Data Protection and Privacy Policy

This policy explains how The Soil Searchers Ltd (trading as The Soil Searchers) collects, uses and protects your personal information when you visit our website, join our membership, book digs or weekenders, purchase merchandise, or otherwise interact with us. Please read this Policy carefully so you understand what data we hold, how we use it, and the choices and rights you have. This Policy is written with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 in mind.

Policy Version: 1.02 - Effective Date: 24th October 2026 (Review Date: October 2027)

1. Introduction
This is the Data Protection & Privacy Policy for The Soil Searchers. For information on how we use website trackers, please refer to our separate Cookies Policy.

The Soil Searchers is a trading name of The Soil Searchers Ltd, registered in England & Wales (Company No: 16887184). Registered Office: 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ. ICO Registration: Registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under the Data Protection Act 2018. Registration Ref: ZB647610 - We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By engaging with our website or services, you acknowledge you have read and understood this privacy policy.

2. The Information We Collect About You

Information You Give Us This is information about you that you give us directly when you interact with us.

Mandatory Sign-Up Data: When you sign up as a member, we require your full name, date of birth, residential address, mobile telephone number, email address, and your NCMD membership details. We collect this to fulfil our contract with you. We may also capture your IP address.
Vehicle Data (Mandatory for Drivers): After signing up, if you intend to drive to an event, you must input your Vehicle Registration Number (VRN), Make, and Model via your online account. You can amend this data at any time, but it must be accurate for the specific vehicle you bring to a dig.
Optional Profile Data: Once you are active, you may voluntarily choose to add Emergency Contact details (Name & Number) and relevant Medical Information to your secure profile. This is not required for membership but is strongly recommended for your safety during events.
Minors & Guest Data: When you register a child or guest for an event (as required by our Terms & Conditions), we collect their Full Name, Age/Date of Birth, and Emergency Contact details. By providing this data, you confirm that you have the legal authority to do so on their behalf.
Car Sharing Data: When using our car share systems, you may provide details of other members travelling in your vehicle to ensure the accuracy of our attendance registers.
Third-Party Emergency Contacts: If you provide us with contact details for a third party (e.g., an emergency contact for a child or yourself), you warrant that you have obtained their explicit permission to share this data with us for emergency purposes.
Other Services: We may ask for additional information when providing special or personalised services. Providing this is optional, though it may limit your ability to use those specific features.
Merchandise & E-Commerce Data: If you purchase merchandise from us, we will collect your full name, billing address, shipping address, contact telephone number, email address, and specific order details (including any customisation requests such as tag names). We collect this strictly to process your payment, manufacture your goods, and fulfil your delivery.
Information We Collect From Your Use of Our Site While on our site, we may automatically log certain information about how you are using it. This may include the URL you came from, your IP address (or a partially anonymised IP address), and the pages you visit. This enables us to record that a specific user ID has visited a particular page, allowing us to analyse visitor behaviour, optimise our site, and improve marketing focus.

3. The Legal Bases We Rely On

The law on data protection sets out specific reasons for which we may collect and process your personal data. We rely on the following:

Consent: Where you voluntarily provide optional information (such as emergency contacts or medical notes) via your member profile, we process this data based on your explicit consent. You may withdraw this consent at any time by deleting the data from your profile.
Contractual Obligations: Where we need your data to fulfil our service to you (e.g., using your email to send membership confirmations, dig details, processing event registrations, and processing physical merchandise orders to arrange for the manufacture and delivery of purchased goods).
Legal Compliance: If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data (e.g., passing details of fraud/criminal activity to law enforcement, or reporting Treasure to the Coroner).
Legitimate Interests: We may use your data to pursue our legitimate business interests in a way which might reasonably be expected and which does not materially impact your rights. This includes:
- Internal analytics and website improvement.
- Verifying the legal possession of controlled medication where relevant to site safety.
- Monitoring compliance with our Terms & Conditions and Code of Conduct (including the use of site monitors) to protect the integrity of the event and our landowner relationships.
Vital Interests: We process your Sensitive Data (health information) strictly under this basis—to protect your life or safety in an emergency situation.
Contractual Obligations: Where we need your data to fulfil our service to you (e.g., using your email to send membership confirmations, dig details, processing event registrations, and processing physical merchandise orders to arrange for the manufacture and delivery of purchased goods).
Legal Compliance: If the law requires us to, we may need to collect and process your data (e.g., passing details of fraud/criminal activity to law enforcement, reporting Treasure to the Coroner, or retaining sales invoices and financial transaction data to meet our statutory HMRC accounting obligations).

4. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

Administer our site and for internal operations (troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research).
Keep our site safe and secure.
Measure the effectiveness of advertising and deliver relevant content.
Keep you informed about products, services, and upcoming digs similar to those you subscribed to.
Administering Membership Benefits: To conduct the "Free Dig Draw," including the automated processing of attendee lists to select a winner and the subsequent notification of that winner.
Car Share Logistics: To link passenger members to drivers for the purpose of creating an accurate site attendance register.
Emergency Situations: To provide essential medical information to first responders if you fall ill or are injured during an event.
Emergency Contact: We process your designated emergency contact's details strictly to notify your next of kin in the event of a serious accident, injury, or medical emergency during a dig event.
Automated Decision Making: We do not use automated decision-making software or profiling that produces legal effects (e.g., credit scoring) or similarly significant effects on you.

5. Email Tracking and How to Turn It Off

We use email tracking technologies in our communications. This applies to both marketing emails and system/transactional emails (such as membership renewals, dig notifications, and account alerts).

How it works: We use small invisible images called "pixels" within our emails. These tell us:
- Whether you opened the email.
- How many times it was opened.
- The device/browser you used.
- Whether you clicked on any links within the email.
- We use this data to ensure important system messages are being received and to improve the relevance of our communications.
- How to turn off email tracking: You can stop tracking pixels from activating by disabling "automatic image loading" in your email client or browser. Most email providers (like Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail) allow you to change your settings to "Ask before displaying external images." If you choose this setting, the tracking pixel will not load unless you actively choose to download the images in that specific email.

For further details on how we use tracking pixels alongside website cookies, please see our Cookies Policy.

6. Where Your Information Is Stored & Security

The data we collect is primarily stored within the United Kingdom.
If we transfer your personal information outside the UK (e.g., to third-party service providers), we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, relying on recognised legal adequacy mechanisms to ensure your data is treated securely and in accordance with this policy.
Security: We use Secure Socket Layers (SSL) technology to encrypt your information. Access to paid-for areas (Members' Section) is password-protected. While we do our best to protect your data, transmission via the internet is never completely secure and is done at your own risk.
Data Breach Procedures: In the unlikely event of a data breach that poses a risk to your rights and freedoms, we are committed to notifying the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and affected members within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach, in accordance with UK GDPR requirements.

7. How Long We Keep Your Information

Contractual Data: We retain mandatory personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil our legal obligations and process your membership.
User-Managed Data: Information you add to your optional profile (Emergency Contacts/Medical) remains under your control. You may update or delete this data at any time via your account settings.
Anonymisation: We may anonymise data beyond these times for research and development purposes; you cannot be identified from this anonymised data.
Financial & E-Commerce Data: To comply with UK tax law and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) requirements, we are legally obligated to retain all e-commerce transaction records, sales invoices, and associated billing/shipping information for a minimum of 6 full tax years after the end of the financial year in which the transaction occurred.

8. Information Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell, rent, or lend individual information to third parties. We may disclose information only in the following circumstances:

Landowners (Attendance): We may share attendee names and vehicle registration numbers with the Landowner strictly for the purposes of site security, validating the attendance register, and verifying fee exemptions for volunteer staff/Marshals on the day of the event. Landowners are contractually bound to keep this data confidential and destroy it post-event.
Landowners (Treasure Act Compliance): In the specific event that you discover an item of potential Treasure (as defined by the Treasure Act 1996), we are legally required to facilitate the reporting of this find. For this purpose, we will share the Landowner's name and address with you (the finder) and relevant authorities (e.g., Coroner, Finds Liaison Officer) to ensure the correct legal declarations are made.
Member Visibility (Tag Names): Your chosen Tag Name is visible to other members on the web portal. Specifically, when you register for a dig, your Tag Name will appear on the Confirmed or Reserve lists visible to other members viewing that event. If you choose your full name as your Tag Name, you acknowledge it will be publicly visible to the membership in these contexts.
Competition Winners: If you are selected as the winner of the "Free Dig Draw," we will publish your Tag Name on the members' web portal to announce the result and ensure the transparency of the draw. We will not publish your real name or contact details without your further express consent.
Third-Party Service Providers: We may use trusted third parties for operations like payment processing or email distribution. They are bound by confidentiality agreements and may only use your data for the specified service.
Legal Requests: We will disclose information to law enforcement or government agencies if required by law, court order, or to protect the rights/safety of The Soil Searchers and its members.
Emergency Services & Next of Kin: As stated above, relevant medical data may be shared with paramedics. We may also contact your designated Emergency Contact to inform them of your location and condition in the event of an emergency.
Merchandise Fulfilment Partners & Couriers: If you purchase physical merchandise from our us, we will share your delivery name, shipping address, contact details, and order specifications with our designated third-party fulfilment partner and relevant postal/courier services (such as Royal Mail). This data sharing is strictly limited to the purpose of manufacturing, packing, and dispatching your physical order. Our fulfilment partner acts as a Data Processor and is contractually bound to handle your personal information securely, to never use it for their own independent marketing, and to securely destroy your delivery data within 60 days of dispatching your order.

9. Your Rights

Under the Data Protection Act 2018 / UK GDPR, you have the right to:

Request a copy of your personal data held by us.
Request rectification or erasure of your data.
Request we restrict the processing of your data.
Object to processing (including marketing).
Request your data be moved to a third party (Portability).
Withdraw Consent: Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time by contacting email: admin@thesoilsearchers.co.uk
Right to Complain: If you feel we have mishandled your data or not respected your rights, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
- Website: ico.org.uk
- Helpline: 0303 123 1113

Managing Your Preferences:

Marketing: You can opt-out of marketing or dig notification emails via your account page under "Account & Security"
System Emails: Please note you will still receive essential service emails regarding the management of your account even if you opt out of marketing.
Passwords/Details: You can update your personal details or change your password by logging into the Members' Section.

10. Changes to this Policy We reserve the right to modify this Data Protection and Privacy Policy at any time.

Significant Changes: If we make changes to how we process your data, who we share it with, or your rights, we will actively notify members by email and provide a summary of the changes.
Minor Updates: We may make minor updates to reflect valid contact details, correct errors, or improve clarity without direct notification.
Member Responsibility: It is the member's responsibility to ensure they are aware of the current policy. The "Effective Date" at the top of this page indicates when the latest changes were made.

Contacting Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how we handle your personal data, or if you would like to exercise any of your data protection rights, please contact us:

By email: admin@thesoilsearchers.co.uk
By post: The Soil Searchers Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ

Please provide enough information for us to identify you and understand your request. We may ask you for additional information to confirm your identity before we act on certain requests.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Details on how to do this are available on the ICO’s website.