At Commonweal we are committed to protecting your privacy. When you interact with us by phone, mail, in person or online, we sometimes receive personal information about you. This policy explains how we collect, use and store your personal information. We aim to be clear when we collect your data and are compliant with the UK General Data Protection Regulation.

We have an ‘opt-in only’ communication policy. This means that we will only send communications to those that have stated they are happy to receive information via either email or post. 

Who are we?

Commonweal is a Registered Charity (1053157), based at the JB PRIESTLEY Library, University of Bradford, Richmond Road, BRADFORD BD7 1DP.

How do we collect information from you?

Directly: We obtain information when you give it to us directly. For example, you might join as a reader, make a donation online, apply for a job or volunteer position with us, register for an event or fill in a mailing list consent form.

Third Parties: We may also receive your information from third parties, for a specific purpose. This will only happen if you have given them permission to share your information.

Social Media: This will depend on your privacy settings or the privacy policies for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Bluesky; you might give us permission to access information from those accounts.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, telephone number and email address. When making a donation online you may give us financial information such as card and bank details. Financial data information is not held by Commonweal but is dealt with by a third party processor.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

• Provide you with updates and information you have requested, for example through our newsletter or invitations to events.
• Process a donation that you have made.
• Seek your views or comments on the services and products we provide
• To ensure we know your preferred means of contact.

We use MailChimp to send out any news and updates via email. MailChimps privacy policy can be found here. 

Who has access to your data and how do we protect it?

Only Commonweal trustees and staff have access to your data. 

We take appropriate physical and electronic measures to ensure that we keep your information secure, accurate and up to date, and that we only keep it as long as it is reasonable and necessary.

Although we use the appropriate security measures to protect your personal information, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure.  We cannot guarantee the security of personal data transmitted when using our website, so any transmission is at the user’s own risk.

If you join as a Commonweal reader, staff at the JB Priestley Library will also have access to the data you give them. More information about how the University of Bradford use and store your data can be found here. 

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

We will not share your information to third parties for marketing purposes.

Keeping your information up to date

To keep your information up to date we rely on you to let us know if any of your personal information changes, for example your postal address or email. You can request to see what data we have on you.

Please email commonweal@peacemuseum.org.uk if you need to update us on any changes or wish to request your information.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. If you use these links to go onto another website our privacy policy no longer applies. You should look at their privacy policies

Cookies and Data Privacy

We use cookies on our website. Insofar as those cookies are not strictly necessary for the provision of our website, we will ask you to consent to our use of cookies when you first visit our website.

About cookies

 A cookie is a file containing an identifier (a string of letters and numbers) that is sent by a web server to a web browser and is stored by the browser. The identifier is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies: a persistent cookie will be stored by a web browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date, unless deleted by the user before the expiry date; a session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.

Cookies do not typically contain any information that personally identifies a user, but personal information that we store about you may be linked to the information stored in and obtained from cookies.

Your data may also be available to our website provider to enable us and them to deliver their service to us, carry out analysis and research on demographics, interests and behavior of our users and supporters to help us gain a better understanding of them to enable us to improve our services. This may include connecting data we receive from you on the website to data available from other sources. Your personally identifiable data will only be used where it is necessary for the analysis required, and where your interests for privacy are not deemed to outweigh their legitimate interests in developing new services for us. In the case of this activity the following will apply:

• Your data will be made available to our website provider
• The data that may be available to them include any of the data we collect as described in this privacy policy.
• Our website provider will not transfer your data to any other third party, or transfer your data outside of the EEA.
• They will store your data for a maximum of 7 years.
• This processing does not affect your rights as detailed in this privacy policy.
• You can choose whether you wish to accept or decline the use of cookies.

This policy will be updated from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes.

If you have any concerns about our privacy policy, please contact us by emailing commonweal@peacemuseum.org.uk.

Review of this policy

We aim to keep this policy update and will review it annually. This policy was last updated in December 2024.

Copyright Policy

Commonweal is committed to respecting copyright and other intellectual property rights. We make every effort to respect copyright holders.

For anyone who is seeking to reproduce any images in our Collection you will need to actively obtain consent from us. If copyright is not held by us then you will need to contact the copyright holder directly.

Commonweal has made all reasonable efforts to ensure that images on our website, social media accounts, on any marketing materials and any other uses, are reproduced with the consent of their copyright holders. However, it maybe that some copyright holders have so far been untraceable and if you have any information or queries about any of the images used please contact commonweal@peacemuseum.org.uk.

Takedown policy

Commonweal undertakes to remove images if requested to do so by copyright holders.

If you hold rights for an image that you see on the Commonweal website, social media, any marketing material or any other use, and do not agree with its reproduction, you can request the image’s removal by emailing commonweal@peacemuseum.org.uk

Please include the following in your email:

• Your name, email address and phone number
• Where you have seen the misuse of your rights
• A statement that you are the copyright holder or are authorised to act on behalf of the rights holder. You may be asked to provide proof of this ownership that would stand up in a court of law.
• Commonweal will endeavour to respond to your initial message within ten working days and will aim to process any approved takedown requests within a further two working days.