At Retra we respect the privacy of visitors to our website (www.retra.co.uk). This policy is concerned with how we collect information, what we do with it and what controls you have over your personal information.
Your Privacy
Retra is the UK’s leading trade association for independent electrical retailers and servicing organisations. We also represent our member’s views and interests at a national level, maintaining dialogue with manufacturers, Government and other key organisations in supporting our member’s needs.
We take our duty to process your personal information very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal information.
We may change this document from time to time to reflect the latest view of what we do with your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated.
Website Usage
When you are browsing our website we have some essential cookies in use, this makes the website work and ensures the security of the website. You can disable these cookies but it will significantly affect the way the website works for you.
When you are browsing our website we do not collect any personal information about you.
When you contact us via email
When you make an enquiry via email, you consent to the information in the email being used to respond to your request or question and it will only be used for this purpose. We try to respond to email queries as promptly as possible but it can take the team up to 48 hours to respond to email queries especially at busy times, so please be patient with us.
When you complete the contact form on the website
When you make an enquiry via the contact form on the website, you consent to the information in the contact form being used to respond to your request or question and it will only be used for this purpose. We try to respond to email queries as promptly as possible but it can take the team up to 48 hours to respond to email queries especially at busy times, so please be patient with us.
Using the “Find a Retra Member” Facility
If you use the “Find a Retra Member” facility, you will be asked to provide a postcode to locate the nearest members. This information is not stored on our systems and purely used to provide you with the information requested. When you select a particular Retra member you will be provided with contact information which may include a link to their website. We aim to ensure that the information provided is accurate and up to date.
When you become a Retra Member
When you become a Retra member your information is used to fulfil the contract between us and ensure you have access to all the member services and support. Your subscription information will be held for 7 years for accounting purposes. Each year at renewal time you will be provided with a privacy notice explaining how your personal information will be used. If you require a copy of these please contact us for the latest version.
Links to other websites
In order to be able to provide you additional information and services, occasionally we have links to other websites on our website or in our member information. We suggest that you review the privacy policies for any third-party websites you visit as we cannot accept any liability for the way they manage your personal information.
Children
The Retra website is not intended for anyone under 16. If you are under 16 please ensure you obtain your parent/guardian's consent before sending us any personal information.
The information we need
Retra is what’s known as the ‘data controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. Your relationship with us determines how much information we collect from you. We will only ever collect the information needed to provide you with advice and services.
We will be very clear with you about the reason for collecting information and how we intend to use, share and store that information at the point we collect it.
Collecting your personal information
- We collect personal information about you through a variety of different methods including when you:
- Complete our contact form
- Ask for more information
- Send us correspondence via email
- Become a member
- Attend an event
- Give us feedback
We may also collect it when you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us e.g. to confirm your membership when seeking the member discounts negotiated by Retra or when you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us e.g. LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.
Why we need it
We collect your personal information in connection with processing and managing your membership. This includes contacting you regarding specific activities, such as renewal of your membership, sending you newsletters and magazines as part of your membership benefits.
Some 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 website. However, if you choose to withhold any requested information, we may not be able to provide you with some services.
If you fail to provide the information requested
If you fail to provide the information requested where we need the personal information for either legal or accounting purposes or to fulfil our membership contract with you, we may need to cancel your membership. Before cancelling your membership, we will notify you that you are required to provide the missing information and give you a further reminder before cancellation.
Where is your information stored?
Wherever possible, all the personal information we process is processed within the UK or European Economic Area (EEA).
If we need to transfer your personal information outside of the UK or EEA, we do our best to make sure a similar degree of security of personal information by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
- We will only transfer your personal information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal information by the European Commission; or
- Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal information the same protection it has in the UK and Europe.
Legitimate interests
We have a number of lawful reasons that mean we can use your personal information. One of these 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 we are not harming any of your rights and interests.
We use this lawful basis occasionally to provide you with membership benefits and information about meetings or events near you we believe are of interest.
Sharing your information
Other than in the following instances we do not share your information with any other organisations or individuals unless we are obliged to by law (e.g. for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations):
- If you have agreed that we may do so.
- Providing membership benefits to you including information from associate members about their services.
- When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf, e.g. mailing Alert, sending mail and emails, customer analysis, assessment, when using auditors/advisors or processing credit/debit card payments.
- To our subsidiaries (i.e. the companies owned by the Retra).
- 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 identifiable 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 for the event.
And, we will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.
Retaining your information
We hold your information only as long as necessary for each reason that we use it. We have provided some examples of the time we will keep your information in this paragraph but you can contact us for more information.
If you decide not to continue to be a member of Retra or request that we have no further contact with you, we will keep some basic information in order to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future and to ensure that we don’t accidentally duplicate information.
Basic membership information including payment details will be kept for a period of seven years for accounting purposes.
Our cookie Policy
This policy explains what cookies are, how Retra uses them on our website and what you can do to manage how they are used.
Cookies and how they benefit you
Our website uses cookies, as almost all websites do, to help provide you with the best experience we can. Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer or mobile phone when you browse websites.
Our cookies help us:
- Make our website work as you'd expect.
- Remember your settings during and between visits.
- Improve the speed/security of the site.
- Allow you to share pages with social networks like Facebook.
- Continuously improve our website for you.
Granting us permission to use cookies
If the settings on the browser that you are using to view our website are adjusted to accept cookies we take this, and your continued use of our website, to mean that you are fine with this. Should you wish to remove or not use cookies from our site you can learn how to do this below, however doing so may mean that our site may not work as you would expect.
How long do cookies last?
When a web server sends a cookie, it asks your browser to keep that particular cookie until a certain date and time. These dates can be:
- Some date in the future – which might be a few minutes or a few hours from now (to track something like your shopping cart in an online store). The cookie might expire many years in the future, to keep track of your browser for a long time.
- When you close your browser – this is called a session cookie, the next time you start your browser these will have vanished.
- Some date in the past – this is how the server asks a browser to remove a previously-stored cookie.
Anonymous visitor statistics cookies
We use cookies to compile visitor statistics such as how many people have visited our website, what type of technology they are using, how long they spend on the site, what page they look at, etc. This helps us to continuously improve our website. These analytics programs also tell us, on an anonymous basis, how people reached this site (e.g. from a search engine) and whether they have been here before, helping us to develop our services for you. Our site uses the following analytics program: Google Analytics.
Turning cookies off
You can usually switch cookies off by adjusting your browser settings to stop it from accepting cookies. Doing so, however, may limit the functionality of not only our own website but also a large proportion of the world's websites as cookies are a standard part of most modern websites.
What are your rights?
You have a number of rights about how the personal information you provide can be used. These are:
- Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
- The ability to 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 information 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, you can find out more at the Information Commissioner’s Office website (www.ico.org.uk)
Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your consent for processing your personal information at any time by logging into your account through our online membership portal.
How to contact us
If you wish to talk through anything in our privacy policy, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact us (details at the bottom of this page), we will be happy to help.
If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal information, you can contact our Chief Executive who will investigate the matter. If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal information in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
If you wish to talk to us about anything in the policy or the information we hold about you please contact us:
By telephone: +44 (0) 1234 269110
By email: retra@retra.co.uk
By post: Retra, 1st Floor, Woburn Court, 2 Railton Road, Woburn Road Industrial Estate, Kempston, Bedford, MK42 7PN.
Retra is a company Limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales. Registered Company Number: 00374327.
This document was last updated: October 2022
