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It’s likely that we’ll need to update this statement from time to time, so check back here regularly to find out more. Your continued use of the site will mean that you accept those revisions. This page was last updated in February 2024.

Privacy policy

The information below provides a summary of the key ways in which London Transport Museum (LTM) may use your personal information.

Privacy

  • Personal information we hold

    Personal information we collect may include:

    • your name, title;
    • date of birth;
    • postal address, email address and phone number;
    • family and spouse/partner details, relationships to other donors and/or Members and Patrons;
    • current interests and activities;
    • ticket purchase and event registration / attendance;
    • payment card data;
    • online retail purchases;
    • contact preferences;
    • information on any donation that you make to the Museum including Direct Debit and bank account information where applicable;
    • Gift Aid status;
    • details of correspondence sent to you, or received from you;
    • donor status and wealth assessment information;
    • employment information and professional activities;
    • where relevant, selected media coverage;
    • any other information provided by yourself at the request of London Transport Museum;
    • gender and sexual orientation (where you choose to provide this)
    • racial or ethnic origin (where you choose to provide this)
    • health-related information (where you choose to provide this).
  • Legal basis for using your information

    Under data protection legislation, we are only allowed to use personal information if we have a proper reason or ‘legal basis’ to do so.  In the case of LTM, there are a number of these ‘legal grounds’ we rely on, which are:

    Our statutory and public functions:

    • LTM is a subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) and Schedule 11 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 provides that TfL may provide and maintain a transport museum, and, do anything that is ‘necessary or expedient for, or in connection with the provision or maintenance of the museum’. Being part of TfL, the Museum also plays a role in supporting TfL’s general functions to promote and encourage safe, integrated, efficient and economic transport facilities and services, and to deliver the Mayor’s Transport Strategy.
    • LTM is also a registered charity. The Museum’s charitable objects which underpin the purposes for which we process personal information are: to advance the heritage of transport in London and to educate the public about the history of transport in London through the provision, operation and maintenance of a transport museum for the public benefit, and to educate the public about the role of transport in the life and work of London past, present and future.
    • These statutory and public functions underpin our general fundraising activities as well as our programme of outreach, educational and employment-related activities with schools, young people and London’s communities.

    Where you have given your consent to LTM, for example:

    • where you have opted in to receive marketing messages from us; or
    • you have asked us to resolve an issue or complaint for you; or
    • you agree that testimonials or photographs can appear on our website or other supporter materials (such as our annual report)

    For the ‘performance of a contract’, for example:

    • in connection with the purchase of a ticket to visit the Museum or attend an event;
    • where you make a purchase from our online shop
  • How we collect your information

    We may collect your information in several different ways:

    Most of the information we hold is provided directly by you. For example, you may give us your information in order to purchase a ticket or sign up for one of our events, visit the LTM Library or interact with the Library catalogue online, request our newsletter, make a donation, or purchase something from our online shop. We will also collect your information if you email, phone or write to us. If you telephone LTM, your call may also be recorded for training and quality purposes.

    You may also have provided us with your information if you are a LTM Volunteer, Trustee, Patron or any other type of supporter or member.

    Depending on your privacy settings, we may also collect information about you from your interaction on one of the Social Media platforms we use; for example, if you post on our Facebook or Twitter pages or visit our YouTube channel.

    If you are a member of the London Transport Museum Friends, they may share your personal information with us, where you have agreed they can do so.

    To help with our various outreach activities, we occasionally make use of contact lists that have been collected by other third parties.  Examples might include obtaining key contact information for schools and colleges so that we can raise awareness of activities such as STARS and our other learning programmes. We will always ensure that our use of such data is compliant with privacy and data protection legislation.

    On some occasions we may also collect publicly available information about you. You can read more about this in the sections below.

    London Transport Museum works with third party agencies and resellers who sell admission tickets on behalf of the Museum. If you book tickets through a third party, London Transport Museum will receive information about the booking as well as associated data that you provided when making the ticket purchase.

    We also run promotions and competitions with other organisations from time to time - for example to win tickets to visit the Museum or attend a special event run by us. If you win a prize, we will receive information about this from the organiser, as well as associated data that you provided when entering.

    We may ask you to take part in one of our customer satisfaction surveys at the end of your visit or provide other feedback by phone or email (where you have agreed to be contacted in this way). As part of our surveys, we may ask you some questions for equalities monitoring purposes - for example about your gender, ethnicity, or disability. We ask about these so we can ensure our displays, exhibitions and other outreach work (eg with schools) are relevant, accessible and appealing to everyone. While we appreciate your assistance with this, answering these questions is always entirely voluntary.

  • How we use your personal information

    LTM uses your personal information in five main ways:

    1. To administer and fulfil your ticket order, online purchases or donations, including processing Gift Aid;
    2. To maintain an accurate record of your relationship with us and manage your contact preferences;
    3. To administer, operate and improve our events, exhibitions and fundraising activities;
    4. To supply information you have requested from us (such as from the Library Catalogue for example); and
    5. Where you have agreed, to send you information about the Museum and its offers, events and promotions

    If you have agreed to receive our newsletter, we will send you regular updates that will include information about the Museum’s work, as well as our events, special offers and fundraising activities.

    If you attend a specific event (for example a guided tour, or one of our debates or talks) we may contact you afterwards to obtain your feedback.

    There are some membership and donation communications that we are required to send regardless of your contact preferences. These are essential communications, deemed necessary to fulfil our contractual obligations to you. These may include Direct Debit confirmations and advanced notices, thank you letters, renewal of Membership cards and renewal reminders, Gift Aid confirmation letters and querying returned mail or bounced Direct Debit payments with you.

  • Supporter profiles and targeting communications

    Sometimes we may combine your personal information with information available from other publicly available sources.

    We do this for a number of reasons; for example, so that we can send better communications more likely to interest you - or to provide an improved Museum experience for our supporters and visitors. It also helps us to build a better long-term relationship with all of the people who support us currently - or who may do so in the future. Importantly, it enables us to raise more funds, more quickly and so support the wide and varied work that takes place at London Transport Museum.

    We may analyse geographic, demographic and other information relating to you and we may use additional information from third party sources when it is available including using companies that can help us to research individuals and organisations that might want to support the Museum and its charitable activities. Such information is only compiled using publicly available information about you. Some examples of the resources we might use include:

    • Royal Mail National Change of Address database;
    • BT Operator Services Information System;
    • Reviewing employment information that you have made publicly available via social media;
    • Newspaper articles, publications and company websites;
    • Companies House, BoardEx and other company information databases;
    • Charity Commission and Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator registers

    Occasionally LTM may use aggregated, depersonalised information to carry out other research and analysis. Examples may include looking at which geographic areas our visitors travel from, or which age groups visit us. Individuals cannot be identified using this data.

  • Automated processing

    Under data protection legislation we have to let you know when we use your personal information do something ‘automatically’ using our computers or other systems, or make an automated decision (without human intervention) that significantly affects you.

    LTM does not make decisions or assumptions about you based solely on the use of automated systems, databases or computer applications.

  • Sharing personal information

    LTM has contracts with a number of third party service providers that support the day-to-day operation of the Museum, website, our fundraising activities and our shop.

    We also work with service providers to help us with our customer research, for example by conducting customer satisfaction surveys on our behalf.  These may be in person within the Museum itself, or where you have agreed, you may be contacted by phone or email.

    Where we appoint an external supplier any such arrangements will be subject to a formal agreement between London Transport Museum and that organisation or individual to protect the security of your personal information.

    Where you explicitly agree, we may share your personal information with the London Transport Museum Friends, a separate charity that works closely with the Museum to support its objectives and fundraising activities.

    We will never pass your personal information on to any other organisation for marketing purposes and do not sell or rent personal information to third parties for any purpose.

    If you have made a Gift Aid declaration, we may disclose the information you provided to HMRC for the purpose of reclaiming Gift Aid on your donation(s). 

    As LTM is a subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL), we sometimes share personal data internally for a number of purposes. These include:

    • To respond to correspondence, concerns, complaints or disputes;
    • To request or receive legal advice or otherwise establish, exercise or defend the Museum’s (or TfL’s) legal rights; and
    • In connection with legal proceedings (or potential legal proceedings)

    As a recipient of funding from the Arts Council England, we are required to share with them certain information about our staff, trustees and volunteers as well as our visitors.

    Find out more about Arts Council England and how they work with funded organisations.

    We also provide information about our visitors to a national database administered by a third party organisation called The Audience Agency, who are appointed by the Arts Council England. This information comes from transactional ticketing data as well as survey responses from our visitors.

    The Audience Agency makes information at an aggregated level publicly available about visitors to the UK’s cultural attractions. The purpose of this data sharing is never to identify individuals, but to better understand the type of audience that visits artistic and cultural attractions. The categories of  information we may share includes:

    • Gender
    • Age range of visitors
    • Ethnicity
    • Number of visitors who consider themselves to have a disability
    • Where in the country our visitors live (by postcode area)

    Visit The Audience Agency website for find out more about their work.

    In some circumstances, disclosures of personal information to the police (and other law enforcement agencies) are permitted by data protection legislation, if they relate to the prevention or detection of crime and/or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders. Before any such disclosure takes place, the police are required to demonstrate that the personal information concerned is necessary for them to carry out a proper investigation. Each police request received by TfL is dealt with on a strictly case-by-case basis to ensure that any such disclosure is lawful and carried out in accordance with relevant guidance issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

  • Length of time we keep your information

    The Museum will retain personal information in line with its data retention policy. This means that we will not hold information for longer than is necessary for the purpose we obtained it for.

    To ensure that we do not retain inaccurate, out-of-date or irrelevant information, information will be regularly reviewed and we will delete anything that we no longer need.

    We keep your personal information for several different reasons, including:

    • To respond to correspondence, concerns or complaints
    • To maintain records according to rules that apply to us (for example Gift Aid, or financial regulations)
    • To establish and defend any legal rights
  • Keeping your information secure

    We take the privacy of our customers and supporters very seriously and a range of robust policies, processes and technical measures are in place to control and safeguard access to, and use of, personal information associated with LTM. This includes payment card data which is handled in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (‘PCI DSS’).

    TfL also publishes guidance on the steps you can also take to protect your personal information.

    LTM and its service providers may process your personal information in countries within the European Economic Area (EEA) and worldwide. These locations include the Netherlands and the USA. Any such processing will be carried out in strict accordance with UK and EU privacy legislation and the appropriate contractual safeguards which LTM has put in place.

  • CCTV

    We operate CCTV cameras throughout the Museum and at our Depot in Acton. We use it for three main purposes:

    • Protecting the health and safety of employees and visitors
    • Protecting our collections; and
    • Preventing and detecting crime and antisocial behaviour
    • We retain CCTV for a period of 30 days before it is automatically deleted unless the images are required for an investigation under lawful authority.

    We also operate CCTV cameras for the purpose of footfall counting with the help of our supplier HoxtonAi. These cameras help us count the number of visitors across the various parts of the Museum and better understand occupancy levels at any given time. The cameras only provide us with statistical information; there is no identification of individuals or storage of any personal data.

  • Your information rights

    If you would like to unsubscribe from our enewsletters or other updates you receive from us, please use the link we include at the end of every email. You can also update your contact preferences at any time by contacting us at one of the addresses below.

    Under data protection legislation you are entitled to ask to see any personal information that we hold about you and be given details of how we use that information, and where we obtained it from. Find out how to access your data from the London Transport Museum.

    You also have a number of other information rights which include:

    • The right to question any information we have about you that you think is wrong or incomplete.
    • The right to object to how we use your information or to ask us to delete or restrict how we use it.

    In relation to these information rights, please email us at [email protected] or write to us at the address below:

    Privacy Officer, London Transport Museum, 39 Wellington Street, London WC2E 7BB

    Please note that we may require proof of your identity and address before we can process your request. We will respond to your request within the appropriate statutory timescales and in accordance with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

    If you have a specific concern or complaint about the way LTM handles your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer.

    You can also contact the regulator for information rights - the Information Commissioner’s Office.

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