Privacy & Cookie Policy

Every effort has been made to ensure the information contained in this site is accurate. However, the publishers can accept no responsibility for any errors or omissions. This site contains a number of external links the inclusion of which does not signify any endorsement. The Kent Downs Area of Natural Beauty (AONB) Unit is not responsible for the contents of such sites, or any links contained within them.

The following Privacy Policy is subject to updates.

Privacy Policy

The Kent Downs AONB website does not collect personally identifiable information about individuals except when individuals provide such information on a voluntary basis by completing and submitting one of the forms available on our website. When we do so we are regulated under the General Data Protection Regulation which applies across the European Union (including in the United Kingdom) and we are responsible as ‘data controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts. Personally identifiable information collected will only be used for the purpose the intended by the individual. We will only hold your personal information for as long as necessary or in the event you request your information be deleted.

Your personal information may be shared with internal departments or with external partners and agencies involved in delivering services on our behalf. However, we will only share information with organisations who also comply with appropriate data protection laws.

The Kent Downs AONB unit is hosted by Kent County Council (KCC), you can read their Privacy Notice here

Cookies

This site uses cookies which are small, anonymous information files stored on your computer. Some of the cookies set by our website are essential to provide you with certain functions you may need or want on the website. Other cookies may be set by third party services which we include in our website for your convenience. We are currently working towards disabling all cookies which are not essential for using our website unless you choose to accept them. Information on deleting or controlling cookies is available at AboutCookies.org. Please note that by disabling or deleting our cookies or disabling future cookies you may not be able to access certain areas or features of our website.

Cookies set by third party websites

Some third party services we include in our website to improve your experience set their own third party cookies when you visit a page. These cookies are specific to the third party’s domain, therefore the data held in them can be seen and managed by the third party and not by us. We control if and how we use the third party service on our website, and how it is presented. We do not have control over the cookies themselves.

We may embed videos from YouTube and news feeds from other websites such as Facebook and Twitter to enhance the user experience of our websites. These third party websites place cookies on your device when watching or viewing these pages. Below are links to their cookie policies:

Google Maps

Our Interactive Map uses the third party Google Map service and is available to provide you with extra useful functionality on our website, on the basis that it is useful to you and that Google adheres to its privacy policywhich can be found at and its terms of service for Google Maps. We have no control over the cookies set by Google.

Google Maps may set upto 7 cookies on your computer: SID, SAPISID, APISID, SSID, HSID, NID, and PREF. They last between 6 months and 10 years. PREF stores your own options such as your preferred zoom level. The other cookies appear to include a mixture of unique, anonymous IDs to measure the number and behaviour of Google Maps users and the number of times a specific Google Map is used.

Online forms

In order to provide certain services or activities, we need to be able to collect information from individuals and organisations. We use software provided by Mailchimp  to create these online forms and MONDAY to store email addresses for business signed up to our EXPERIENCE Countryside Development Programme mailing list.  These companies are acting as data processors for Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and only process personal information in line with our instructions.

Your rights

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have rights which you can exercise free of charge that allow you to:

  • Know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
  • Ask to see what information we hold about you (known as a Subject Access Request)
  • Ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
  • Object to direct marketing
  • Make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
  • Where we process information based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

  • Ask us to delete information we hold about you
  • Have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
  • Object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
  • Object to how we are using your information
  • Stop us using your information in certain ways

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

Who to contact

Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of these rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk or by writing to Data Protection Officer, Office of the General Counsel, Kent County Council, Sessions House, County Hall, Maidstone, ME14 1XQ.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone 03031 231113.