Privacy Policy

Last updated – 17.11.2022

1. Introduction

The Pets Foundation respects your right to privacy. The terms “we”, “us”, “our” or “PAHF” in this Privacy Policy refers to the Pets Foundation (Registered Charity Number 1104152).

This Privacy Policy explains in detail the types of personal information we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we will store and handle that personal information, how we keep it safe, how you can exercise your privacy rights and how we combine data across the Pets at Home Family to build a picture of you.

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided in the section of this Privacy Policy headed “How to contact us”.

2. Quick links

We recommend that you read this Privacy Policy in full to ensure you are fully informed.  However, if you only want to access a particular section of this Privacy Policy, then you can click on the relevant link below to jump to that section.

• What personal information do we collect and why?
• Who do we share your personal information with?
• Legal basis for processing personal information
• Cookies and similar tracking technology
• How do we keep your personal information secure?
• International data transfers
• Data retention
• Your data protection rights
• Contacting the regulator
• Updates to this Privacy Notice
• How to contact us

3. What personal information do we collect and why?

Established by Pets at Home in 2006, the Pets Foundation is a registered charity that supports hundreds of pet rehoming organisations in the UK through grant funding, donation schemes and fundraising initiatives with Pets at Home stores.

The personal information that we may collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:

• Information that you provide voluntarily

When you use our Website or when you interact with us in Pets at Home stores or when you interact with us on the fundraising or charitable events or initiatives organised by us, you may be asked for some essential information including your title, first name, surname, postal address, email address, telephone and, if applicable, photographs, payment and credit card information including whether a donation is gift aided. This includes:

• information you provide when you register to use our Website, subscribe to our newsletters, fill in forms on our Website or correspond with us by phone, email or by other methods;
  • when you adopt a pet from or through us;
  • when you enter our lottery or prize draws, search for a product, place an order on our site;
  • if you apply for a grant or donation from our charity (including making an application for donated stock) or if you apply to be one of our charitable partners;
  • when you make a donation to our charity;
  • when you participate in discussion boards or other social media functions;
  • enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
  • when you report a problem with our site.  

Where you have made a donation via the Just Giving, Virgin Money website or via Paypal and agree with Just Giving, Virgin Money or Paypal that they can pass your information to us (to use to send you thank you emails and news about our fundraising activities), this information will be processed in accordance with this Privacy Policy.  

This information is collected to help us:

• contact you about your adopted pet or PAHF account;
  • contact you in response to your request for support;
  • process donations and gift aid declarations;
  • contact you to show you how a donation you have made has made a difference;
  • provide you with information about the fundraising activities of our charity;
  • enter you into our lottery or prize draws, search for a product, or place an order on our site;
  • to manage your account preferences with us;
  • to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us and to provide you with the information and products that you request from us;
  • to allow you to participate in interactive features of our site, when you choose to do so; or
  • keep our site safe and secure.

• Information that we collect automatically

            When you visit our Websites, we may collect certain information automatically from your device.  In some countries, including countries in the European Economic Area, this information may be considered personal information under applicable data protection laws.

Specifically, the information we collect automatically may include information like your IP address, device type, operating system, unique device identification numbers, browser-type, broad geographic location (e.g. country or city-level location) and other technical information.  We may also collect information about how your device has interacted with our Websites, including the pages accessed and links clicked. 

Collecting this information enables us to better understand the visitors who come to our Website, where they come from, and what content on our Website is of interest to them.  We use this information for our internal analytics purposes, to improve the quality and relevance of our Website to our visitors and users, to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes and to improve our site to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer/device.

Some of this information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology, as explained further under the heading “Cookies and similar tracking technology” below.

• Information that we obtain from third party sources

We are part of the Pets at Home Family which is made up of Pets at Home Limited (including its retail stores, retail Website and Apps, the Groom Room and VIP Club) and all of its group and affiliated companies including:

• Pets at Home Limited;
  • Pets at Home Vet Group Limited (comprising Companion Care (Services) Limited, Companion Care Management Services Limited, Vets4Pets Limited and our affiliated joint venture first opinion veterinary practices branded either Companion Care or Vets4Pets);
  • Pets at Home Group plc;
  • Anderson Moores Veterinary Specialists Limited;
  • Dick White Referrals Limited;
  • Northwest Veterinary Specialists Limited; and
  • Eye-Vet Limited,

(together, “Pets at Home Family”).

We may receive information about you from the other members of the Pets at Home Family. In this case we will have informed you when we collected that data that it may be shared internally and combined with data collected on this site. 

4. Who do we share your personal information with?

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:

• to other members of the Pets at Home Family, third party services providers, business partners and sub-contractors who provide data processing or analytics services to us (for example, to support the delivery of our Website or to provide support for our charitable and fundraising initiatives), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Policy or notified to you when we collect your personal information. If you have any questions about the third parties we share your personal information with, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below;

• to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights or apply any contractual terms applicable to our relationship with you, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;

• to a potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business or that of any member of the Pets at Home Family, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy; or

• to any other person with your consent to the disclosure.

5. Legal basis for processing personal information

Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it. 

However, we will normally collect personal information from you only (i) where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, (ii) where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms, or (iii) where we have your consent to do so.  In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need the personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person.

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contact with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information). 

Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

6. Cookies and similar tracking technology

We use cookies and similar tracking technology (collectively, “Cookies”) to collect and use personal information about you.  

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users’ experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices. This includes a device’s IP address (processed during your session and stored in a de-identified form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), and the preferred language used to display our website. Hotjar stores this information on our behalf in a pseudonymized user profile. Hotjar is contractually forbidden to sell any of the data collected on our behalf.

For further details, please see the ‘about Hotjar’ section of Hotjar’s support site.

For further information about all the types of Cookies we use, why, and how you can control Cookies, please see our Cookie Notice.

7. How do we keep your personal information secure?

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you.  The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. 

Specific measures we use include:

• Storing information on our secure servers;
• Encrypting payment information when you transact with us; 
• Keeping your information up-to-date and accurate. Please note that, to do this, we require you to tell us if any of your details such as your name or address change; and
• Having in place strict security procedures for the storage and disclosure of your information to prevent unauthorised access.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to and/or through our Websites; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

8. International data transfers

Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident.  These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of your country.

Our Website servers and group companies are located in the UK, but some of our third party service providers and partners operate outside of the UK. This means that when we collect your personal information we may process it in any of these countries.

However, we have taken appropriate safeguards to require that your personal information will remain protected in accordance with this Privacy Policy. For more information about the safeguards provided please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

9. Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements). 

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible. For more information about the specific periods for which we retain your data, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

10. Your data protection rights

You have the following data protection rights:

• If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below. 

• In addition, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

• You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time.  You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you.  To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

• Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time.  Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.

• You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.  For more information, please contact your local data protection authority.

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

11. Contacting the regulator

If you feel that your personal information has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal information, you have the right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113 or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns (opens in a new window; please note we cannot be responsible for the content of external websites).

12. Updates to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or charity developments. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.

You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Policy. 

13. How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us on info@petsfoundation.co.uk.

Alternatively, you can write to us at Pets Foundation, Epsom Avenue, Stanley Green Trading Estate, Handforth, Cheshire SK9 3RN.

The data controller of your personal information will be the Pets Foundation (Registered Charity Number 1104152).