Who we are
We are a publishing company called Platform Publishing & Media Ltd.
We are Registered in England 4507686
Our registered office is 87 Hewell Road, Barnt Green, Worcs, B45 8NL
We publish a website with the prime address being https://www.thevillage.co It is also reached via web forwarding from a number of other addresses, including: www.villageonline.co.uk www.burcot.com www.cofton.com www.alvechurch.org www.weatheroak.com
We also publish a magazine called The Village, and circulate 10,000 copies each month around the villages to the east of the town of Bromsgrove in north Worcestershire using our own delivery teams. This magazine was established in 1998. The print edition is normally published monthly, but the frequency has been reduced during the coronavirus pandemic.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
Information you give to us
We collect information you provide to us to enable us to run our business and to provide our customers and our readers with our services.
This includes information provided to us by:
Our present and potential customers, with whom we interact to provide advertising services in our publications;
Our readers and commenters, with whom we interact to provide our services when they subscribe or register with us or contact us via the internet, by telephone, by postal letter, in person or by other means;
People who are the subjects of articles and/or photographs in our publications. This information my be provided via the internet, by telephone, by postal letter, in person or by other means;
Our employees and people who contact us regarding employment. For example, we maintain a waiting list of people who have contacted us recently seeking work.
The information you provide to us might include your name, address, email address, phone number, and if you’re creating an account you may also provide a password. If you are submitting a job application you may also provide additional information about yourself, such as age, past experience and qualifications.
Information we collect about you
We collect information in correspondence between us, such as emails or telephone calls or via our website.
We will also collect certain information about how you use our website and the device that you use to access our website. This might include your IP address, geographical location, device information (such as your hardware model, mobile network information, unique device identifiers), browser type, referral source, length of visit to the website, number of page views, the search queries you make on the website and similar information. This information may be collected by a third-party website analytics service provider on our behalf and/or may be collected using cookies.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on our website we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for some advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)
Who we share your data with
As a business we use a number of professional services with whom we share information. These include accountants, legal advisers and online service providers.
As a publisher, we publish information both online and in print. This information may include names, locations and ages – and photographs – of people who are the subjects or sources of the articles we publish. This information is available to all readers of our publications.
We do not share data with anyone else unless it is a statutory requirement, such as for tax or employment purposes, or unless you request us to do so.
How long we retain your data
We retain information only as long as it is required legally or is necessary for the running of our business.
At the same time, we have archives of previously published information in the public domain published on our website going back many years and it is likely this will be retained indefinitely. In the course of news gathering, we maintain contact information required to carry out our work and it is likely these will be retained indefinitely.
If you leave a comment on our website, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users who register on our website, we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
You can at any time request to receive any information we hold about you and can request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. We will always try to fulfil your request, although we may sometimes be unable to do so if we are required to retain the information for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
If you have an account on our website, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you.
This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments to the website may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
Your contact information
Any queries regarding our privacy policy or your data should be made in the first instance to info@villageonline.co.uk by post to our registered address:
Platform Publishing & Media Ltd
87 Hewell Road
Barnt Green
B45 8NL
How we protect your data
We take every effort to protect your data, particularly the personal details of our distributors, whose ages range from 13 years old upwards.
We use industry standard cloud-based services to store personal information and we operate a password-protected computer system in-office.
Our staff have been trained in the safe use of personal data and are aware that any breach should be reported immediately.
Changes to our privacy policy
This privacy policy will change from time as business or legislative practices change.
