Privacy Policy

Who we are

We are Discover Downham Heritage Centre, a charity-run organisation celebrating the history of Downham Market and the surrounding area.

Our website address is: https://www.discoverdownham.org.uk.

We take your privacy seriously and are committed to protecting your personal information in line with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

What personal information we collect and why

We collect only the information we genuinely need to provide our services, support our visitors, and run our online shop. This may include:

  • Your name, contact details and delivery address when you place an order.

  • Your email address if you sign up for updates or contact us directly.

  • Information you share when you leave a comment or complete a form on the site.

  • Basic technical data (like IP address and browser type) to help prevent spam and keep the site secure.

We use this information only to process orders, answer enquiries, or improve your experience of our website.

Online shop orders

When you buy something from our online shop, we collect the information needed to process and deliver your order.

Payments are handled securely through our payment provider, and we do not store your full payment details on our site.

Order records — including refunds — are kept for up to six years to meet our legal and accounting obligations. After that, personal details linked to those orders are anonymised or securely deleted.

Comments and media

If you leave a comment, we collect the data shown in the comment form plus your IP address and browser information to help prevent spam. An anonymised version of your email address may be shared with the Gravatar service to display your profile picture. If you upload images, please avoid including location data (EXIF GPS) as visitors could download and extract that information.

Cookies

Our website uses small text files called cookies to make things work smoothly. These help remember your preferences, logins, and basket items. You can control or delete cookies at any time through your browser settings, though some features may not work as intended without them. We never use cookies to track you across other sites.

Embedded content

Some pages may include videos, maps, or other content from external websites (such as YouTube or Facebook). These sites may collect data about you or use cookies of their own once you interact with the content. We recommend checking their privacy policies for more information.

Who we share your data with

We only share your personal data with trusted service providers who help us run our website and shop — for example, our payment processor and delivery partners. They only receive the information necessary to perform their service and are required to keep it secure and confidential. Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.

How long we keep your data

  • Comments are kept indefinitely so we can recognise and approve follow-ups automatically.

  • Registered users can view, edit or delete their own information at any time (except usernames).

  • Order information is kept for up to six years to meet our legal obligations.

  • Test, pending, or failed orders are cleared after short periods as part of regular housekeeping.

Your rights

You have the right to:

  • Access the personal data we hold about you.

  • Request corrections if any information is inaccurate.

  • Ask for your data to be deleted or anonymised (where legally possible).

  • Withdraw consent for communications at any time.

To exercise these rights, please contact us using the details below.

If you request account deletion, we will remove or anonymise your personal details from our records while keeping only the information we must retain for legal or audit purposes. Once removed, you will no longer have access to any downloads or order history linked to that account.

How to contact us

If you have any questions or wish to make a data-related request, please contact:

Discover Downham Heritage Centre
Discover Downham, 13 Priory Road, Downham Market, Norfolk PE38 9JS
📧 info@discoverdownham.org.uk

If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at https://ico.org.uk.

Updates to this policy

We review this policy regularly and may update it from time to time. The latest version will always be available on our website, and significant changes will be highlighted clearly.