Member privacy

Members put much the same handful of questions to the secretary about the register and the papers kept beside it. Those questions, and the answers Careabout Ltd gives to them, are set out here in the order they usually arrive.

Why does Careabout Ltd need anything about me at all?

Because a membership organisation runs from a list, and the list has to be right. The register settles who belongs, whose vote is counted in the room, who must be sent notice before a meeting is held, and who may draw on the resources the membership shares. A registered company of this shape is obliged to maintain such a list, and the everyday coordination the organisation exists to do rests on the very same pages.

What sits in my entry?

Your name, the address you have chosen for correspondence, and the point at which your membership opened. Filed beside the register are the subscription ledger, the notices the secretary issued to you and whatever you sent back, attendance where a meeting records it, and a note of any shared resource signed out in your name. If you came in by application, the form you completed stays with the entry as the origin of it.

I only wrote to the secretary — where does that go?

An enquiry from someone outside the membership is filed as a message and a reply route, so an answer can be written and so the officers can see what was said should the subject come round again. Correspondence of that kind is held apart from the register itself.

What entitles the organisation to hold this?

Different parts rest on different footings. The statutory record exists because a registered company must keep one. The entry itself and the run of subscriptions rest on the membership agreement struck between you and the organisation. Correspondence and the working papers of the officers rest on the organisation's legitimate interest in administering itself and in giving an answer to the people who write in.

Who inside the organisation reads it?

The secretary, who keeps the record, and any officer who needs a slice of it for a task actually in front of them. The accountant works from subscription and payment figures at the point the annual accounts are drawn up. Reach follows the job, and ends when the job does.

Does any of it travel outside?

Along two routes, both fixed by law. The register of members is open to inspection on the footing company law lays down, and a request to inspect is answered strictly on that footing. Where a public authority is entitled to call for information, the organisation supplies what that entitlement covers. Past those two routes the papers stay inside the organisation, for the organisation's own work.

How long does my entry stay on file?

The statutory entry, with the papers filed against it, runs for the term company law fixes, and that term reaches past the moment a membership closes, so a former member remains legible in the closed part of the record for a good while yet. Money records follow the separate span that tax rules set for a company's books. Applications that never turned into a membership, and letters from correspondents who never joined, are cleared once the matter they were about has finished.

Can I see what the register holds about me?

Yes, and a note to the secretary is the whole of the procedure. What comes back is your entry together with the papers filed against it, written out in a form you can read rather than in the shorthand the ledger keeps. Where a document also concerns another member, the parts belonging to that person are left out of your copy, so that their entry stays theirs.

Something in my entry is wrong — will you put it right?

Tell the secretary what the correct position is and the record is amended to match it. A change of address is the common case and a practical one, since notice of a meeting travels to whatever the register carries. Where the correction touches a figure in the accounts, the amendment is written as an entry of its own, which keeps the trail through the books legible.

Can my entry be taken off the register?

Resignation closes a membership, and the entry then moves into the closed part of the record for as long as company law requires it to remain readable there. Material sitting outside that statutory core — an old enquiry, a form that led nowhere, correspondence whose subject is settled — comes off on request. Where the law holds an entry in place for its term, the secretary writes back and names the reason plainly, so that the request is answered even in the case where the record itself stays put.

Can I hold back a particular use, or take a copy elsewhere?

Both are open to you, and both begin the same way: a written request to the secretary, and a written answer explaining what follows from it. Holding a use back is straightforward while a disagreement about accuracy is being worked through, because the record can be kept still until that point is settled. If some particular use strikes you as unwarranted, name the use and your grounds; the organisation weighs them against the reason the record is being used that way, and tells you where it lands. Where the material you supplied is of the sort a person may take away with them, the secretary prepares it in a common file format that another organisation is able to open.

What does this website itself pick up?

These pages are static documents about the organisation: a browser asks for one, draws it, and the visit ends there. The organisation hears from you at the moment you decide to write to the secretary, and what it then holds is the message you chose to send.

Who do I write to?

The secretary, at [email protected], or by post to the registered office printed below. Careabout Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under number 14132276, stands as controller of everything described on this page. Should the secretary's answer leave the matter where it started, the Information Commissioner's Office supervises data protection across the United Kingdom and will take the question up.

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