About/Privacy

On this page you can read more about the website and our data privacy policy:

About the Website

Garvald and Morham villages are situated at the foothills of the Lammermuirs in East Lothian. The garvald.org.uk domain name and hosting is funded by Garvald and Morham Community Council, a non-profit organisation.

The website is managed and updated by local volunteers, who aim to provide timely and relevant information to foster community spirit and inclusion of all people living in the Garvald and Morham community council area, irrespective of age, religion, ethnicity, ability, gender, gender identity, or political view. For security and to reduce spam messages, forms on the website use Google’s reCAPTCHA program.

The Home page provides the latest news. Other pages are dedicated to the different groups within the area to provide useful local information and links.

The Garvald website Constitution can be downloaded here.

Website Data Protection/Privacy

We all value our privacy so here’s how we make sure your personal data is looked after:

  • Where possible we aim to ensure that no personal contact data (email addresses/phone numbers) is published on the website.
  • Readers can subscribe to our email updates service to receive the latest news/blog posts via email. Subscribers’ email addresses are stored securely and you can unsubscribe at any time.
  • Photographs will be used on the website to record village events for posterity. When using photographs on the site we obtain verbal permission from any identifiable people featured in the photo. People will not be named in any photograph caption unless written consent has been obtained. If a subject decides they want to have their photograph removed from the site, less us know via the contact form and we will do it straight away. Permission will also be obtained from photographers to protect their copyrighted work.

Privacy Policy/GDPR Information

This privacy notice is for the website www.garvald.org.uk, is served by the site’s website manager on behalf of residents of the villages of Garvald and Morham. It governs the privacy of the website’s users. It explains how we comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (UKGDPR, 2020), the Data Protection Act (DPA, 2018) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

This Notice explains how this website that may affect your privacy, how we collect, process, manage and store your personal details and how your rights under GDPR, DPA & PECR are adhered to. Additionally it explains the use of cookies, tracking software, content from third parties and the download of any documents, files or software made available to you (if any) on this website. Detailed explanations are provided for specific features of this website in order to help you understand how the website and its third parties interact with you and your computer/device. Please use our contact form if you have any questions.

Use of Cookies

This website uses cookies to enable a better user experience and on first accessing the site the user is asked for permission to allow the use of cookies on their computer/device. Users can deny the use cookies by blocking them in their web browser’s security settings. Help on how to do this can be found on the aboutcookies website.

What are cookies? Cookies are small files saved to the user’s computers hard drive that track, save and store information about the user’s interactions and usage of the website. This allows the website, through its server, to provide the users with a tailored experience within this website.

Website Visitor Tracking – This website uses WordPress and Jetpack tracking software to monitor its visitors to better understand how they use it. The software will save a cookie to your computer’s hard drive to track and monitor your engagement and usage of the website. For more information on what data is collected for site visitors and site contributors, please read Jetpack’s Privacy information. Please note that any piece of data explicitly identifying a specific user (IP address, WordPress.com ID, WordPress.com username, etc.) is not visible to us, the site owners. For example, we can see how many views a specific post has, but cannot see which specific users viewed that post.

Contact and Communication With Us

Users contacting this us through this website do so at their own discretion and provide their personal details at their own risk. Your personal information is kept private and stored securely until it is no longer required or has no further use.

Email Mailing List & Marketing Messages – Where you have given your express permission via the sign-up form, we may use your details to send you information through a mailing list system. This is done in accordance with current data protection regulations. We operate an email mailing list program to inform subscribers about local news. Users subscribe through an online form where they give their explicit permission for us to store their name, address and email address, and notification of whether they are local residents. Subscriber personal details are collected, processed, managed and stored in accordance with data protection regulations. Subscribers can unsubscribe at any time through an automated online service (simply click the ‘Unsubscribe’ link on the newsletter email), or use the website Contact form. Subscribers will receive an email newsletter showing the latest blog posts from the Home page. This may contain third party content, for which we are not responsible.

Email marketing messages may contain tracking beacons/tracked clickable links or similar server technologies in order to track subscriber activity within email marketing messages. Where used, such marketing messages may record a range of subscriber data relating to engagement, geographic, demographics and already stored subscriber data. You can read more about our mail service (Mailchimp) privacy policy by clicking the link in the resources section below.

For the purposes of managing our website’s newsletter mailing list and to provide a Social Media presence (Facebook), we use services provided by companies outside of the UK/EU. These US-based companies use US servers to store this data, meaning that data is transferred out of the UK/EU. However, these companies have all signed up to Privacy Shield, which is an agreement between the US and UK/EU relating to the protection of personal data – this constitutes a safeguard under the GDPR.

Garvald and Morham Community Council Data Protection

If you contact the community council or apply for Crystal Rig wind farm grant funding, your contact information is collected and used to respond to your query or process your application. Data from successful grant applications is shared with Fred.Olsen Renewables Crystal Rig fund administrators and the Community Council auditor.

We will not sell your personal information to any third party. We will notify you promptly of any breach of your personal data which might expose you to serious risk. Your data will be kept for as long as is necessary to resolve your enquiry. A record of all Crystal Rig grant applications will be kept for at two years and data from successful applications will be retained for seven years (for account purposes) then securely deleted. For more information, please read Garvald & Morham Community Council’s Privacy Policy.

Garvald Horticultural Society – Membership Data Protection

Garvald Horticultural Society collects membership data in order to run the annual village show. The group has a separate Privacy Notice governing protection of this data, which is available on the Garvald Horticultural Society page.

Garvald Village Hall – Bookings Data Protection

Garvald Village Hall collects your data in order to complete hall bookings. The committee have a separate Privacy Notice governing protection of this data, which is available on the Garvald Hall Bookings page.

External Website Links and Third Parties

Although we only look to include quality, safe and relevant external links (clickable text/banner/image links to other websites) on this site, users are advised to adopt a policy of caution before clicking any external web links mentioned throughout this website. We cannot guarantee or verify the contents of any externally linked website despite our best efforts. Users should therefore note they click on external links at their own risk. We cannot be held liable for any damages or implications caused by visiting any external links mentioned.

Social Media Policy and Usage

We adopt a Social Media Policy to ensure our volunteers and subscribers/readers conduct themselves accordingly online. While we may have official profiles on social media platforms (such as the garvald.org.uk Facebook page) users are advised to verify authenticity of such profiles before engaging with, or sharing information with such profiles. We will never ask for user passwords or personal details on social media platforms. Users are advised to conduct themselves politely and appropriately when engaging with us on social media. The website manager reserves the right to remove unacceptable, impolite or discriminatory comments by social media users online.

There may be instances where our website features social sharing buttons, which help share web content directly from web pages to the respective social media platforms. You use social sharing buttons at your own discretion and accept that doing so may publish content to your social media profile feed or page. You can find further information about some social media privacy and usage policies in the resources section below.

Resources & Further Information

Website Privacy Policy, 6 February 2024. For further enquiries about any of our privacy policy, please use the contact form.