Privacy policy

The Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE) understands that your privacy is important to you and we respect the privacy of visitors to our website (www.ciphe.org.uk). We take our responsibility to process your personal information very seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal information.

About us

Founded in 1906, the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE) is the professional body for the UK plumbing and heating industry.

Membership is made up of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds such as consultants, specifiers, designers, public health engineers, lecturers, trainers, trainees and practitioners.

Purpose

The Purpose of the CIPHE is to enhance the safety and health of the public through a strong qualified membership reinforced by their competency and technical expertise.

Vision

The Vision of the CIPHE is to create an environment in which the public will benefit from a protected environment and enhanced sustainability together with improved safety and health through the provision of correctly installed, commissioned, maintained and decommissioned plumbing and heating systems.

Mission

The Mission of the CIPHE is to operate as an independent technical and professional focal point and be a leading authority to the plumbing and heating industry by providing technical and professional standards, expertise, educational and technical innovation to the operatives within its scope.

The CIPHE provides public benefit by raising awareness of plumbing and heating issues such as Legionnaires' Disease and hot water scalding and promote a register of competent individuals.

The personal information we collect and how we use it

The CIPHE is the ‘Data Controller’ of the personal information you provide to us. We will usually collect basic personal information about you such as your name, postal address, telephone number, email address and your payment details if you are purchasing a membership or other items from us.

Sometimes we will collect other information about you such as your date of birth, gender, employment details, professionally relevant interests and specialisms and other details.

We primarily collect your personal information in connection with membership applications and activities, to keep you up-to-date with professionally relevant information, to provide you with membership services and benefits and to record product purchases.

Where you register for the member only area of the CIPHE website, your personal information is recorded to allow continued access.

CIPHE find a plumber or heating engineer

You may choose to advertise your availability to provide services via our find a plumber or heating engineer directory. In doing so you are consenting for your personal contact information to be shared with third-party users of the service.

CIPHE expert witness

In the plumbing and heating world, expert witnesses can be useful in disputes over bad workmanship or faulty installations. The CIPHE has a list of expert members who will provide initial advice over the phone or email for free.

You may choose to declare your availability for providing this service on <LINK TO EXPERT WITNESS>. In doing so, you are consenting for your personal information to be shared with third-party users of the service.

Engineering Council

Many members of the CIPHE are also registered with the Engineering Council. Where this is the case, the CIPHE and the Engineering Council (EngC) are Joint Data Controllers. In practice, this means that both parties have valid reasons for processing your personal information and for sharing it with each other where required.

An example of this is for the CIPHE to confirm your ongoing membership of a Professional Engineering Institute (PEI) and, therefore, your eligibility to be registered with the EngC.

Marketing

Sometimes, with your consent, we will process your personal information to provide you with information about our work or to contact you regarding the payment of your annual membership fees.

On other occasions, we may process personal information when we need to do this to fulfil a contract (for example, if you have purchased something from us) or where we are required to do this by law or other regulations.

The CIPHE also processes your information when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights.

Obtaining your personal information

There are a variety of ways in which CIPHE will obtain your personal information. We will:

  • Record your preferences so that we can respect them with reference to how you are contacted by us.

  • Collect your personal information in several ways:

    • When you provide it to us directly as part of your communication with us for membership, products and services, and training

    • When we collect it as you use CIPHE websites.

    • When you provide permission to other organisations to share it with us

    • When you have given it to a third party and you have provided permission to pass your information on to us.

    • From publicly available sources (where possible) to keep your information up to date (e.g. the Post Office’s National Change of Address database).

We combine the information from these sources with the information you provide to us directly.

All of the personal information that we process is processed within the EEA. Personal data is hosted within the EEA or in countries that have data protection legislation that is compliant with GDPR requirements

Legitimate Interests

The General Data Protection Regulations have a number of reasons by which we can use the personal information you provide to us. One of these is called ‘legitimate interests'.

This means that we have the potential to use your personal information if we have a genuine and legitimate reason and we are not harming any of your rights and interests.

When you provide your personal details to us we may use your information to keep you informed of the membership services, industry news and professionally relevant information.

The main reasons we would use your personal information in this way would be when we might use the approach for confirming your identity, CIPHE marketing, maintaining the security of our system, data analytics and enhancing, modifying or improving our services.

Sharing your information

We do not share your information with any other organisations or individuals unless we are obliged to by law, and in the following instances:

  • If you have agreed that we may do so.

  • When we use other companies to provide services on our behalf such as:

    • Processing, mailing or delivering member publications and orders

    • Processing credit/ debit card payments received and/ or setting up direct debits

    • When using charity auditors


Retaining your information

If you make a purchase from us, including for the payment of a CIPHE membership fee, we will retain your personal information for a period of seven years for accounting purposes. During this period, we may continue to contact you regarding our activities under the legitimate interests banner.

Before we use your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will always consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection legislation and any other relevant law. Our legitimate interests do not automatically override your interests – we will never use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

What are your rights?

You have a number of rights about how the personal information you provide can be used. These are:

  • Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).

  • The ability to request a copy of the information we hold about you (right of access).

  • Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).

  • Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).

  • Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be 'forgotten').

  • Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).

  • Obtain and reuse your personal information for your own purposes (right to data portability).


If you would like to change the way you hear from us or no longer wish to receive direct marketing communications from us, use the 'Contact Us' page https://www.ciphe.org.uk/about-ciphe/contact-us/