Privacy policy

We are committed to protecting your personal information

We are committed to protecting your personal information. This policy sets out how we propose to collect and use any personal information that you provide to The Aspinall Foundation and/or The Howletts Wild Animal Trust (Howletts and Port Lympne parks).

If you have any questions regarding this policy, or if you object to your data being used by us in any way, please contact us by email to supportercare@aspinallfoundation.org, 

or by writing to:
Supporter Care
The Aspinall Foundation, Lympne, Nr Ashford, CT21 4PD 

What is the Aspinall Foundation and the Howletts Wild Animal Trust?

The Aspinall Foundation is a world-leading animal conservation charity; helping to protect critically endangered species including western lowland Gorillas, Black Rhino and Sumatran Tigers. In our two parks in Kent, we run world-class breeding programmes, and we manage major conservation projects in Congo, Gabon, Indonesia, and Madagascar. Our mission is to return animals to their natural environments; so we run reintroduction schemes in more than ten countries.

The Foundation works hand-in-hand with The Howletts Wild Animal Trust, which runs the Howletts and Port Lympne parks. The Parks provide a home to a wild array of rare and endangered species, and the Foundation works to reintroduce animals back into their wild habitat.

Our registered charity numbers are The Aspinall Foundation - 216401 in England and Wales and SC037717 in Scotland; for the Howletts Wild Animal Trust – 1100845 in England and Wales. The Trust is also a registered company 04711904 and its Trading Company, Howletts and Port Lympne Estates, is a wholly owned subsidiary, registered number 01120626. Within the context of this Privacy Policy, "we" means all three of these entities.

The information we collect

When you visit us, stay with us, make a purchase in our retail or catering outlines, donate money, or take part in one of our events, we may collect and process personal information about you. Depending on your activity, this personal information may include your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number, date of birth, financial details, age, and other personal information required to deliver the service requested.

We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our website, make a complaint or request information about one of the services or products we offer.

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence. We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond.

We may also collect details of your visits to our website, including but not limited to traffic data, location data, weblogs, and other communication data and the resources that you access. To help us create a more efficient website that reflects users' needs, we may also use cookie files to collect and record information about how our site is used and collect your IP address (a number that identifies a specific computer or another internet device) for system administration and to report aggregated information. Cookie files and IP addresses will not identify you as an individual. For more information on cookie files and IP addresses read our cookies policy. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our use of cookies.

By submitting this personal information, you enable us to better provide you with the information, services or products you select. However, at the start of each website visit, you will be offered the chance to accept the use of cookies during your time on the site.

How we may use your personal information

1. To improve the quality and accuracy of the information you provide, including your postal address and telephone contact details by checking against publicly available external data lists. If you do not want us to do this, please contact Supporter Care at the email address above.
2. To provide you with information (including fundraising or campaigning activities), services or products you have requested or which we feel may interest you related directly to our work or how you might consider supporting our work, where you have consented to be contacted. This will include adverts and inserts in communications sent by us, from carefully selected third party organisations.
3. To allow you to participate in interactive features on our website, when you choose to do so, for example, booking visits or making purchases, we may help complete forms by inserting your contact details for you to edit.
4. To analyse and improve the services offered on our websites by providing you with the most user-friendly navigation experience we can for your computer or another internet device.
5. With IP addresses, to identify your approximate location, block disruptive use or to establish the number of visits to the website from different countries.
6. To process personal information for the purposes of customer analysis, using postcodes, and profiling to help us better understand the best way to communicate with you and which offers or campaign to engage you with and provide you with the most relevant information.
7. To ask you for your support for our work and to offer you the opportunity to participate in events, park activities, and other offers.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis and when there is no purpose to holding your data we will securely destroy it. We are legally required to hold some personal information to fulfill statutory obligations, for example, the collection of Gift Aid or to support certain financial transactions. We will also hold information about your details so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us e.g. avoid sending you direct mail if you have previously told us not to do so.

How we will contact you

If we contact you by text, email, phone or letter, we will not contact you again if you ask us not to. We will not contact you to send you information about how you can support The Aspinall Foundation by email or text unless you have given us your prior permission. You can contact us to change your contact preferences by emailing our team on supportercare@aspinallfoundation.org, or by calling 01303 234 147.

How we handle your information and other organisations

The Aspinall Foundation will not exchange, rent or sell your personal information to other organisations for use by them in their own direct marketing activities.

However, where you have given us permission to contact you, we may use external service providers to do this on our behalf. An external service provider may, for example, include a fundraising agency calling on our behalf or a mailing house sending out material by post. We may also ask external service providers to carry out tracking and analysis on our behalf as described in the cookies policy.

Where we use an external service provider to act on our behalf, we will disclose only the personal information necessary to deliver the service and will have a contract in place that requires the provider to comply with our data protection and information security requirements and with the relevant legal regulations.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data to comply with any legal obligation; or to enforce or apply our terms of use for this website or other agreements; or to protect the rights, property or safety of The Aspinall Foundation or the Trust, our donors, customers or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud detection and protection.

How we handle direct debit or credit card information

We will ensure that when collecting sensitive information over the Internet such as debit cards, credit cards or personal information that this done so securely by encrypting data sent between the customer and us or our partners. We are PCI compliant and use external Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant providers to collect this data on our behalf. We do not store PCI data on our own systems.

To protect yourself when sending us sensitive information, please ensure that you use devices running supported operating systems that are regularly patched, and incorporate some form of malware protection. Only connect your devices to networks that you trust.

Securing your passwords

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts our website, you are responsible for keeping the password confidential. You agree not to share that password with anyone else.

Following links to third-party websites

This site may include links to other websites, not owned or managed by the Foundation of the Trust. While we try our best to only link to reputable websites we cannot be held responsible for the privacy of data collected by sites not managed by us nor can we accept responsibility or liability for those policies. For this reason, you should consult the privacy policy on any external website you link to before you submit any data to those sites.

Posting or sending inappropriate content or content you do not own

If you post or send any content that we believe to be inappropriate or content in breach of any laws, such as defamatory content, we may use your personal information to inform relevant third parties such as your internet provider or law enforcement agencies. We have the right to disclose your identity to any third party claiming to own any content that you posted.

Where we store your information digitally

Our Primary Storage servers are held on site by us. We may need, from time to time, to transfer your information to one of our third-party suppliers to supply information or make contact with you. When we do so the information will be protected when in transit and held securely by our supplier.

We may for financial or technical reasons from time to time need to use the services of an Internet Services Provider located outside of the European Economic Area. However, we shall ensure that your personal information will be held by those Internet Service Providers in compliance with European data protection regulations. By submitting your personal information to our website, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing at a location outside the European Economic Area. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

In cases when we use external websites provided by other organisations such as Twitter or Facebook, then we would ask you to consult their privacy policies.

How to access your personal information

You have a right to know whether we hold any information about you (personal data) and a right to be provided with a copy of your information within 40 days in accordance with the Data Protection rules. WIt will help us to find your information if you can tell us something about the nature of your contact with us. We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. You may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate.

Updates or changes to the privacy policy

We reserve the right to make changes to this Privacy Policy. Each time you visit this site, you should check this Policy to check that no changes have been made to any sections that are important to you.  Where appropriate, any changes will be notified to you by email, or we will announce changes on our website.