Home  /  Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice

A plain‑English summary of what we collect, why, and how we look after it.

Last updated: 10 May 2026.

Who we are

Racehorse Relief is a charity registered in England and Wales (No. 1157554, VAT No. 323584700). Our registered office is at Vicarage Farm, Underlane, Helston, Cornwall, TR13 0EJ. For the personal information described in this notice we are the “data controller”, and the trustees are jointly responsible.

You can reach us at [email protected], on 0845 519 9551, or via our contact form.

What we collect

We only collect information you give us directly, plus a small amount of analytics if you opt in.

From everyone who interacts with the charity

  • Contact form / email — your name, email, and the content of your message.
  • Newsletter signup — your email address and any other fields on the signup form, via our HubSpot account.
  • Gifting enquiries — the details you provide via our Google Form when offering a horse to the charity.
  • Donations — the information our payment provider needs to process the donation, plus any Gift Aid declaration (name, postal address, donation history). We don’t see or store your card details ourselves.
  • Website analytics — if you accept cookies, HubSpot’s tracking script records the pages you visit on this site so we can see which pages help drive newsletter signups. We also load Google Ads’s gtag.js, which lets us measure whether donations on the site came from one of our adverts. If you decline, none of this is collected.
  • Technical — IP address, browser type, device information (collected by our hosting and analytics providers when you visit).

From entrants to The Charity Flutter (our small society lottery and sweepstakes)

  • Everything above, plus:
  • Age verification — your date of birth, or confirmation that you are over 18 (a legal requirement under the Gambling Act 2005).
  • Entry details — tickets purchased, entry dates, the horse(s) drawn for you.
  • Bank details for prize payouts — account name, sort code and account number, used only to pay winnings.
  • Game history — wins, losses and any self‑exclusion request you make.

Why we use it (lawful basis)

  • Contact and gifting enquiries — to respond to you. Lawful basis: legitimate interest in answering your message.
  • Newsletter — to send you updates from the yard. Lawful basis: your consent, given when you sign up. You can withdraw it at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email.
  • Donations and Gift Aid — to process your gift, send an acknowledgement, and (if you’ve declared Gift Aid) claim it from HMRC. Lawful basis: contract performance and, for Gift Aid, legal obligation.
  • The Charity Flutter (lottery / sweepstakes) — to operate the draw, verify you’re over 18, take payment, pay winnings and meet our regulatory duties. Lawful bases: contract performance (running the draw and paying winnings), legal obligation (Gambling Act 2005 age verification, fraud prevention, responsible‑gambling rules) and legitimate interest (preventing fraud).
  • Marketing to past supporters — we may send occasional updates to people who have previously supported the charity. Lawful basis: legitimate interest. You can opt out at any time.
  • Analytics cookies — to understand how the site supports our work. Lawful basis: your consent. We only set them if you accept the cookie banner.

Who we share it with

We don’t sell your data, ever. We share it only with a small number of trusted services and authorities that help us run the charity:

Service providers

  • HubSpot — our CRM and email platform. Hosts the newsletter signup form, sends our emails, and (with your consent) provides website analytics.
  • Google Ads — (with your consent) measures whether donations on the site came from one of our adverts, so we know which campaigns are working. No personal data is shared.
  • Google — hosts our gifting enquiry form (Google Forms).
  • Stripe — processes donation and lottery ticket payments securely.
  • PayPal — used to pay out lottery prize winnings.
  • Supabase & Vercel — host The Charity Flutter web application.

Regulators and authorities

  • HMRC — if you’ve made a Gift Aid declaration, we share what’s needed to claim it.
  • The Gambling Commission & Cornwall Council — our lottery licensing and regulatory bodies. We share information when required to demonstrate compliance.
  • The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) — for verification of prize winners if requested.

We may also share information if we’re legally required to (for example, by court order).

Cookies

This site uses two types of cookies:

  • Strictly necessary — small bits of data your browser stores so the site can remember things like whether you’ve dismissed the cookie banner or the newsletter prompt. No tracking, no sharing.
  • Analytics (optional) — HubSpot’s tracking cookie and Google Ads’s gtag.js, only loaded if you click “Accept” on the cookie banner. They let us see which pages help drive newsletter signups and donations. You can change your mind by clearing this site’s data in your browser and reloading.

How long we keep your data

  • Newsletter subscribers — until you unsubscribe.
  • Contact and gifting enquiries — up to two years after your last message, unless an ongoing case needs longer.
  • Donor and financial transaction records — six years, as required by HMRC.
  • Lottery winner contact details — six months after the draw, then deleted.
  • Self‑exclusion records — kept indefinitely. We can’t enforce a self‑exclusion if we delete the record of it.

Children

The Charity Flutter is an 18+ product. We do not knowingly sell tickets to anyone under the age of 18, and age verification is mandatory under the Gambling Act 2005. The rest of the site is suitable for all ages, but we don’t target marketing or advertising at children.

Lottery winners

For major prize draws we may publish the winner’s surname initial and county (for example, “J. Smith, Cornwall”) to confirm a genuine winner has been paid. You have the right to object to this publication before the draw — in that case we will not publish, but the regulator may still require the details on request.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

  • Ask what data we hold about you.
  • Ask us to correct or delete it.
  • Withdraw consent (for example, unsubscribe from the newsletter or decline cookies).
  • Object to processing or ask us to restrict it.
  • Ask for your data in a portable format.

To exercise any of these, email [email protected]. We’ll respond within one calendar month.

Complaints

If you’re not happy with how we’ve handled your data, please tell us first so we can try to put it right. You can also complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this notice

If we change how we use information, we’ll update the date at the top of this page and, where the change is significant, let active subscribers know.