Privacy policy

Who are we?

In this policy references to the Woodland Trust, or Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to the Woodland Trust which is a registered charity in England and Wales 294344, and in Scotland SC038885. A non-profit making company limited by guarantee. Registered in England No. 1982873 at Kempton Way, Grantham, Lincolnshire, NG31 6LL.

This also includes our trading company – Woodland Trust (Enterprises) Limited (registered company number 2296645) a wholly owned subsidiary of the Woodland Trust which trades only to raise funds for its parent company – the Woodland Trust.

We were established in 1972 and are the UK's largest woodland conservation charity. We’re passionate about woods and trees and work to transform our landscapes, joining up fragile and fragmented habitats. We campaign to save threatened woodland and own and care for more than 1,000 publicly accessible woods. We want everyone to have access to woodland, and we want to make the UK a healthier, better place to live.

We take our duty to process your personal data very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal data.

We comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
2. collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes
3. relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes
4. accurate and kept up to date
5. kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about
6. kept securely.

Please read our supporter promise for more information.

We may change this document from time to time. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated.

What personal data we collect and how we use it

What information we collect

The Woodland Trust is what’s known as the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. This means that we determine how we process your personal data ensuring it is done so in a secure way.

We collect your personal data in connection with specific activities, such as campaign updates, newsletter requests, registration or membership requests, product purchases, feedback, donations, competition entries, information you provide in public forums on our sites and applications.

The information is either needed to fulfil your request or to enable us to provide you with a more personalised service. You don't have to disclose any of this information to browse our sites. However, if you choose to withhold requested information, we may not be able to provide you with certain services.

We will only process your data when we have a lawful basis to do so, such as your consent, fulfilling a contract, our legitimate interest and the Data Use and Access Act 2025 revision for ‘soft on in’ in achieving our charitable aims.

We collect and use the following types of personal information:

• Names & contact details: We use this information for identification & authorisation, communicating with you, delivery of goods or services such as memberships, donations, dedications and Gift Aid contributions/declarations. Queries, complaints, customer relationship management, marketing, profiling and contractual obligations. This information is also collected and processed during our recruitment processes.
• Address: We use this information for identification & authorisation, communicating with you, delivery of goods or services such as memberships, donations, dedications and Gift Aid contributions/declarations. Queries, complaints, customer relationship management, marketing, profiling and contractual obligations. This information is also collected and processed during our recruitment processes.
• Date of birth: We process this information to ensure that we apply the correct safety rules to under 18-year-olds. This information is also collected and processed during our recruitment processes.
• Photographs/video recordings: The Woodland Trust captures this data with our use of CCTV located across our sites. Photographs could be obtained at events, when taking photographs valid consent will be obtained by the Woodland Trust through our model release forms completed prior to capturing them. On occasion when requested by the authorities this information may be shared by the Woodland Trust with the police to aid investigations.
• Call recordings: Our calls are recorded for monitoring and training purposes. Calls are also recorded and used in instances such as complaints and investigations.
• Service Use History: We use this information for identification & authorisation, communicating with you, delivery of goods or services such as memberships, donations, dedications and Gift Aid contributions/declarations. Queries, complaints, customer relationship management, marketing, profiling and contractual obligations.
• Payment details (including card or bank information for transfers and direct debits): This information is processed for financial transactions such as Gift Aid declarations, donations, memberships, shop purchases and delivery of goods.
• Website users (including user journeys and cookie tracking): Please refer to our cookies policy for more information.
• Information relating to compliments or complaints: We process your personal information when investigating any complaints received, this allows us to investigate efficiently and accurately.
• Gender: This information is processed in ways such as determining salutations for mailings, it is also collected through our recruitment processes and anonymously for research purposes. This information is also collected and processed during our recruitment processes.
• Criminal convictions: This information is processed during our recruitment processes in line and in accordance with appropriate legislation.
• Right to work information: This information is processed during our recruitment processes in line and in accordance with appropriate legislation.

Sometimes we will collect other sensitive information about you such as health information. This information is normally collected when you are attending an event where you provide to us directly information about accessibility such as wheelchair use and allergies. This is collected so we can accommodate your needs at the event. This information will only be collected and processed when we have explained why we require it and with your consent.

Sometimes when we are collecting research information we may request:

Sexual Orientation, health information, racial or ethnic origin and religious or philosophical beliefs. This is collected anonymously unless we specify otherwise and obtain the valid consent needed from you. We will always explain why and what we are wanting to collect and process data for.

How we obtain your details

We will also hold information about your details so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

We collect your personal information in a number of ways:

• when you provide it to us directly such as donations, signing up to our newsletters, becoming a member, making an enquiry, visiting our website or using our apps.
• Family Members, Guardians or carers that provide us your information on your behalf such as our Nature Detectives Memberships.
• when you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us (including Facebook)
• when you have given it to a third party and you have provided permission to pass your information on to us
• from publicly available sources (where possible) to keep your information up to date (e.g. the Post Office’s National Change of Address database).
• CCTV footage and or other recordings such as events.

We combine the information from these sources with the information you provide to us directly.

From time to time, we may pay for the contact details of people who might be interested in hearing from us in future. Before we purchase contact information, we always check the wording used when your information was originally collected, to make sure that we only contact people who have actively expressed an interest in receiving information from third parties.

When providing permission for third party organisations to share your data you should check their Privacy Policies carefully to understand fully how they will process your data.

Our marketing

Sometimes, with your consent, we will process your personal data to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or are expecting.

In June 2025 we saw the introduction of the Data Use and Access Act 2025 that has amended rules specifically for charities surrounding marketing information and a ‘soft opt-in’ approach. This means that we do not explicitly need your consent to send you relevant communications based on the contact you have had with us. For example, you may have contacted us for information about one of our ancient woodlands, we may then include you to receive information about our other ancient woodlands we feel you may find beneficial and interesting to you. We will always provide you with an option to stop receiving these communications via our opt out functions within the communication.

On other occasions, we may process personal data when we need to do this to fulfil a contract (for example, if you have purchased something from our web shop) or where we are required to do this by law or other regulations. Please refer to our Service Email Communications And Guidelines for more information on how we process and apply service emails.

The Trust also processes your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on our appeals, conservation, campaigning, membership, services, products, fundraising, newsletter requests, feedback, competitions and other activities and those of other carefully selected organisations. Please see the section on 'Legitimate interest' for more information.

Building profiles of supporters

The Trust may make use of profiling and screening methods to produce relevant communications and provide a better experience for our supporters. Profiling can help us target our resources more effectively through gaining an insight into the background of our supporters and helping us to build relationships that are appropriate to their interests and capacity to give.

To do this we may use additional external sources of data to increase and enhance the information we hold about you. This may include obtaining details of changes of address, date of birth, telephone numbers and other contact details, information related to your wealth, and consumption and demographic data generated through a variety of geodemographic tools. It may also include information from public registers and other publicly available sources such as Companies House, newspapers and magazines.

Children

If you are under 18, please ensure you obtain your parent/guardian's consent before sending any personal information to any website or the Woodland Trust. We do have activities for those under 18 so we may ask your age. Before taking part, please ensure you speak to your parent or guardian.

Please note that we will not knowingly market to or accept donations or orders for goods or services from persons aged under 18 years.

As a parent or guardian, we encourage you to be aware of the activities in which your children are participating, both offline and online. If your children voluntarily disclose information, this may encourage unsolicited messages. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing any information without your consent.

Volunteering

When you volunteer with the Woodland Trust, we will keep you up to date with the work that we are doing and events we are involved with. For more information on what personal information we process for Volunteers please see Volunteer Privacy Policy.

Scientific data

Scientific data sharing helps to further research, education and our national understanding of biodiversity and conservation issues. Hence anonymised scientific data may be shared with project partners and third parties such as the National Biodiversity Network, organisations such as local authorities, academic researchers and students.

In some circumstances such scientific data may be sold, but the income will be directly used to support the running cost of these data-gathering projects. By submitting your scientific or environmental records you are indicating agreement with our approach. More information relating to how your personal data is processed can be found here Privacy policy - Observatree.

Tree Charter

If you join our Tree Charter Network we collect some basic information about you such as your Charter branch name, branch lead contact name, address, email address, contact telephone number and a description of the branch.

This information is then used to update our branch location map, branch events/activities and the Woodland Trust Charter Champions Facebook page.

We will only publish your information on our branch location map of our Tree Charter Website with your consent.

Anything else?

The personal and special category data we process is primarily processed by our staff in the UK, however, for the purposes of IT hosting, development and maintenance of your personal and special category information, this will be situated and or disclosed outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). This will be done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office and in line with the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, with the correct security principles applied and binding corporate rules (BCR).

If you would like to change the way you hear from us or no longer wish to receive direct marketing communications from us, then use the contact form on our contact us page or go to our online permission portal.

Lawful basis for processing

We have a number of lawful reasons that mean we can use (or 'process') your personal information.

Legitimate interest

One lawful reason is something called 'legitimate interests'. Broadly speaking Legitimate Interests means we can process your personal information if:

• we have a genuine and legitimate reason and are not harming any of your rights and interests

Please read the 'Legitimate interests' statement for more information.

Consent

At the Woodland Trust we also use consent, this is where you give us clear and informed instruction for processing, we obtain your consent through email and consent statements.

Contract

We use this basis where we have entered a contract with you or steps to enter into one, for example, we offer contracts relating to our More Hedges, More Trees and employment contracts.

Vital Interests

We only use this when the processing of your personal data is necessary to protect someone’s life.

Sharing your information

We only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations, and the following:

• If you have agreed that we may do so.
• When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf, e.g. processing, mailing or delivering orders, answering customers’ questions about products or services, sending mail and emails, customer analysis, assessment and profiling, when using auditors/advisors or processing credit/debit card payments, developing/maintaining and hosting new IT provisions.
• To our subsidiaries (i.e. the companies owned by the Woodland Trust).
• If we receive a complaint about any content, you have posted or transmitted to or from one of our sites, to enforce or apply our terms and conditions or if we believe that we need to do so to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of the Woodland Trust, our websites or our visitors and for other lawful purposes.
• If we merge with another organisation to form a new entity, information may be transferred to the new entity.
• We may disclose aggregate statistics about our site visitors, supporters, customers and sales to describe our services and operations to prospective partners, advertisers and other reputable third parties and for other lawful purposes, but these statistics won’t include any personally identifying information.
• If we run an event in partnership with other named organisations your details may need to be shared. We will be very clear what will happen to your data when you register.

We will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations. Any data shared with third parties will be done so in accordance with the security and data protection principles of the UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018, Data Use & Access Bill 2025 as well as appropriate Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) in line with these regulations.

How long do we keep your data?

We hold your information only as long as necessary for each purpose we use it. This period will normally be for seven years after your last financial contribution or other activity with us, unless we have a good reason to keep your information for a longer period. This is based on any legal, regulatory or business reasons we may have to retain your information.

You have the right to ask us to remove your personal information from our records. We will inform you in writing when we have actioned your request and if we need to refuse you, we will give you the reasons why.

Your details on the web

What are your rights?

The UK GDPR gives everyone a number of very important rights. These are:

• transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
• request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
• update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
• ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
• ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be 'forgotten').
• object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
• obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes (right to data portability).
• not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law see the Information Commissioners Office website.

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal data at any time by using the form on our 'Contact us' page or by using our online permission portal.