Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This notice explains when and why we collect personal information about people who apply for a role with us, visit our website or send us personal data, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, and how we keep it secure.

We may change this notice from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes.

Any questions regarding this notice and our privacy practices should be sent by email to info@trailblazersmentoring.org.uk or by writing to: Trailblazers Mentoring Ltd, Landgate Chambers, Rye, East Sussex, TN31 7LJ.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use the contact us form, fill in an application form, engage with us, enquire about our services or email us directly.

We may gather information from previous employers etc when gathering references.

If your application is successful, we will collect information about you during your course of employment/volunteering.

All donations go through our Just Giving page, which securely captures the information needed to process your donation, and only passes on details to us if you have given permission.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect about you depends on how you are interacting with Trailblazers mentoring.

Job applicants/employees

• Name and contact information
• References
• Employment and education history
• NI number, right to work documentation, documentation to allow DBS check
• Next of kin/emergency contact
• Health information that you may disclose
• Information relating to your employment with us e.g. salary, annual leave records, appraisals and performance information, disciplinary information
• EDI data

Volunteer/mentor applicants

• Name and contact information
• Employment and education history
• EDI data
• Date of birth
• References
• Documentation to allow DBS check

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

• Process a donation that you have made.
• Process a volunteer application, initiate security clearance, and if approved, ensure that a safe and appropriate match is made.
• Process a job application, and employ you if you are successful
• Answer your queries about our service
• Report to funders
• Send you marketing newsletters if you ask us to
• Monitor equality (EDI monitoring)
• Safeguard you and our mentees

We do not send out any marketing emails or newsletters without first obtaining consent from you. 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 (for example the collection of Gift Aid). We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us. Details of retention periods are provided in individual data submissions that you provide to us, or you can get in touch with us if you’d like to know more.

Who has access to your information?

• Members of Trailblazers staff who need to access your data to perform their role
• We share staff salary data with HMRC where we have a legal obligation.
• Where we work with external companies who process your data on our behalf, such as Croner HR for employee data or our CRM system Salesforce to store your personal data
• Where relevant, external agencies such as the police or care services in relation to a safeguarding need relating to yourself or a mentee.
• We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
• We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Our lawful basis to process your data

We mainly rely on contractual obligation and legitimate interests to process job applicant and employee data.

We rely on legitimate interests to process volunteer data, and the data of our website users or those who reach out with enquiries.

We rely on consent to send you our newsletter.

For safeguarding information, we rely on legitimate or vital interests.

We may have a legal obligation to share your data for example with HMRC.

Where we process special categories of your data or criminal record data for DBS checks, we either rely on explicit consent, or extra conditions of the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, such as substantial public interest for the purposes of equal opportunities monitoring, for employment, social security or social protection.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems. Where we have given (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our websites, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Use of ‘cookies’

Please refer to our Cookie Policy.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website. In addition, if you linked to our website from a third-party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third-party site.

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Your rights and how you can access and update your information

You have the following rights. Please note that these rights only apply in certain circumstances, and some exemptions and exceptions may also apply:

• ‘Right to be informed’, which means we will be completely clear and transparent about how we plan to use your personal information.
• ‘Right of access’, which means you can request details of the personal information we hold about you and how we use it. We will provide this within one month unless the request is complex, where we may need to extend this.
• ‘Right to rectification’, which means you can ask us to update or amend the personal information we hold about you if it is incorrect. Please ensure that the data you give us is accurate and inform us as soon as possible of any changes to your information so that we can rectify our records.
• ‘Right to restrict processing’, which means you can ask us to change, restrict or stop the way we are using your personal information.
• ‘Right to erasure’ (or ‘right to be forgotten’), which means you can ask us to remove your personal information from our records.
• ‘Right to object’, which means you can object to us using your personal information
• ‘Right to data portability’, which means you can obtain the personal information we hold about you and reuse it for your own purposes.
• ‘Right not to be subject to automated decision making’, which means if we use systems to make a decision about you, you have the right to ask for a person to intervene, which may change the outcome.
• Right to withdraw consent if that is the lawful basis we are relying on to process your data
• Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority, such as the Fundraising Regulator or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), if you are not satisfied with our response to a request you make to us, or you feel we are not using your information correctly. They can be contacted at 0303 123 1113 or, you can write to them at Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Please get in touch with a staff member or email us at info@trailblazersmentoring.org.uk to exercise any of these rights.

We keep this Policy under regular review. This Policy was last updated in December 2025.