Debate England

Privacy Policy

Last updated January 30, 2026

Debate England is a registered trademark of National Debate Team Limited (NDT). NDT is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This privacy policy for Debate England (‘we‘, ‘us‘, or ‘our‘), describes how and why we might collect, store, use, and/or share (‘process‘) your information when you use our programmes, resources and services (‘Services‘), such as when you:

  • Visit our website at debateengland.com, or any website of ours that links to this privacy notice.
  • Engage with us in other related ways, including any communications or participation in programmes and events.

This privacy policy will also inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

You should be aware that if you use links provided on our websites to access third party websites, these websites are outside our control and have their own privacy policies governing the use of personal information and we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies.

It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or information we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or using personal information about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your information. This privacy policy is in addition to other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

Questions or concerns? Reading this privacy notice will help you understand your privacy rights and choices. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, please do not use our services. If you still have any questions or concerns, please contact us at chair@debateengland.com.

Privacy Policy

1. WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

In Short: We collect personal information that you provide to us.

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when you express an interest in obtaining information about us or our products and Services, when you participate in activities on the Services, or otherwise when you contact us.

Personal Information Provided by You. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal information about you which we have grouped together as follows: 

  • Identity Information includes your first name, last name, title, date of birth and gender.
  • Contact Information includes your address, email address and telephone numbers.
  • Financial Information includes bank account and payment card details. 
  • Transaction Information includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us. This includes data provided to administer services, membership, alumni communications, scholarships, awards, competition entries, participation in programmes or competitions and provision of information.
  • Communications Information includes your preferences in receiving communications from us and your communication preferences.

We may also collect, use and share statistical or demographic information for any purpose, including using your aggregated data. This information could be derived from your personal information but is not considered personal information in law as this information will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. However, if we combine or connect this information with your personal information so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we will treat the combined information as personal information which will be used in accordance with this privacy policy.

2. HOW DO WE COLLECT YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We collect information that you provide to us by interacting with us or utilising our services. We may also receive information about you from public sources.

You may give us your identity, contact and financial information by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal information you provide when you: 

  • apply for our events, scholarships, awards, competitions or for any of our programmes; 
  • subscribe to our website, publications or newsletters;
  • express an interest in any of our programmes, scholarships, awards, or competitions; 
  • request marketing to be sent to you; 
  • enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
  • give us feedback or contact us. 

We may receive personal information about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below: 

  • Identity and Contact Information from publicly available sources such as Companies House, The Charity Commission and the Electoral Register based inside the EU. 
  • Online survey providers (such as Survey Monkey, Google Forms, and MailChimp) based outside of the EU.

3. WHAT LEGAL BASES DO WE RELY ON TO PROCESS YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We only process your personal information when we believe it is necessary and we have a valid legal reason (i.e. legal basis) to do so under applicable law, like with your consent, to comply with laws, to provide you with services to enter into or fulfil our contractual obligations, to protect your rights, or to fulfil our legitimate business interests.

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances: 

  • Where we have your consent. 
  • Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you. 
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation. 

You have the right to stop receiving some communications by contacting us.

4. HOW DO WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

In Short: We process your information to provide, improve, and administer our Services, communicate with you, for security and fraud prevention, and to comply with law. We may also process your information for other purposes with your consent.

We have set out below a description of all the ways we plan to use your personal information, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate. Note that we may process your personal information for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your information. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal information where more than one ground has been set out in the table below. 

Purpose/ActivityCategory of informationLawful basis for processing including basis of legitimate interest
To register you as a new member, participant, or applicant of any of our activities (e.g. application to be part of Team England or the Development Squad) (a) Identity (b) Contact(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to be able to communicate with beneficiaries/users of our services/activities for specific purposes)
To administer services, membership, alumni communications, scholarships, awards, competition entries, participation in programmes or competitions and provision of information including: a) Manage and send information on our activities b) Manage payments, fees and charges c) Collect and recover money owed to us(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial (d) Transaction (e) Communications(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to be able to communicate with beneficiaries/users of our services/activities for specific purposes, recover debts due to us)
To manage our relationship with you which may include: a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Profile (d) Communications(a) Performance of a contract with you
(b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services)
To process any donations and gift aid (if added)(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Financial(a)Necessary for our legitimate interests (knowing our donors)
(b)Necessary to comply with a legal obligation (gift aid details)
To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you(a) Identity (b) Contact (c) Technical (d) Usage (e) Profile (f) Marketing and CommunicationsNecessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services and grow our business) 

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so. Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

5. WHEN AND WITH WHOM DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?

In Short: We may share information in specific situations described in this section and/or with the following third parties.

We may share your personal information with the parties set out below for the purposes set out above. 

  • External Third Parties – Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the UK who may provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.
  • Participating schools or other parties who may engage in our programmes.

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

6. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?

In Short: We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organisational and technical security measures.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. While we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will not occur while it is under our control, we use our best efforts to try to prevent this. 

In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those volunteers and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

7. HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We keep your information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this privacy notice unless otherwise required by law.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal information for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your information: see your legal rights section below for further information. In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

8. WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?

In Short: You have rights that allow you access to and control over your personal information. 

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under information protection laws in relation to your personal information. 

  • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new information you provide to us.
  • Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing (see below), where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are legally required to erase your personal information. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request.
  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
  • Request restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal information in the following scenarios:
    • If you want us to establish the information’s accuracy.
    • Where our use of the information is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it.
    • Where you need us to hold the information even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. 
    • You have objected to our use of your information but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
  • Request the transfer of your personal information to you or to a third party. We will provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal information in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
  • Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal information. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.

Please contact us to exercise any of your rights. However, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. 

We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. We are not a ‘public authority’ as defined under the Freedom of Information Act and we will not therefore respond to requests for information made under this Act; using the funds generously donated to us by our supporters for such activities is not in accordance with our charitable purposes.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated. 

Opting out of newsletters: You can unsubscribe from our newsletters at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link in the emails that we send, or by contacting us using the details provided in the section ‘HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?‘ below. You will then be removed from our mailing list.

9. DO WE MAKE UPDATES TO THIS NOTICE?

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. This version was last updated on 30 January 2026.

10. HOW CAN YOU CONTACT US ABOUT THIS NOTICE?

If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may email us at chair@debateengland.com, or contact us here:

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨