
When you visit our website, we automatically collect the following types of personal information: 

(i) Technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions and operating systems and platforms. 

(ii) Information about your visit to the websites, including the uniform resource locator (URL) clickstream to, through and from the website (including date and time), services you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, referral sources, page interaction information (such as scrolling and clicks) and methods used to browse away from the page. 

We collect and use your personal information by using cookies on our website – please see our Cookie Policy. 

In general, we may combine your personal information from these different sources, for the purposes set out in this Statement.
 

We may collect, store and otherwise process the following kinds of personal information:

• your name and contact details including postal address, telephone number, email address; 
• your social media identity; 
• details of your organisation and the position you hold there; 
• information about your computer/ mobile device and your visits to and use of this website, including, for example, your IP address and geographical location; 
• personal information you provide to us to receive technical assistance or during customer service interactions; 
• product performance information and details about your use of PitchPower;
• information about our services which you use/which we consider may be of interest to you; and/or 
• personal descriptions; and/ or any other personal information which we obtain as per section 1.

 
Do we process special categories of personal information?

The UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) recognises certain categories of personal information as sensitive and therefore requiring more protection, for example information about your health, ethnicity and religious beliefs.

PitchPower does not collect special categories of personal information. 

Your personal information, however provided to us, will be used for the purposes specified in this Statement. In particular, we may use your personal information:

• to assess your organisation’s quality of grass pitches that you maintain; 
• to assess your organisation’s need for a Football Foundation grant application; 
• to allow you to make use of the software in general and provide you with related information; 
• to provide you with technical assistance and customer support; 
• to update you on the status of your orders/requests; 
• to provide further information about our work, services or activities (where necessary, only where you have provided your consent to receive such information); 
• to confirm your identification when you contact us; 
• to answer your questions/ requests and communicate with you in general; 
• for our own internal record keeping purposes; 
• to manage relationships with our partners and service providers; 
• to analyse and improve our work, services, activities, products or information (including our website), or for our internal records; 
• to run/administer PitchPower, including our dedicated PitchPower website, and ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device;  
• to publish information about our projects on our website and via social media channels;
• to audit and/ or administer our accounts; 
• to satisfy legal obligations which are binding on us, for example in relation to regulatory, government and/or law enforcement bodies with whom we may work (for example requirements relating to the payment of tax or anti-money laundering); 
• for the prevention of fraud or misuse of services; and/or 
• for the establishment, defence and/ or enforcement of legal claims.

The UK GDPR requires us to rely on one or more lawful bases to use your personal information. We consider the grounds listed below to be relevant:

• Where you have provided your consent for us to use your personal information in a certain way (for example, in the PitchPower sign up process we ask for your consent to use your personal information as outlined in this policy).
• Where necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. For example, we have a legitimate interest in providing the PitchPower service to you and to keep you updated about any requests you make.
• Where necessary so that we can comply with a legal obligation to which we are subject (for example, where we are obliged to share your personal information with regulatory bodies which govern our work and services). 
• Where necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are a party or to take steps at your request prior to entering a contract (for example, to provide you with the software in return for you signing up to use the PitchPower service). 

We may use your contact details to provide you with information about our work, events, services and/or activities which we consider may be of interest to you (for example, about software updates which may become available after you have registered with PitchPower).

Where we do this via email, SMS or telephone (where you are not registered with the Telephone Preference Service), we will not do so without your prior consent (unless allowed to do so via applicable law).

Where you have provided us with your consent previously but do not wish to be contacted by us about our work, events, services and/or activities in the future, please let us know by email at pitchpower@footballfoundation.org.uk. Or you can opt out of receiving emails by following the instructions at the bottom of our emails.

When we process children’s personal information, where required we will not do so without their consent or, where required, the consent of a parent/ guardian. We will always have in place appropriate safeguards to ensure that children’s personal information is handled with due care.
 

In general, unless still required in connection with the purpose(s) for which it was collected and/or processed (or e.g. we are required to retain it in accordance with our obligations under law), we remove your personal information from our records six years after the date it was collected. However, if before that date (i) your personal information is no longer required in connection with such purpose(s), (ii) we are no longer lawfully entitled to process it or (iii) you validly exercise your right of erasure (please see Section 11 below), we will remove it from our records at the relevant time.

If you request to receive no further contact from us, we may keep some basic information about you on our suppression list in order to comply with your request and avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future.

We do not share, sell or rent your personal information to third parties for marketing purposes. However, in general we may disclose your personal information to selected third parties in order to achieve the purposes set out in this Statement. 

These parties may include (but are not limited to):

• The Grounds Management Association, to enable them to assess your pitch quality and help support you in the maintenance of these pitches;
• Our funding partners (The FA, The Premier League, Sport England) in connection with our charitable aims;
• Our other partners, including the appropriate national governing body of your organisation’s sport, e.g. (as relevant) the Rugby Football Union, Rugby League or England and Wales Cricket Board) so that they can access pitch and contact information;  
• County FAs who help support the implementation and performance of some of our grants and help with the maintenance of grass pitches;
• Hive Learning to help support you via the Football Foundation Groundskeepers community;  
• Suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them, for example IT service providers such as software developers or cloud storage providers; 
• Funding bodies with which we work; 
• Professional service providers such as accountants and lawyers; 
• Parties assisting us with research to monitor the impact/effectiveness of our services; 
• Regulatory authorities, such as tax authorities;

In particular, we reserve the right to disclose your personal information to third parties: 

• in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we will disclose your personal information to the (prospective) seller or buyer of such business or assets; 
• if substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, personal information held by us may be one of the transferred assets; 
• if we are under any legal or regulatory duty to do so; and/or 
• to protect the rights, property or safety of PitchPower and/or the Foundation, its personnel, users, visitors or others.

When you use PitchPower, the Foundation is committed to keeping your personal information safe and secure and we have appropriate and proportionate security policies and organisational and technical measures in place to help protect your information.

Your personal information is only accessible by appropriately trained staff, volunteers and contractors, and stored on secure servers which have features to prevent unauthorised access.

Given that we are a UK-based organisation we will normally only transfer your personal information within the UK or the European Economic Area (“EEA”), where all countries have the same level of data protection law as under the UK GDPR.

However, because we may sometimes use agencies and/or suppliers to process personal information on our behalf, or if you are a customer based outside the UK or EEA, it is possible that personal information we collect from you will be transferred to and stored in a location outside the UK or EEA.

Please note that some countries outside of the UK or EEA have a lower standard of protection for personal information, including lower security requirements and fewer rights for individuals. Where your personal information is transferred, stored and/or otherwise processed outside the UK or EEA in a country that does not offer an equivalent standard of protection to the UK, we will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that the recipient implements appropriate safeguards (such as by entering into standard contractual clauses or equivalent which have been approved by the UK Government) designed to protect your personal information and to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Statement. If you have any questions about the transfer of your personal information, please contact us using the details in section 14 below.

Unfortunately, no transmission of your personal information over the internet can be guaranteed to be 100% secure – however, once we have received your personal information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try and prevent unauthorised access. 

Where we rely on your consent to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. This includes the right to ask us to stop using your personal information for marketing or fundraising purposes or to unsubscribe from our email list at any time. You also have the following rights:

• Right of access – you can write to us to ask for confirmation of what personal information we hold on you and to request a copy of that personal information. Provided we are satisfied that you are entitled to see the personal information requested and we have successfully confirmed your identity, we will provide you with your personal information subject to any exemptions that apply. 
• Right of erasure – at your request we will delete your personal information from our records as far as we are required to do so. In many cases we would propose to suppress further communications with you, rather than delete it. 
• Right of rectification – if you believe our records of your personal information are inaccurate, you have the right to ask for those records to be updated. You can also ask us to check the personal information we hold about you if you are unsure whether it is accurate/up to date. 
• Right to restrict processing – you have the right to ask for processing of your personal information to be restricted if there is disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage. 
• Right to object – you have the right to object to processing where we are (i) processing your personal information on the basis of the legitimate interests basis (see section 4), (ii) using your personal information for direct marketing or (iii) using your information for statistical purposes. 
• Right to data portability – to the extent required by the UK GDPR, where we are processing your personal information (that you have provided to us) either (i) by relying on your consent or (ii) because such processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which you are party or to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contact, and in either case we are processing using automated means (i.e. with no human involvement), you may ask us to provide the personal information to you – or another service provider – in a machine-readable format.  
• Rights related to automated decision-making – you have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing of your personal information which produces legal or similarly significant effects on you, unless such a decision (i) is necessary to enter into/perform a contract between you and us/another organisation; (ii) is authorised by UK law to which the Foundation is subject (as long as that law offers you sufficient protection); or (iii) is based on your explicit consent. 

Please note that some of these rights only apply in limited circumstances. For more information, we suggest that you contact us using the details in section 14 below.

We encourage you to raise any concerns or complaints you have about the way we use your personal information by contacting us using the details provided in section 14 below.  You are further entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office – www.ico.org.uk. For further information on how to exercise this right, please contact us using the details in section 14 below.

We may update this Statement from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by contacting you directly where reasonably possible for us to do so and by placing an updated notice on our website. This Statement was last updated on 22 August 2022.

We link our website directly to other sites. This Statement does not cover external websites and we are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies or notices of any external websites you visit via links on our website.

Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this Statement or about the way in which the Foundation processes your personal information by contacting us at the channels below. Please ask for/mark messages for the attention of Director of Business Services.

Email: data.enquiries@footballfoundation.org.uk
Telephone: 0345 345 4555
Post: Football Foundation, 10 Eastbourne Terrace, London, W2 6LG