London Nightline Privacy Policy

Privacy is at the heart of our work at London Nightline. We are committed to protecting the anonymity of our callers and the privacy of our volunteers, supporters and website users.

The purpose of this statement is to inform you of our policies regarding the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data when you use our service, and to do so in a clear and transparent manner.

The type of personal information we collect

We currently collect and process the following information:

Service users

Nightline is an anonymous listening service. We do not require service users contacting Nightline to disclose any identifiable information (such as name, age, email address, university attended) in order to access the Nightline service. Callers’ phone numbers, email addresses or IP addresses are not accessible to helpline volunteers.

If a service user calls Nightline, their phone number comes up as withheld. If a service user emails the Nightline helpline email address, their email address is withheld. If a service user instant messages the Nightline helpline, their name comes up as ‘Caller’ and their IP address is not accessible to the helpline volunteer. If a service user uses Skype to call us via the internet, it rings on our phone system and therefore comes up as withheld.

The details of the calls, emails and instant messages we receive are not shared outside of London Nightline. We record a limited number of non-personally identifiable pieces of information (such as a record of the date/time, duration and broad contact category) which are used only for analysis purposes. Amalgamated themes of the calls we receive are monitored in order to improve our service and volunteer training, and to demonstrate our impact. Abstract versions of these themes may be passed on to third parties, which may include student unions and higher education institutions, but any information shared in this way will be untraceable to any individual.

Our instant messaging service uses a server provided and processed by the Nightline Association, the umbrella body for Nightlines in the UK. The Nightline Association accesses these servers only in exceptional circumstances where system administrators must undertake system maintenance.

We will only share the details of a call outside of London Nightline in these specific situations:
• A suicidal caller requests us to contact the emergency services on their behalf. For more information, please request a copy of our Suicidal Contacts Policy.
• We are told information about an upcoming act of terrorism
• We are given information about a threat to a child’s safety, or other legal obligations under safeguarding children legislation
• We receive a court order requiring us by law to share information

As our volunteers’ wellbeing is of the utmost importance to us, an exception to accessing callers’ phone numbers is in the case of abusive calls. In the case of a volunteer receiving an abusive call, this is escalated and investigated by a separate member of staff, London Nightline’s Coordinator. In these rare cases, the Coordinator will access the telephone records in order to retrieve the abusive caller’s phone number and block it.

Volunteers

We recruit student volunteers annually in October and February. During this process, we use application forms to collect information from everyone who registers their interest in volunteering. The information we hold about volunteers includes their full name, date of birth, email address, phone number, and the institution where they study. In addition to this, we also ask the applicants general questions about themselves to assess their suitability for the role and any accessibility/access requirements. This information is not shared with anyone outside of London Nightline before, during or after the recruitment drive.

This personal data, plus any additional data provided by volunteers during their time volunteering with us, is stored and processed in order to ensure a high quality experience of volunteering with London Nightline.

‘Friends of London Nightline’

‘Friends of London Nightline’ include former volunteers (known internally as ‘alumni’), ex-trustees, donors and other supporters of the charity. They can opt-in to receive our regular email newsletter. We retain their name, email address, and dates of their involvement with London Nightline in order to keep them informed of the charity’s latest work.

Website users

Certain information is automatically collected from users to the Nightline website using cookies. This includes information about the web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on a visitor’s device, and individual pages that are viewed. Website users can opt-out of cookies collecting this information.

Anonymised data from visitors to our website is monitored to help us analyse how our website is being used and how we can improve it.

How we get the personal information and why we have it

The personal information we process is provided to us directly by you for one of the following reasons:
• To use the Nightline helpline
• To volunteer with London Nightline
• To remain informed about our latest work

We use the information that you have given us in order to deliver and continuously improve our helpline service.
Each phone call or instant message we receive remains completely anonymous within London Nightline. We amalgamate broad themes in order to track general call trends, and may share this information with partners including universities and students’ unions.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:
• Consent
• It is necessary for us to perform our contracts
• Our legitimate interests as a charity
• It is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest
• We have a legal obligation

How we store your personal information

Your information is securely stored. We store data on Office 365 which is secured and supported by Microsoft, and has been security assessed by independent organizations (including the National Cyber Security Centre: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/saas-security/product-evaluations/office-365).

We only keep your information for as long as is necessary for the relevant purpose. We use a number of criteria for determining the retention period, including obligations under law, our need to defend or bring any contractual claims within the statutory limitation period, and consideration of the original purpose we collected it for.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:
Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure – You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing – You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.
Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

If you have any questions about this data protection policy or would like to make a request, please contact us at london@nightline.org.uk. We will respond to you within 10 working days.

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