Green Tree Schools Award privacy policy

Who are we?

In this policy, references to the Woodland Trust, or Trust, or to ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to the Woodland Trust which is a registered charity in England and Wales 294344, and in Scotland SC038885. A non-profit making company limited by guarantee. Registered in England No. 1982873 at Kempton Way, Grantham, Lincolnshire, NG31 6LL.

This also includes our trading company – Woodland Trust (Enterprises) Limited (registered company number 2296645) a wholly owned subsidiary of the Woodland Trust which trades only to raise funds for its parent company – the Woodland Trust.

The Woodland Trust’s Green Tree Schools Award gives schools the opportunity to complete environmental projects set by the Woodland Trust. These activities range from tree planting, reducing CO₂ emissions and visiting woodlands. It's a great way to get all age groups involved with nature.

We take our duty to process your personal data very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal data.

We comply with data protection law which says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

1. used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
2. collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes
3. relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes
4. accurate and kept up to date
5. kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about
6. kept securely.

What personal information do we collect and how do we use it?

The Woodland Trust is what is known as the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. This means that we determine how we process your personal data ensuring it is done so in a secure way.

We collect your personal data in connection with specific activities relating to the Green Tree Schools Award, such as completing activities and challenges. For each activity your school completes you will earn points towards your Green Tree Schools Award, progressing through bronze, silver and gold levels up to the platinum award.

In order to collect points, you will need to submit supporting evidence to us online of your school completing the projects and challenges. This may include summaries by your staff members, photographs of work achieved and images or videos of children and staff participating in the assigned activities. Your evidence may also include reports written by pupils and links to social media posts etc. Once we have reviewed the evidence, we will add your points to your award account (usually within two weeks of submission).

We will only process your data when we have a lawful basis to do so, such as your consent, fulfilling a contract or legitimate interest and only collect the data needed to fulfil the purposes outlines below. If we ever require collecting additional information we will ask you first.

Our main privacy policy will provide you with further details as to how your information could be used by us.

For the purposes of the Green Tree Schools Award, we collect and use the following information:

Names and contact details including email addresses and postal addresses of school staff representatives

We use this information for identification and authorisation, communicating with you, delivery of awards, materials and certificates where you have met the requirements for our challenges. Queries, complaints and maintaining relationships.

Names of school pupils (children)

This information is submitted by the school staff representative on behalf of the child where they have sought appropriate consent from the parent/guardian of the child. This information, where we have permission to do so, could be used externally to promote the Green Tree Schools Award, such as marketing at events, publishing on social media, internal and external materials such as leaflets and presentations.

Images and videos of identifiable people including children and staff

This information is used as evidence for completing the activities and challenges set by the Woodland Trust as part of the award. We may also use your evidence on our award materials, website, press releases and social media to inspire other teachers and young people about outdoor learning. Where people can be identified, we will get permission first. This is a great way to show how your school is helping us make our country greener and healthier. In some circumstances, statements/testimonials/comments and images (where people cannot be identified) will be collected and used, however we will ensure any personal or identifiable information is anonymised.

Written reports, statements, testimonials and comments

This information is used as evidence for completing the activities and challenges set by the Woodland Trust as part of the awards. We may also use your evidence on our award materials, website, press releases and social media to inspire other teachers and young people about outdoor learning. Where people can be identified we will get permission first. This is a great way to show how your school is helping us make our country greener and healthier. In some circumstances, statements/testimonials/comments and images (where people cannot be identified) will be collected and used, however we will ensure any personal or identifiable information is anonymised.

Feedback

On occasion we may also ask you to provide feedback, letting us know what is going well or what you think could be better. This is so that we can continue to improve our Green Tree Schools Award.

Public information

For publicly available information, we use this to create, identify and manage your school's record with us, however this is usually provided directly by the representative onboarding for the award programme. We also use it to send relevant materials and information relating to the Green Tree Schools Award and the work we do at the Woodland Trust.

How do we collect your details?

In some circumstances, we collect publicly available information relating to the school. We use this information to get in touch and see if your school wants to be part of our Green Tree Schools Award.

When you join the award, your data is collected via our School’s Management System and you will be provided with a unique log in to your Green Tree Schools Award dashboard. Here you can submit your evidence for challenges and activities, update your details and submit permissions and consent for how the information is used.

Children

Children will not submit information to us directly as part of the Green Tree Schools Award. This information will be shared by a school staff representative. The school and that representative are responsible for ensuring that any information they send or provide to us where a child could be identified has been authorised by the parent or guardian in line with the school’s relevant policies. The Trust will not process any data that identifies a pupil without confirmation of consent first.

As a parent or guardian, we encourage you to be aware of the activities in which your children are participating, both offline and online at school. If your children voluntarily disclose information, this may encourage unsolicited messages. We suggest that you discourage your child from providing any information without your consent.

How do we keep your data safe?

Keeping your information secure is very important to us and we have systems to stop personal information being lost or used incorrectly. We’ll only give your information to people who need to use it, like employees of the Woodland Trust. Anyone using your information must follow our rules and the UK GDPR regulations. If we find someone has accessed your information without permission, we’ll tell you when the law requires us to.

Anything else?

The personal data we process specifically for the Green Tree Schools Award is processed by our staff in the UK. However, for the purposes of IT hosting, development and maintenance of our databases, some are situated and or disclosed outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). This will be done in accordance with guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office and in line with the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, with the correct security principles applied and binding corporate rules (BCR) where applicable.

Lawful basis for processing

We have a number of lawful reasons that mean we can use (or 'process') your personal information for the Green Tree Schools Award.

Legitimate interest

One lawful reason is something called 'legitimate interests'. Broadly speaking, legitimate interests means we can process your personal information if:

• we have a genuine and legitimate reason and are not harming any of your rights and interests.

Please read the legitimate interest statement for more information.

Consent

At the Woodland Trust we also use consent, this is where you give us clear and informed instruction for processing. We obtain your consent through email and your Green Tree Schools Award dashboard. Where consent is required for the processing of children’s data, consent will be captured by the school from the parent or legal guardian of that child prior to sharing any information that identifies them.

Contract

We use this basis where we have entered a contract with you or steps to enter one. We do not have a contract for the Green Tree Schools Award but we do require those that sign up to agree to our website terms and conditions.

Vital Interests

We only use this when the processing of your personal data is necessary to protect someone’s life.

What do we need from you?

Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, as a school you must ensure that you obtain the relevant consent from parents/guardians regarding processing and sharing personal data. You must inform parents/guardians/staff members with appropriate privacy notices. More information relating to the processing of personal data for school’s can be located on the Department for Education website and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website.

When submitting any personal data to the Woodland Trust relating to any identifiable persons, you will ensure you have the relevant permissions to do so.

It is important that the personal information we hold is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes.

Permissions

It is the responsibility of the school representative to ensure that they have the relevant parental/guardian/individual explicit consent before sharing any identifiable information with the Woodland Trust. When you submit your evidence via the Green Tree Schools Award dashboard, you will be asked to confirm this by ticking the following statements.

By submitting your evidence to us, you confirm that you have obtained the necessary permissions from the relevant parent(s) or guardian(s) to share any personal data that may identify a child and that you have permissions from any other identifiable person. This may include names, photographs, videos and written comments. You also confirm that you have informed those individuals, in a clear and age appropriate way where relevant, about how this information will be used in line with the purposes set out in our privacy policy, reflecting the requirement for fairness, transparency and specific protection for children under the UK GDPR. Where you appoint a photographer or other third party to capture images, you understand your responsibility to ensure that appropriate permissions and rights have been secured with them to enable us to use those images for the purposes described in our privacy policy.

Statement

We confirm that we have consent from parents/guardians/identifiable individuals for the Woodland Trust to use the evidence supplied to promote the Green Tree Schools Award for the purposes set out in our Green Tree Schools Award privacy policy.

(opt in – opt out)

Please note, where an individual cannot be identified we may use the data you submit to us to promote the Green Tree Schools Award. 

By ensuring your school obtains the relevant explicit consent from parents/guardians/staff members in reference to allowing the Woodland Trust to share images/videos with other schools, teachers and pupils you will be supporting our achievements and goals to inspire schools with our work.

Sharing your information

We only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, taxation and criminal investigations, and the following:

• If you have agreed that we may do so.
• When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf, e.g. processing, mailing or delivering materials, answering questions about products or services, sending mail and emails, customer analysis, assessment and profiling, when using auditors/advisors, developing/maintaining and hosting new IT provisions.
• To our subsidiaries (i.e. the companies owned by the Woodland Trust).
• If we receive a complaint about any content you have posted or transmitted to or from one of our sites, to enforce or apply our terms and conditions or if we believe that we need to do so to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of the Woodland Trust, our websites or our visitors and for other lawful purposes.
• If we merge with another organisation to form a new entity, information may be transferred to the new entity.
• We may disclose aggregate statistics about those enrolled or historically involved with our Green Tree Schools Award, but these statistics will not include any personally identifying information.
• If we run an event in partnership with other named organisations your details may need to be shared, apart from any children’s data.

We will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations. Any data shared with third parties will be done so in accordance with the security and data protection principles of the UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018, Data Use & Access Bill 2025 as well as appropriate Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) in line with these regulations.

How long do we keep your data?

We hold your personal information only as long as necessary for each purpose we use it. This period will normally be for seven years after your last activity or engagement with us, unless we have a good reason to keep your information for a longer period. This is based on any legal, regulatory or business reasons we may have to retain your information.

You have the right to ask us to remove your personal information from our records. We will inform you in writing when we have actioned your request and if we need to refuse you, we will give you the reasons why. Please see the sections on 'what are your rights?' and 'how to contact us' for further details.

What are your rights?

The UK GDPR gives everyone a number of very important rights. You can:

• You can ask us for a copy of your personal information and how we use it.
• You can ask us to correct your personal information if we’ve got it wrong.
• You can ask us to stop using your personal information.
• You can ask us to change or limit how we use your personal information.
• You can ask us to delete your personal information.
• You can ask us to transfer your personal information to another person.

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law, see the Information Commissioner's Office website.
Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal data at any time by contacting us. Please see the ‘how to contact us’ section for more information.