Funeral Services - Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice applies to all Central Co-op funeral businesses, usually trading as Co-operative Funeralcare, although you may know others by their trading names. These include Bretby Crematorium, Terry Smiths Ltd and Co-operative Memorials, as well as our funeral homes: 

Central Co-op Funeral Plans (the trading name of Central England Co-operative Funeral Plans Limited) is also part of the Central Co-op family.  It is regulated and approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to sell a range of fully guaranteed prepaid funeral plans.  Central Co-op assist with the sales and administration of funeral plans and the funeral plan privacy notice can be found here

We collect the information we need to respond to an enquiry, arrange a funeral for your loved one, set up a pre-paid funeral plan or record your funeral wishes. This includes:

• Your name, address, other contact details and date of birth
• When you are our client for a funeral arrangement, your relationship to your loved one and the name, address, telephone number and relationship of the next of kin to your loved one
• Your membership number and details of any membership cards if you present them.
• When we record your funeral wishes the name of your next of kin and your relationship to them
• Orders, charges and payments on your client account
• Payment card information, when you make a payment by credit or debit card and bank details if you pay by direct debit
• Details of any funeral plan which will be used to pay for the funeral
• Any other personal data you provide to allow us to make arrangements that meet your requirements which may, for example, include choices of dates, venues, celebrants, memorials, inscriptions, service preferences, religious beliefs and arrangements to accommodate individuals with a disability
• Your communication and marketing preferences
• Personal data contained in any communication you may enter into
• Footage and/or images of you, which may be recorded on CCTV when you visit our premises

• To handle enquiries and orders, to liaise with you, to provide information required by a crematorium, burial site or service venue, to fulfil your order and to process payments on the grounds of contractual obligation.
• To request feedback on our service on the basis of our legitimate interest in developing our business
• If you are a member and present your membership card, we collect information and use it as set out in the membership section of our Privacy Notice
• If you are a member or already a customer, we may use your personal data to send you information about other related products and services on the basis of our legitimate interest in developing our business. 
• If you are not a member or an existing customer we may send you information about our products and services when you have consented to this. 
• To make arrangements to accommodate individuals with a disability on the grounds of a legal obligation.
• To confirm your identity when you visit one of our funeral homes, on the basis of our legitimate interests of caring for your loved one.
• To complete statutory paperwork relating, for instance, to care of your loved one or cremation on the grounds of a legal obligation.
• To arrange or plan for a funeral in line with your religious preferences on the grounds of contractual obligation and your explicit consent.
• To deal with communications including enquiries, complaints and compliments on the grounds of our legitimate interest in managing our relationship with you.
• We use non-identifiable information about purchases for statistical analysis and business planning, for instance to identify trends, to schedule our resources, to improve our products and services and to develop new ones. We do this on the grounds of our legitimate interest in continually improving service to our customers.
• We use CCTV monitoring to protect our customers and colleagues and to safeguard our property and assets. We do this in the legitimate interests of the Society, customers and colleagues. We also do this in the public interest, to prevent and detect crime and accidents.

If you have recently organised a funeral through one of our homes, we offer a complimentary telephone call from our Bereavement Support Team, who provide advice on probate and related matters.  We do this on the grounds of our legitimate interest in continually improving the service to our customers.  If during this call we identify that further help is required, we will seek your consent to share your details with Co-op Legal Services for an additional call to discuss your needs.

Sometimes we share your personal data with organisations we trust to process it on our behalf. They may only use this data for the purpose we agree with them, unless they are required by law to process your personal data for other purposes. For example we may share the content of an order of service with a printing company, or an inscription with a stonemason.

Sometimes we help you to order services from a third party supplier, for example, to make a booking with a crematorium. In this case the third-party supplier will collect your data for their own purposes.

Where you have given your consent, we may pass some of your personal data to our partners:

• Co-op Legal Services, so that they may contact you about their services and provide complimentary advice on probate and related matters
• Muchloved,  so that they may contact you to offer you the opportunity to write an online obituary, set up donation management, or to provide feedback on our service

To see how our partners will use your personal data you should look at their privacy notices.

We may share your personal data, where necessary, with our auditors, legal advisors and other professional advisors acting in their professional capacity, for instance, for the purposes of allowing us to exercise or defend our legal rights.

We may be required to share your personal data to comply with laws or with legal obligations, such as in response to a valid court order or to e.g. HMRC, or where we consider that there is a legitimate interest to do so, such as reporting details of a suspected criminal incident to the Police.

When you pay by credit or debit card we pass your payment and card details securely to our card payment service provider. We do not keep your card details.

We may share your personal data, where necessary, with our statutory or professional regulators, either to evidence our compliance with legal or professional obligations, or to assist them in any investigations arising from any complaints made about us.

When you pay by direct debit, we will share your payment details with the relevant banks.

If any overdue amount is not paid, we will share your personal data with a debt recovery agent.  In such cases, the agent may only use the data in line with our instructions and not for any other purpose.

CCTV footage and/or images may be shared with law enforcement agencies, prosecution agencies, legal representatives, insurance companies, NBCS and third parties where it's lawful to do so.

We will keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes described in this notice, including where it is needed to comply with our legal obligations, to resolve disputes or to enforce agreements. This means we may keep your personal data for up to seven years after the funeral or redemption/cancellation of a pre-paid funeral plan, unless we are legally required to keep it for longer. Certain cremation records must be kept for 15 years.

We do not keep credit or debit card details.

CCTV footage and/or images are normally kept for 31 days. Images and/or footage of incidents that require investigation will be normally be kept for up to 7 years from the conclusion of any investigation and/or any subsequent legal proceedings, unless we are legally required to retain this footage or images for longer.