Winchester Mediation Service (WMS) is an independent charity offering mediation to people living in the area covered by Winchester City Council.

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and we comply with the General Data Protection Regulations 2018 when dealing with any data received from visitors to our site.

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email to winchestermediation@yahoo.co.uk or by telephone to 01962 813320.

We only hold the data we need to provide the services we detail on our website and only hold it for as long as necessary. Once data is no longer required it is deleted. We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity and will ensure that any information we have is held securely.

What type of information is collected from you?

If you complete our contact form or e-mail us regarding our services, we collect personal information which might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. This will be held on the servers of the company which hosts our website. For this reason data may be passed to and stored securely with third party service providers located outside the EEA (European Economic Area).

If your enquiry does not progress to mediation your details will be deleted from our records, a process which is undertaken on a monthly basis. You have the right at any time to request access to any information we hold about you by contacting us either by e-mail, telephone or mail on the details provided in our contact page.

However we use the data only for the purposes of responding to your enquiry and will obtain your specific consent before proceeding with any mediation.

We will not provide your details to any third party without your permission, except that in certain situations we may disclose personal data in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including but not limited to national security or law enforcement requests.

We never send unsolicited e-mail to anyone. In accordance with the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, we never send bulk unsolicited emails (popularly known as Spam) to email addresses.

Our website uses "cookies" to track use. When you access the website, general non-personal information (Internet browser used, number of visits, average time spent on site, pages viewed) is recorded automatically. This information is used to gauge our website's appeal and to improve its content and functionality. Your data is not processed any further nor is it transmitted to any third parties with the exception of our website provider and Google Analytics. However, such information will also be subject to our partners' privacy policies. These cookies do not contain or pass any personal, confidential or financial information or any other information that could be used to identify individual visitors to our website. Please note that you are free to refuse cookies. However, for purely technical reasons this may prevent you from accessing our website.

When someone visits our website we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do wish to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be open about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.