What Information Do We Collect and Why?

Personal data you provide

We collect data that you provide to us and only ever collect the information we need in order to carry out our statutory purposes and that helps us to deliver and improve our services. We may collect information about you in the following ways:

  • You contact us in relation making an enquiry, providing feedback
  • You purchase a product
  • You apply for a grant from us
  • You make a donation to us (which may be financial, non-financial or in-kind), or respond to mailings, appeals, campaigns and competitions
  • You apply for a job with us or become an employee or provide services via an agency or provide consultancy services directly to us
  • You contact us in relation to becoming a volunteer
  • You request materials from us
  • You subscribe to our newsletter
  • You register a website account
  • You contact us with enquiries or other correspondence (including via social media) or become involved with us in another way
  • You enter into a contract with us
  • Our use of Cookies (please see our Cookies section below)

Should you provide us with information in the above ways, we may collect the following:

  • Personal details (such as name, email address, postal address, telephone and other contact information (including details of your social media accounts and profiles).
  • Details of interests and preferences such as what campaigns you support, how you wish to be contacted.
  • Financial information such as bank details if you are making payment to us, or receiving a payment from us.
  • Details of your visit to our website including your IP address (the location of the computer on the internet), pages accessed and files downloaded.
  • Records of your correspondence with us, if you have contacted us.

Information from third parties and external sources

We sometimes receive personal data about individuals from third parties in relation to activities carried out as part of our statutory purpose. For example, we may be provided with the identifying and personal contact details (name and address) of an owner or occupier of a heritage asset, by a third party submitting a listing application or as a result of a listing or scheduling review.

To enable us to assess applications for planning permission, listed building consent and other approvals in line with relevant legislation and policies of the National Planning Policy Framework we may collect personal information from publicly available sources such as the Planning Portal or from third parties such as local authorities. In these cases we retain personal details solely for the purposes of carrying out our statutory function and to keep all interested parties up to date with our activities. We will not use your personal details for any other reason.

For a small number of people, where we want to better understand the interest of individuals in supporting the work of Historic England, we may seek information about their interests and preferences before contacting them, but only if we feel there is a legitimate interest to do so.

The information we gather may relate to: career and business networks, voluntary roles including trusteeships, residential location, family (not including information about children unless given personally or made public by the individual concerned), wealth and assets, hobbies and interests and previous philanthropy.

We use this information to improve our understanding of individuals’ interests and preferences. We will contact these few individuals to notify them of our privacy policy no later than one month following collection of data relating to them.

We may use a number of sources to carry out our work, including printed and online newspapers and publications, charity and company websites, and the websites of organisations similar to us. From time to time we may use specialist companies to help us identify individuals who we think might be interested in supporting us and the work we do. This will only be done when individuals give permission to the relevant third party organisations to share the data they hold on them, or if the data is already publicly available.

We will also collect data from the following officially registered information providers that we subscribe to:

We may collect information from social media where you have given us permission to do so, or if you post on one of our social media pages.

Sensitive personal data

We do not normally collect or store sensitive personal data (such as information relating to health) about people that engage with us. However, there are some situations where this will occur (for example if you become an employee or a volunteer or if you make us aware of accessibility requirements when visiting our offices or using our services). In these circumstances we will take extra care, in line with law and good practice, to ensure your privacy rights are protected.