Talk London Privacy Policy

Talk London collects and processes a range of information about you:

Your account

Community members are required to provide their name and email address, and to set a unique password for their account. This is so we can create and administer your Talk London account. This information is stored privately in your Talk London profile and won’t be displayed on the site itself.

There are two types of profiles on Talk London: mini profiles and full profiles.

Mini profiles

Sign-up with just your email address and a chosen password, and you’ll be able to:

• Care for or upvote Talk London’s or other members’ contributions

Full profiles

Complete your profile with the demographic details set out below, and you’ll also be able to:

• Comment in our discussions
• Take our surveys
• Add your ideas

Usernames

Users are also required to set a username for their full Talk London account.

• Please do not use your own name as a username. Your username will appear alongside any comments you post and we strongly recommend you do not choose a username that identifies you. You are unable to register with an email address as your username.

Email and notification preferences

We will use your email address to notify you about new opportunities to participate - such as consultations, surveys, discussions, focus groups and to share feedback when it is available. You can change some email and notification preferences in the My Account page or you can unsubscribe from these emails at any time. We will not use or share your email address for any other purpose unless you have given us your consent to do so - for example, signing up to receive a separate newsletter.

Avatars

Community members can select an avatar to add to their profile.

Your information

Community members with a full profile are also asked to provide the following information about themselves for their account profile:

• the first part of your postcode
• the month and year of your date of birth
• your gender
• the London borough you live in
• your work status,
• your ethnicity
• your housing tenure

Talk London collects this personal information:

1. to identify you internally and help administer your community membership and use of the platform; and
2. to weight the results of our surveys, and identify sample groups for certain consultations. We aim to ensure that the views of all sections of the community population are given proper representation in the final aggregated results.

To be clear: while authorised administrators at Talk London will, in certain limited cases (depending on the nature of the survey and your express preferences) retain the ability to link feedback and survey answers to specific users, no contributions, feedback and results from consultations, surveys, discussions and focus groups will be published or shared with third parties by reference to your name or any of your identifying details unless you explicitly consent to this.

Although not itself a member of the Market Research Society (MRS), Talk London has adopted the MRS Code of Conduct as the best practice standard for ensuring its research is carried out in compliance with appropriate privacy and ethical safeguards.

Content you post

By using the services available through Talk London, community members will have the opportunity to share personal information with other community members by, for example, posting comments in existing discussions or creating a new discussion.

Any additional information, content and material you choose to voluntarily post will be visible to all other community members of Talk London, staff at the GLA, and anyone who views the site. It will not be publicly linked to your email address or private profile information on the site.

Any information you post in these areas can be seen by others and you should always be careful when deciding to disclose personal information in this manner. Talk London may typically retain all such posts as archive material, but please visit our Your Privacy Rights page if you have any specific queries or concerns about what Talk London retain and why.

Community members under 18

Community members aged 16-17 will not have their status as children visible to other community members, although moderators and administrators for Talk London will be able to identify such users. Talk London aims to maintain an active moderator presence in discussions.

Additional information

We may ask for further information about you if you choose to take part in certain surveys, consultations or other research through Talk London. These questions, for additional profile information, are optional. Some of them will ask for information that is classed as ‘special category data’ under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR. They may ask you to provide information about:

• your political opinions
• your religious beliefs
• your physical or mental health
• your sexual orientation

Again, we collect this “special category” personal data in order to weight the results of our surveys and identify sample groups. We aim to ensure that the views of all sections of the community population are given proper representation in final aggregated results.

Again, while authorised administrators at Talk London will, in certain limited cases (depending on the nature of the survey and your express preferences) retain the ability to link feedback and survey answers to specific individuals, no contributions, feedback and results from consultations, surveys, discussions and focus groups will be published or shared with third parties by reference to your name or any of your identifying details unless you explicitly consent to this.

Under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, the GLA is only allowed to use personal information if we have a proper reason or 'legal basis' to do so. In the case of Talk London, these legal grounds are:

• where you have given your consent, for example, you have asked to sign-up to a specific newsletter or where you have posted your own information in a comment, blog or forum on Talk London
• where it is necessary for our performance or enforcement of a contract entered into with you, for example under Talk London’s Community Guidelines
• where it forms part of a public task carried out in the public interest - Talk London allows you to have your say on London's big issues and gather your opinions to help steer the GLA’s policy decisions. The Greater London Authority Act provides a legal basis for Talk London and it is necessary for us to process certain personal data to perform this public interest task. Talk London collects this personal data to weight the results of our surveys to ensure that the views of all sections of the community population are given proper representation in the final aggregated results

Where we ask you to provide 'special category (sensitive) personal data', the GLA must rely on an additional ‘legal basis’ for the processing of that data, which will be:

• where you have given your explicit consent, for example, where we have chosen to provide specific and optional information about yourself (such your ethnicity or racial origin, your political opinions, your religious beliefs, your physical or mental health, or your sexual orientation), when you choose to take part in certain surveys, consultations or other research through Talk London
• where necessary for equality of opportunity or treatment, for example, so we can ensure that the views of all sections of the community population are given proper representation in the final aggregated results
• where you have chosen to make such personal data public, notwithstanding [our firm recommendation / site rule] not to do so using the Talk London platform
• where necessary and proportionate for archiving purposes in the public interest, historical research purposes or statistical purposes, but subject to the safeguards set out in this notice (or in any specific survey, feedback or consultation request notified to you) concerning the protection and de-identification of such personal information.