Membership - Privacy Notice

We collect the personal data we need to administer your membership and to encourage members to trade with us. This includes:

• Your name and contact details for post, email and telephone
• Dates relating to your application and membership
• Your membership number and details of any membership cards
• Your agreement to be subject to the rules of the Society
• Your attendance at meetings of the Society
• Any personal data contained in the minutes of meetings of the Society
• Records relating to the administration of voting
• Details of financial transactions relating to shares and dividends
• Purchases in our trading businesses where your membership card has been presented
• Details of your spend where you present your Central England Co-operative membership card at the Co-operative Group, Southern Co-operative, Midcounties Co-operative and Chelmsford Star Co-operative. Central England Co-operative is in a membership affinity scheme with these societies.
• Redemption of e-dividend where your membership card has been presented
• Redemption of vouchers associated with your membership number
• Payment card information, when you make a payment by credit or debit card
• Personal data contained in any contact or communication relating to your membership
• Footage and/or images of you, which may be recorded on CCTV when you visit our premises
• Your communication and marketing preferences
• Any other personal data you give us.

• To process any application for membership, to administer your membership account, to maintain the register of members, to invite you to attend meetings, to keep the minutes of meetings, to administer voting, to pay a dividend and to send you information to help you participate in the governance and the affairs of the Society in line with the rules. We do this because it is a contractual obligation under the rules of the Society or for legal compliance with the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014.
• We may use your personal data to create a profile based on your purchase history in combination with publicly or commercially available statistical information, so that we can send you offers, vouchers and information about products, services and events that we think will be of interest to you. We do this on the grounds of the legitimate interest in achieving the Society’s purpose, which is to provide goods and services to our members as a co‑operative. Members also share our legitimate interest in creating a trading surplus for application according to co‑operative principles, including member dividend, employee dividend and community activity. You may opt out of your data being used in this way by contacting us.
• To process payments on the grounds of contractual obligation.
• To respond to contact or communication including enquiries, complaints and compliments. We do this on the grounds of legitimate interest in managing our relationship with you.
• To confirm your identity when you contact us about your membership, on the basis of our legitimate interests in keeping your account secure.
• To administer any of our prize draws or competitions which you enter, based on your consent given at the time of entering.
• To protect the Society and your membership account from fraud. We do this on the grounds of the legitimate interests of the Society and our members.
• We use non-identifiable purchase information for statistical analysis and business planning, for instance to identify trends in shopping, plan to meet future demand, improve our products and services and develop new ones. We do this on the grounds of our legitimate interest in continually improving service to our customers.
• To allow us to investigate complaints and defend or bring legal claims, on the basis of legitimate interest.
• To share information with law enforcement bodies, where we consider it necessary for the purposes of the prevention and/or detection of crime or the prosecution of offenders.
• To share information with appropriate statutory regulators, where necessary to comply with our professional or legal obligations, or in response to any complaint made by you or on your behalf.
• We use CCTV monitoring to protect our members, customers and colleagues and to safeguard our property and assets. We do this on the grounds of the legitimate interests of the Society, our members, customers and colleagues.

Your personal data may be processed by organisations acting 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 instance, we use a specialist company to produce membership cards, a data insight company to help us keep your details up to date and a mailing service provider to send you membership information by post or email.

We may also use a mailing service provider to send you offers, vouchers and information about products, services and events that we think will be of interest to you.

When you pay by credit or debit card we immediately pass your card and payment 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 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.

We may also share your data with  third parties where we are legally required to do so, or where you have either explicitly asked us to, or given permission to a third party to be provided with a copy of your personal data.

Central England Co-operative is in a membership affinity scheme with the Co-operative Group, Southern Co-operative, Midcounties Co-operative and Chelmsford Star Co-operative. If you present a membership card from one of these co-operatives at a Central England Co-operative trading outlet, we will pass details of your spend to that co-operative society.

If you present your Central England Co-operative membership card at a trading outlet of the Co-operative Group, Southern Co-operative, Midcounties Co-operative or Chelmsford Star Co-operative, we will receive details of your spend with that co-operative society.  We also receive information from Will and Probate Services, our official partner for the provision of legal services in support of our funeral services clients, if you have authorised Will and Probate Services to undertake legal services covering wills, probate and estate administration and support with executors’ duties.

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 will normally keep your personal data for up to seven years after your membership has ended, unless we are legally required to keep it for longer.

We do not keep credit or debit card details once payment has been made.

CCTV footage and/or images are normally kept for 31 days. Images and/or footage of incidents that require investigation will 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.

If you choose to download our App to manage your membership, we may also collect further information to allow us to develop an understanding of our members preferences. This may include.

• Information in relation to app usage data such as number of downloads and, where you have enabled push notifications, engagement information. 

You can opt-in and out of push notifications through the ‘notifications’ feature within system settings on your device or via the app by navigating to the menu > settings > notification settings.