We are the Conservative and Unionist Party, commonly known as the Conservative Party (The Party), and we are registered as a political party with the Electoral Commission under registration PP52 and a registered data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number Z5909711.
Our objective is to promote our values and to elect Conservative candidates at every level of government across the United Kingdom, or when we campaign in referenda.
This is the privacy notice for the Conservative Party and not just for our website www.conservatives.com. We have specific privacy notices for other areas such as Human Resources and Staffing, Candidates, Complaints/Code of Conduct and Party Conference. We are happy to make this notice available in other accessible formats such as braille. If you wish to obtain a copy in an accessible format please contact our Data Protection Officer.
In this privacy notice we also refer to “the wider Conservative Party”. This includes, but is not limited to, local associations, areas and regions of the Party, known as ‘accounting units’ and listed on the Electoral Commission website, elected representatives, candidates, members, volunteers and party officers. These bodies may be data controllers in their own right or data processors acting on behalf of the Party. It is intended that the wider Party will adopt the principles enshrined in this notice.
This privacy notice has been created to demonstrate the Party’s commitment to the protection of your data and to be transparent in how we deal with it. This notice provides the information as required by Articles 13 and 14 GDPR.
The Party will process your data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and related legislation.
This privacy notice was published on 30 November 2020.
From time to time we may make amendments to or update this privacy notice.
If you have any questions about this notice, or for more information about how we use your data, or if you would like to exercise any of your rights you can contact our Data Protection Officer at:
Data Protection Department, Conservative Campaign Headquarters, 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1H 9HQ
E-mail: DataProtection@Conservatives.com.
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7984 8300.
How we use your data is protected by law and we are only permitted to process your data where we have an acceptable reason for doing so. The lawful reasons we process your data are:
Some types of sensitive personal data are given extra protection under the law; information about your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, sex life, religious or philosophical beliefs, criminal record, trade union membership and political opinion is “special category” data under data protection legislation and we will only process this data where we have a lawful reason to do so. The work of the Conservative Party, and the wider Conservative Party, is deemed to be of substantial public interest and therefore we are permitted to process special category personal data relating to your political opinion in so far as it is necessary for the purposes of our political activities.
Where we have identified “legitimate interest” as our lawful reason for processing your data we conduct a balancing test in order to determine whether our legitimate interests to process your data are overridden by your interests, rights and freedoms. For more information about our legitimate interest balancing tests please contact our Data Protection Officer.
We process data with the intention of using it primarily for the broad purpose of our political, campaigning and fundraising activities.
The tables below illustrate examples of how we commonly use your data, the typical categories of data that we might process and our justification and legal bases for doing so.
Like many organisations the Conservative Party uses data analytics to try and understand the people that we seek to represent and make best use of our limited resources. The Conservative Party uses some of the data that we collect about you to make an educated prediction about your lifestyle. We use automated means to analyse this variety of data and collate it (sometimes referred to as “profiling”). We combine personal data about electors (which is provided by local authorities to all political parties under electoral statute) with data from canvassing, the marked register of electors, from external data analytics and research partners, data brokers (such as Experian), opinion polling partners, fulfilment channels such as mail/telephone/Facebook, public bodies such as the Office for National Statistics, etc. This data is then used by CCHQ to inform how and whether we contact you, for example by:
We also use analytics to perform analysis of individual and aggregated data (for example, we might combine individual data relating to voting intention and details about the constituency) to provide us with competitive insight into the political landscape and general trends, and to allow us to better understand the electorate as a whole.
Examples of categories of data that we typically analyse are: political affiliation, political opinions and preferences, likelihood to vote, attitudes, geodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
We undertake these analyses as we have a legitimate interest to identify potential Conservative voters and supporters. Indeed, it also allows us to behave accordingly should voters request that we don’t contact them, for example. Where our profiling processes special category data relating to your political opinion we consider that this is necessary for the purposes of our political activities and therefore permitted in accordance with Article 9(2)(g) GDPR – substantial public interest – DPA 2018, Schedule 1, Part 2, Paragraph 22 Political Parties.
Our analytics and profiling does not replace the direct contact that we make with individuals – these activities supplement our traditional campaigning methods such as canvassing and conducting surveys.
We have determined that this kind of profiling, and any decisions that are based solely on that profiling, is unlikely to create legal or significant affects for you. Where such decisions create legal or similarly significant affects you have the right not to be subject to that decision and you can exercise that right by contacting our Data Protection Officer. You can also contact us at any time and exercise your right to object and ask that we do not process your personal information for this purpose.
The historical nature of the Conservative Party means that rather than being one single organisation we are an interconnected family consisting of the Party Headquarters, local associations, areas and regions of the Party (known as ‘accounting units’ and listed on the Electoral Commission website) elected representatives, candidates, members, volunteers and party officers. We are all united by our common Conservative identity. One of CCHQ’s primary roles is to provide professional support to our family of volunteers who help to run the party across the UK.
Much of the work of the Party is conducted by the wider Conservative Party. For this reason we have a legitimate interest to share and make available certain personal information with the wider Party when it is necessary for our campaigns or other activities and vice versa via our Electoral Management Database, Field Campaigning Teams and Voluntary Party Managers. Sharing may also be necessary in the public interest, as being an activity that supports or promotes democratic engagement. Some examples of such data sharing include:
We collect personal data from a variety of sources:
Provided by you (Directly):
Third-Party Sources (Indirectly):
Some of our service providers are located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) and therefore it may be necessary to transfer your personal data outside of the EEA. Where we do transfer your data outside of the EEA we will make sure that it is protected in the same way as if the data was inside the EEA.
We will use one of the following appropriate safeguards to ensure this:
If we are unable to rely on one of the appropriate safeguards when transferring data outside the EEA, we may rely on a derogation for specific situations under Article 49 GDPR in order to transfer your data outside of the EEA. This may be necessary for example to fulfil a contract that we have made with your or if you give us permission to do so.
We retain your information in accordance with the CCHQ Data Retention Policy and Data Retention Schedule. We constantly review the data that we hold and regularly consider its relevance and our need to hold onto it. We use several factors to determine our retention periods. Factors we take into consideration are:
If you require more detailed information on how long your data will be kept for please contact our Data Protection Officer.
We take the security of personal data seriously. We use security technology, including firewalls, password protection and encryption to safeguard information and have procedures in place to ensure that our paper and computer systems and databases are protected against unauthorised disclosure, use, loss and damage. We have processes in place to deal with a data breach in the unlikely event one should occur.
We only use third party service providers where we are satisfied that they provide adequate security for your personal data.
This section explains about your data subject rights you have. You can exercise any of these rights by contacting our Data Protection Officer or Data Protection Team.
If you are unhappy with the way that we have processed or handled your data, then you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO is the supervisory body authorised by the Data Protection Act 2018 to regulate the handling of personal data within the United Kingdom.
The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office are:
