Privacy Notice
Last updated: 6 September 2026
Who we are
London Royals Hockey Club (“the club”, “we”, “us”) is a hockey club based in London. We are the data controller for the personal information described in this notice — meaning we decide what is collected and why, and we are responsible for looking after it.
If you have any question about this notice, or about the information we hold about you, contact us at joinus@londonroyals.co.uk.
What this notice covers. This is a club-wide notice, not just a website one. It covers the personal information we handle through our website, through the WhatsApp groups we use to organise teams and social events, and through the online forms we use to run the club.
In short
- The main thing we collect is what you send us through the Join Us enquiry form.
- We keep those enquiries for 180 days, then delete them automatically.
- We ask for your consent to hold that information, and you can withdraw it at any time by emailing us.
- We don’t sell your information, we don’t advertise to you, and we don’t run analytics or tracking on this website.
- If you join, we’ll hold your phone number so we can add you to your team’s WhatsApp group — where it is visible to the other people in that group.
- You need to be 16 or over to use the enquiry form.
What we collect, and why
When you enquire about joining
If you fill in the form on our Join Us page, we collect:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your name | To reply to you properly |
| Your email address | To reply to you |
| Your pronouns (optional) | So we address you correctly |
| Your hockey experience | To point you at the right session and team |
| Which side of the club interests you (men’s, women’s, mixed, umpiring) | To pass your enquiry to the right people |
| How you heard about us | To understand how people find the club |
| Anything you write in the enquiry box | To answer what you actually asked |
Our lawful basis is your consent, which you give by ticking the box on the form. You can withdraw it at any time — see Your rights below.
Your enquiry is stored on this website and is also emailed to the club’s membership inboxes, which are Gmail accounts read by committee volunteers who handle membership.
Providing this information is voluntary, but we can’t answer an enquiry without at least a name and an email address.
When you comment on a post
Some of our posts allow comments. WordPress records the name and email address you give, your comment, your IP address and your browser’s user agent. This is standard WordPress behaviour and is used to publish your comment and to help us deal with spam.
If you tick the box to save your details, WordPress sets cookies in your browser so you don’t have to retype them.
Comment author details may be sent to Gravatar (a service run by Automattic) to look up a profile picture.
Our lawful basis is your consent when you submit a comment, and our legitimate interests in preventing spam and abuse.
When you have a website account
A small number of people — committee members and site administrators — have accounts on this website. For these we hold a username, email address, and the role assigned to the account.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — running and securing the website.
Committee members’ details on our website
Our Our Committee page publishes committee members’ first names, their club roles and their photographs. These are volunteers acting in a public role for the club.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — being open about who runs the club, so members and prospective members know who they are dealing with. If you are on the committee and would prefer your photograph or name not to appear, tell us and we will remove it.
Our WhatsApp groups
We use WhatsApp to organise the club. There are groups for each team, for the committee, and for social events. Most of them are announcement groups — only admins post, so you get the information without the chatter.
To add you to a group we hold your phone number, given to us when you join.
The most important thing to know: when you are in a WhatsApp group, your phone number and your WhatsApp profile name and photo are visible to the other people in that group. That is how WhatsApp works, and it is not something the club can switch off. So being in a team group means the rest of that team can see your number.
- We will ask before adding you to a group.
- You can leave any group at any time, or ask an admin not to add you. It will not affect your membership or your place in a team.
- We remove people from club groups when they leave the club.
- We do not use these groups to advertise anything to you, and we do not pass the group membership list to anyone outside the club.
WhatsApp is provided by Meta. Your messages are handled under WhatsApp’s own privacy policy, not ours.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — organising teams, arranging matches and keeping members informed. You can object at any time by leaving the group or telling an admin.
Forms we use to run the club
From time to time we ask members to fill in an online form for something the club needs to organise — for example availability for a match, kit sizes, or arrangements for a tour or social. We currently use Google Forms for this.
These forms collect whatever you type into them, which normally includes your name. Google also records technical information about the connection as part of providing the service. We only ask for what we actually need for the thing being organised, and each form says what it is for.
We keep the responses only for as long as we need them for that purpose — for example, until the tour or the season it relates to has finished — and then delete them.
If a form ever asks for health, accessibility or dietary information, that form will explain on the form itself why we are asking, what we do with the answer and how long we keep it, and we will ask for your explicit consent.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — organising the club’s activities for its members.
Fixtures
Our fixtures come from England Hockey’s Game Management System (GMS). The information we display is match dates, times, venues and opposing teams — not personal information about players. The request to England Hockey is made by our web server, so your browser does not contact them and nothing about you is sent when you view the page.
When you simply visit the website
Our hosting provider records standard server log information, including your IP address, the pages you request and your browser’s user agent. This happens automatically for every website and is used to keep the site running and secure.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — security, diagnosing faults and keeping the site available.
We do not run any website analytics. There is no Google Analytics, no Tag Manager, no advertising pixel and no visitor tracking on this site.
Cookies
This website uses a cookie consent banner. You choose which categories to accept the first time you visit, and you can change your choice at any time from the banner.
Full details of every cookie are in our Cookie Policy.
Third-party services that would set cookies are blocked until you consent to the relevant category.
Age
You must be 16 or over to use our enquiry form, and by submitting it you confirm that you are.
We are an adult hockey club. If you are under 16 and interested in playing, please ask a parent or guardian to contact us on your behalf using the address in this notice.
If we become aware that we have received an enquiry from someone under 16, we will delete it.
Who we share your information with
We don’t sell your personal information and we don’t share it for anyone else’s marketing.
We do use a small number of service providers who handle information on our behalf:
| Who | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Fasthosts | Hosts our website, its database and our email | UK |
| Google (Gmail) | The club’s membership inboxes, where enquiries are received and read | US and other countries |
| Meta (WhatsApp) | Carries our team, committee and social group messages | US and other countries |
| Google (Google Forms) | Hosts the forms we use to organise club activities | US and other countries |
| Automattic (Gravatar) | Profile pictures on comments | US |
| England Hockey | Provides our fixtures data (we receive, we don’t send) | UK |
| Installatron | Website management tooling used by our host | US |
We may also disclose information where we are legally required to.
Where your information goes
Most of your information stays in the UK. Some of the providers above are based in, or store data in, the United States. Where that happens, transfers are covered by the providers’ own safeguards — the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, or standard contractual clauses.
How long we keep things
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Membership enquiries | 180 days, then deleted automatically |
| Emails in the club’s inboxes | 180 days, matching the website — the membership inbox is cleared of older enquiries |
| Your phone number in WhatsApp groups | While you are a member of that group. Removed when you leave the club, or whenever you ask |
| Responses to club forms | Until the activity they relate to is finished — a tour, a match, a season — then deleted |
| Comments | For as long as the post is published |
| Website accounts | For as long as the person needs access; removed when they leave the committee |
| Server logs | Set by our hosting provider |
| Website backups | Held on our hosting provider’s server and overwritten as new backups are taken |
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Ask for a copy of the information we hold about you
- Have it corrected if it is wrong
- Have it deleted
- Object to or ask us to restrict how we use it
- Ask for it in a portable format
- Withdraw your consent at any time, where we relied on consent
To withdraw your consent to us holding your enquiry, email joinus@londonroyals.co.uk and say so. We will delete your enquiry. It is as easy to withdraw as it was to give — one email, no form. Withdrawing does not affect anything we did before you withdrew.
To exercise any of these rights, email us at the same address. We will respond within one month. There is no charge.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first — we would like the chance to put it right.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator:
- Website: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
- Helpline: 0303 123 1113
Changes to this notice
If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this notice and change the date at the top.
