Summary of how we use your data
Parents/carers:
- The FA uses your personal data to allow you to find appropriate Programme sessions, football clubs and other recreational football opportunities.
- The FA may share your data with other relevant football stakeholders to ensure that recreational opportunities you seek can be administered and organised – this will include sharing data with the organisers of Programme sessions, session providers and relevant County FAs and leagues who are involved in the organisation of these sessions. Some of this information will be provided by you, and other information will be generated by The FA or provided by third parties.
Session providers:
- The FA uses your personal data to allow you to advertise appropriate Programme sessions, football clubs and other recreational football opportunities. The FA may share this information with other relevant football stakeholders to ensure that the recreational opportunities you provide can be administered and organised – this will include sharing data with the organisers of Programme sessions, as well as relevant County FAs and leagues who are involved in the organisation of these sessions and making your contact details publicly available on The FA website so that parents of children wishing to participate in the Programme can contact you. Some of this information will be provided by you, and other information will be generated by The FA or provided by third parties.
Parents/carers and session providers
- Our websites may provide interactive features that engage with social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. If you, or your child, use these features, these sites will send us personal data about you, or your child.
- We use cookies and other tracking technologies to personalise content and advertising and to make our content function better.
- Where we rely on your consent, such as for direct marketing purposes, or to place cookies, you can withdraw this consent at any time.
- Our privacy policy sets out more details of your data protection rights, including your right to object to certain processing.
What does this policy cover?
- This policy describes how The FA (also referred to as "we" or "us") will make use of your data during your interaction with The FA's Programme website and how your data will be used by other footballing stakeholders when you participate in this Programme.
- It also describes your data protection rights, including a right to object to some of the processing which The FA carries out. More information about your rights, and how to exercise them, is set out in the “What rights do I have?” section.
What information do we collect?
We collect and process personal data about you when you interact with us and our websites, and when you book your child on to recreational football sessions or if you are a provider of those sessions. This will typically be provided directly by you and may include information you provide on registration or in the process of providing the Programme session, such as your, name, address, email address, marketing preferences and contact details. Occasionally, you might also provide us with sensitive data if, for example, you are entering a disability team, booking onto a disability football session or providing accessibility or medical information. The details being provided by you will be made clear in forms you complete.
What information do we generate or receive from third parties?
We may generate or collect information about you ourselves. In an online context, much of this is set out in our Cookie Policy. In an offline context, other football stakeholders may hold records about your child’s participation in their sessions, such as completing health and safety records or by keeping attendance registers – these are not typically passed to The FA, although we may ask to see attendance records to administer our recreational programmes. We may also collect data in relation to producing match reports or other media content or briefings.
Sometimes, we receive information about you from third parties. For example, if you log in to a site or app using Facebook Connect you will be asked if you wish to share information from your Facebook account with us. If you use a "like" or a "share" button for a feature on our sites or apps, then the third party will share information with us. If you participate in activities on non-FA sites or apps - such as participating in a Facebook application - you may allow us to have access to personal data held by Facebook, or other site or app owners.
Some of our content has an "invite a friend” feature, when users can send details of a particular session to their friends. If a friend asks us to send you a feature, then we will process your contact details. We just use this information to send you the feature and do not retain it. If you want to use this feature, you should only provide your friend's details to us when you know they would like to hear from us. Your friend will know that you provided their details to us.
If we provide online services to a child where we need parental consent for this, we may ask for a parent or carer's email address, in order to ask for consent.
How do we use this information, and what is the legal basis for this use?
We process this personal data for the following purposes:
- As required by The FA to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, in particular:
- where your child is a participant, we will use your information to provide access to recreational football sessions, and pass relevant details to organisers of products and services you have requested, and to respond to any comments or complaints you may send us.
- where you are a session organiser, we will publish your contact details online so that individuals attending sessions can get in contact with you. We will also contact you to confirm your continued availability and in relation to any comments, complaints or other correspondence we receive where we need to liaise with you;
- we monitor use of websites and online services, and use your information to help us monitor, improve and protect our programmes, content, services and websites, both online and offline;
- we use information you provide to personalise our website, products or services for you;
- we use the information you have provided and which we have collected about you to investigate any complaints received from you or from others, about our website or our programmes or services;
- we will use your data to create relevant media content and coverage of our programmes, including sharing data with our media partners;
- we will use your data in connection with legal claims, compliance, regulatory and investigative purposes as necessary (including disclosure of such information in connection with legal process or litigation); and
- due to the pilot nature of the Programme, we will use your data to invite you to take part in market research undertaken by The FA and third party agencies acting on behalf of the FA in order to evaluate, undertake research and gain insights into the Programme.
- Where you give us consent:
- we will process your child’s sensitive personal data in order to enable them to participate in a session of the Programme
- we will send you direct marketing in relation to our relevant products and services, or other products and services provided by us and The FA’s official partners and suppliers;
- we place cookies and use similar technologies in accordance with our Cookie Policy (see below) and the information provided to you when those technologies are used; and
- on other occasions where we ask you for consent, we will use the data for the purpose which we explain at that time, for example, if you provide accessibility or medical information.
- For purposes which are required by law:
- where we are required to hold or collect personal data to meet legal requirements on us, such as keeping health and safety records or ensuring equality of access;
- where we need parental consent to provide online services to children under 13. However, our websites are not designed for children under 13; and
- in response to requests by government or law enforcement authorities conducting an investigation.
Withdrawing consent or otherwise objecting to direct marketing
Wherever we rely on your consent, you will always be able to withdraw that consent. In some cases, we are able to send you direct marketing without your consent, where we rely on our legitimate interests. You have an absolute right to opt out of direct marketing, or profiling we carry out for direct marketing, at any time. You can do this by following the instructions in the communication where this is an electronic message, or by contacting us using the details set out below.
What cookies and/or tracking technologies does The FA use?
When you visit one of our websites, we may also collect, process and use informing about you and your use of the website, including any forums you and/or your child visit and how you and/or your child arrived at our site. Such information may be collected through "traffic data" and may entail the use of "cookies" or other tracking technologies, IP addresses or other numeric codes used to identify your computer. For more information on cookies please click on the link to our Cookie Policy.
Who will we share this data with, where and when?
We will share your data with relevant third parties for the purposes set out above, in particular we will share details of participants with relevant organisers and football stakeholders such as County FAs where this is necessary to ensure that you can attend relevant sessions.
If you are a session organiser, your contact details will be published on FA websites, to ensure that prospective attendees can get in touch with you as necessary. The FA will share your contact data with third party distributors providing equipment to support the Programme.
Personal data may be shared with government authorities and/or law enforcement officials if required for the purposes above, if mandated by law or if required for the legal protection of our legitimate interests in compliance with applicable laws.
Personal data will also be shared with third party service providers, who will process it on behalf of The FA for the purposes identified above. Such third parties include providers of website hosting, security services, maintenance, call centre operations and identity checking.
What rights do I have?
You have the right to ask us for a copy of your personal data; to correct, delete or restrict (stop any active) processing of your personal data; and to obtain the personal data you provide to us with your consent in a structured, machine readable format.
In addition, you can object to the processing of your personal data in some circumstances (in particular, where we don’t have to process the data to meet a legal requirement, or where we are using the data for direct marketing).
These rights may be limited, for example if fulfilling your request would reveal personal data about another person, where it would infringe the rights of a third party (including our rights) or if you ask us to delete information which we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping. Relevant exemptions are included in both the UK GDPR and in the Data Protection Act 2018. We will inform you of relevant exemptions we rely upon when responding to any request you make.
To exercise any of these rights, you can get in touch with us – or our data protection officer – using the details set out below. If you have unresolved concerns, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK.
Data that is mandatory is indicated on relevant forms that you complete. Where provision of data is mandatory, if relevant data is not provided, then we will not be able to fulfil your requests to register or otherwise engage with The FA. All other provision of your information is optional.
How do I get in touch with you, or your data protection officer?
If you wish to make a data privacy request, you can do so via our online form, which can be found here. We hope that we can satisfy queries you may have about the way we process your data. If you have any concerns about how we process your data, you can get in touch at dataprotection@thefa.com or by writing to: Data Protection Officer, Wembley Stadium, PO Box 1966, London, SW1P 9EQ.
How long will you retain my data?
Subject to the below:
- if you have submitted a booking to take part in a recreational football session through The Programme; or
- if you are a session organiser,
we keep the data for 7 years from your last interaction with us or from when any relevant contract ends in relation to such recreational football session ends.
The FA will also retain information in order to meet safeguarding requirements; your data will be retained in accordance with The FA’s Safeguarding Privacy Policy.
Where we process personal data for marketing purposes or with your consent, we process the data until you ask us to stop and for a short period after this (to allow us to implement your requests). We also keep a record of the fact that you have asked us not to send you direct marketing or to process your data indefinitely so that we can respect your request in future.
Where your data is held on FA systems, then at the end of the retention periods set out above, we will not irrevocably delete your information for another 3 months – your data will be held in an inactive form for this time to ensure that any consequential links across our systems remain intact in the event that your data is removed in a particular location.
