Privacy policy

CIH is the controller for the Personal Data collected from website visitors and individuals who access My CIH, unless this is stated otherwise. CIH is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) with registration number (Z8363658). In this privacy notice, references to ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ mean CIH.

You can contact CIH in a number of ways as follows:

• Email: governance@cih.org
• Telephone: +44 (0) 247 685 1700
• Address:
  Data Protection Officer,
  CIH,
  Suites 5 and 6, First Floor,
  Rowan House,
  Westwood Way,
  Coventry,
  CV4 8HS
  United Kingdom

Personal Data is any information which directly or indirectly identifies an individual, for example, your name, email address, membership number.

Special categories of Personal Data are a set of Personal Data that we are required to look after even more carefully. Special categories of Personal Data include details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health and genetic and biometric data.

Where we collect information, we are doing so in order to offer you better services, both on the website and in the rest of our operations.

Types of data include:

We do not collect any financial information on this website. If you make a debit or credit card payment online for example, to pay subscriptions or fees, or to purchase any of our services or products, you will be taken to a secure payment service provider who will take your payment on our behalf and return you to this website when your order has been completed.

Additional note on cookies and tracking:

We use a Consent Management Platform (Usercentrics) to give you control over whether non-essential cookies and similar technologies (such as analytics, advertising, and social media tools) are used. You can review and change your consent choices at any time by visiting our cookie settings.

We collect your personal data for the following purposes:

You can delete or change your email address at any time or unsubscribe to particular types of email. You can do this by logging into your My CIH profile, or by clicking on the links provided in any of our emails.

If you have a web chat conversation, we will record a copy of that conversation will be stored with the membership number/student number/other identification ID you used to log in to this website.

Any information you give will be available to CIH, including our devolved nations and regional groups. 

We may need to share your information with our service providers and agents for the purposes set out in this privacy policy. These may include:

• Email campaign service providers

• Insights and analytics service providers (e.g. Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity)

• Advertising and retargeting providers (e.g. Google Ads, LinkedIn)

• Webchat and accessibility providers (e.g. ReciteMe, LiveChat)

• Video and media hosting providers (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud)

• External organisations conducting research on our behalf. We may share your email address with these organisations so that they can contact you directly and carry out this research independently from CIH. We only use organisations that adhere to the Market Research Society code of practice.

Information you give in response to surveys and questionnaires on the website will be used in two ways:

1. By CIH itself to help determine policy and to help improve our services to members; or
2. By third parties that CIH may give the information to for market research; in this case, the information will only be made available as anonymous statistical reports.

Your Personal Data may be transferred to other third-party organisations in certain scenarios:

1. If we are discussing a merger or acquisition, Personal Data may be transferred to respective third parties under suitable terms as to confidentiality;
2. If we are reorganised or sold, Personal Data may be transferred to a buyer who can continue to provide services to you;
3. If we are required to by law, or under any regulatory code or practice we follow, or if we are asked by any public or regulatory authority, for example the Police, we may need to share your Personal Data; or
4. If we are investigating or defending any legal claims your Personal Data may be transferred as required in connection with defending such investigations and/or claims.

Some of our providers (including Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, YouTube and others) are based outside the UK and EEA. This means your data may be transferred to and processed in countries that may not offer the same level of protection.

Whenever we transfer your Personal Data out of the UK, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as:

• Only transferring to countries deemed by the UK to provide an adequate level of protection; or
• Using contracts approved for use in the UK (such as the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses).

Like many other websites, the Site uses cookies and similar technologies. ‘Cookies’ are small bits of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit.

We categorise cookies into:

• Marketing - These cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
• Functional - These cookies enable the website to provide enhanced functionality and personalisation. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages. If you do not allow these cookies then some or all of these services may not function properly.
• Performance - These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. They help us to know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors move around the site. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. If you do not allow these cookies we will not know when you have visited our site, and will not be able to monitor its performance.
• Essential - These technologies are required to activate the core functionality of our service.

You can switch cookies on or off at any time through our cookie settings.

Our website and emails may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the content or practices of these other sites, and we recommend that you check their own privacy policies. 

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent Personal Data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your Personal Data to those who have a genuine business need to know it.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

1. Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your Personal Data.
2. Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify Personal Data you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete Personal Data you think is incomplete.
3. Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your Personal Data in certain circumstances.
4. Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your Personal Data in certain circumstances.
5. Your right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the processing of your Personal Data in certain circumstances.
6. Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the Personal Data you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
7. Rights related to automated decision making, including profiling - You have the right not to be subjected to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) which may significantly affect you. We do not make any employment decisions, solely using automated decision-making technologies.

In most cases we will deal with your request as soon as possible and at the latest within one calendar month of the request. If we need to extend the time period for responding to your request, we will let you know within the one-month period. We do not charge a fee for any such requests unless there are exceptional circumstances.

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer via email using governance@cih.org.

If you have any concerns about the Personal Data we use about you, you have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues, by contacting them at www.ico.org.uk. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please feel free to contact us in the first instance via email using governance@cih.org.