Policies

Terms, conditions, and privacy policy

The policies on this page were last updated on 15 April 2025 to clarify information on safeguarding and GDPR. We may update this policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new or updated policy on this page, and if relevant in other communications.

Constitution

Camp Quest UK is an Unincorporated Association, we are governed by our Trustees and Executive Committee consistent with the terms and values of our Rules and Constitution.

Terms and conditions

Camp bookings

  1. Completion of the initial booking form and payment of the deposit for a Camp Quest UK camp is interpreted as signalling the intention to book and pay for the camp in question.
  2. The full booking form (and any follow up questions from Camp Quest UK) must be completed at least 70 days (10 weeks) before the start of the camp in question, or ASAP after the initial booking form if booking after this date.
  3. The full remaining balance of the camp booking is due 28 days (4 weeks) before the start of the camp in question, or within 14 days (2 weeks) of the initial booking form if booking after this date.

Refunds

  1. Deposits are non-refundable after 7 days.
  2. In the event of cancellation of the camp, or by the camper, booking fees (minus deposit) will be refunded in the following proportions:
    1. 100% refund up to 56 days (8 weeks) before the start of the camp in question.
    2. 75% refund up to 42 days (6 weeks) before the start of the camp in question.
    3. 50% refund up to 21 days (3 weeks) before the start of the camp in question.
    4. 25% refund up to 7 days (1 week) before the start of the camp in question.
    5. 0% refund if less than 7 days (1 week) before the start of the camp in question.
  3. An exception to this is that a 100% refund of booking fees and deposit will be offered up to 6 weeks before the start of the camp in question, if Camp Quest UK determines that we cannot adequately accommodate the accessibility needs of a camper.
  4. Any other refunds (or crediting booking fees towards future Camp Quest UK events) are at the discretion of Camp Quest UK’s trustees, whose decision is final and not subject to appeal.

Accessibility

  1. Camp Quest UK is deeply committed to inclusion and will make all reasonable efforts to accommodate participants with disabilities or neurodivergences. However, our ability to do so is subject to practical limitations on our resources, volunteer expertise and the facilities of campsites or activity centres where activities take place.
  2. If special accommodations are required, it is the responsibility of the person making the booking to discuss these with Camp Quest UK as soon as is practical.

Behaviour

  1. All participants in Camp Quest UK events are expected to comply with all health and safety rules, instructions or regulations, whether set out in law, by Camp Quest UK leaders, activity leads, or staff or representatives of any host organisations.
  2. All participants in Camp Quest UK events are required to treat all other participants, third parties or members of the public they interact with at the event with respect and dignity, and refrain from any behaviour that could be considered bullying, harassment, discriminatory, or otherwise harmful.
  3. Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all participants is everyone’s responsibility. Camp Quest UK will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure the safety and physical/mental wellbeing and inclusion of all participants (including staff, volunteers and campers) at our events. We reserve the right to take reasonable steps (up to and including restriction on participating in activities, or expulsion from the event) of any camper or volunteer whose behaviour we consider a threat to the safety or physical/mental wellbeing of other participants.
    1. Where this power of restriction or expulsion is exercised, the decision of the Camp Quest UK leader is final, and any refunds or reimbursement of associated expenses shall be entirely at the discretion of Camp Quest UK’s trustees.
    2. If a young person under 18 is expelled from camp, or Camp Quest UK determine that withdrawing from the camp is necessary for their own welfare – parents or guardians are responsible for collecting them, or arranging their safe travel home within 12 hours, or by 12.00 noon the following day, whichever provides greater notice.
  4. All participants, volunteers and staff share responsibility for safeguarding at Camp Quest UK events. This includes maintaining appropriate professional and personal boundaries at all times, avoiding situations which could place themselves or others at risk, and acting on any concerns about the welfare of a child or adult. Any safeguarding concern, disclosure or allegation must be reported promptly to a Camp Quest UK leader, regardless of how certain it may seem. Failure to report safeguarding concerns, or any action which could compromise the safety or wellbeing of others, will be treated as a serious breach of this policy.

Complaints

  1. Camp Quest UK takes all complaints seriously and we are committed to providing the highest quality in the provision of our camps and other activities. We accept sometimes we don’t live up to these standards and you may have cause to complain. Your feedback is appreciated and allows us the opportunity to put things right, learn, and improve our processes.
  2. All complaints received will be investigated, however we request that any complaints are sent in writing to admin@campquest.uk to ensure they are received.
  3. If your complaint relates to our privacy policy or use of your data, you are also entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Humanists UK

  1. If you are participating in a Camp Quest UK event that is run in collaboration with a Humanists UK Local Group, you can also make use of the Humanists UK complaints procedure.
  2. To make such a complaint please use this dedicated form. You can also download their Commitment to Complaints leaflet here.

Third party

  1. In future, Camp Quest UK may make provision for complaints to be addressed to an independent third party.

Privacy Policy

About this Policy

  1. At Camp Quest UK we run and support secular summer camps, inspired by humanist values which provide an inclusive and nurturing environment for young people, mixing physical and traditional camp activities with sessions focused on personal, philosophical and scientific discovery. We also provide community and connections for our camp alumni.
  2. When doing this, we process personal data about people who contact us, support our organisation, or purchase services (e.g. booking a place at a camp) from us. We are committed to protecting your privacy and take this responsibility very seriously. We therefore take care to safeguard it. This notice outlines what data we collect, how we may use it, how we protect your data and your rights, and how you can exercise those rights.
  3. We regularly check this notice to ensure we provide you with the most up-to-date information regarding our data processing activities. We strongly advise you to read this page from time to time to ensure you are happy with any changes that might be made.
  4. This privacy policy was prepared to be as comprehensive as possible, but it does not include an exhaustive list of every aspect of our collection and use of personal information. We are happy to provide any further information or explanation about our practices on request.
  5. If you have any questions about this policy, please contact us via admin@campquest.uk 

Why we collect your data

  1. We collect personal data for many reasons, including to provide you with services, communicate with you, and send you information you have requested, and administer bookings and donations. 

Information we collect

  1. We collect the following personal information:
    1. your name
    2. contact details – including your postal address, telephone number(s), and email address(es)
    3. date of birth
    4. details of relevant personal circumstances when providing you with advice and support
    5. details of family members if you choose a family membership.
    6. your bank details
    7. records of your correspondence and engagement with us
    8. details of your donations to us and any Gift Aid details (not currently relevant)
    9. information you may enter via our websites 
    10. photographs, video or audio recordings
    11. occupation
    12. biographical information
    13. IP addresses (for analytics purpose)
    14. other information you share with us
  2. This information may be collected via:
    1. any paper or online forms you complete
    2. telephone conversations or face-to-face interactions
    3. digital forms completed via our websites, or online surveys
    4. third-party companies and websites such as JustGiving or PayPal
    5. publicly available sources
    6. communication via social media
  3. We sometimes also collect sensitive, personal data about individuals. This includes:
    1. information about health, dietary requirements, accessibility needs or any other information necessary to ensure a safe fun time at one of our camps.
    2. information about your support for the aims and values of Camp Quest UK – which may be viewed as being related to your religion or belief
    3. information on your gender identity, which may be necessary for making accommodation arrangements
    4. information on your social economic situation, which may be necessary for making decisions about discounts or camper bursaries.
    5. information about any behaviour or complaints, which may inform decisions on your participation in future Camp Quest UK activities.

Using your personal data

  1. We will always handle personal data inline with the General Data Protection Regulation (you may know this as GDPR). GDPR is a comprehensive European Union law, effective May 25, 2018, that strengthens data protection and privacy for individuals. GDPR mandates strict rules on collecting, storing, and using personal data for any organization targeting individuals in the EU, with severe fines for non-compliance. Following Brexit, the EU GDPR was incorporated into UK domestic law on January 1, 2021.
  2. We may use your personal data to plan activities and other arrangements at Camp Quest UK events, or to contact you about future events and fundraising requests.
  3. We may use a range of marketing activities and channels to contact our supporters – including our website, email, face-to-face fundraising, direct mail, social media, and telephone.
  4. We will always obtain consent to contact you by email and text message for marketing purposes. 
  5. We will never share or sell your personal data to a third-party organisation for its marketing, fundraising, or campaigning purposes.
  6. You can withdraw your consent and unsubscribe from or update your marketing preferences at any point using the links in any marketing emails, or by contacting admin@campquest.uk
  7. Any ‘mass’ electronic communications, such as emails, will have a link to unsubscribe from future electronic communications, so you can manage your own communication preferences.
  8. If you make any changes to your consent, we will update your record as soon as we possibly can. It may take up to 30 days for our systems to update and stop any postal communications from being sent to you. Email communications will be stopped within a week and usually immediately. If you tell us you do not wish to receive marketing, fundraising or campaign communications, you may still receive transactional and service-based communications confirming and servicing other relationships you have with us
  9. Where possible, we cleanse and remove out-of-date data. This helps us to improve the delivery rate of our mailings and minimise wasted expenditure.

Administrative communications to members and supporters

  1. In addition to the fundraising and marketing communications that you receive from Camp Quest UK, we will also communicate with you by post, telephone, and email in relation to administrative and transactional matters. For example, we may call you after you have set up a payment, to request additional information on your booking, or to discuss your accessibility needs.
  2. There may be other occasions where we need to contact you about your contribution – for example, if there is a problem with a payment or in relation to your Gift Aid declaration, or the intent of your payment (e.g. whether it is a donation or deposit) is unclear.
  3. As mentioned above, we may still need to communicate with you for administrative purposes even where you have opted out of marketing communications from us.

Social media/digital

  1. When someone visits campquest.uk we collect standard logging information and details of visitor behaviour – such as which pages are visited, and how long is spent on each one. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site, and how people are using our site, and find out the kinds of people visiting our site, and we use this data to help us deliver our messages as effectively as possible.
  2. We also track whether you respond to an advert on these services, or whether you engage with us having seen an advert. This is known as ‘conversion tracking’, and uses ‘cookies’ on your machine. We do not provide these third-parties with identifiable information. However, if you have an account on these services it will be possible for them to match up your account to the visit to our site, and as such they may use this to inform future advertising on those services.
  3. If you are logged in to your Reddit/Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/other personal social or web account and visit a page on our site, this is likely to be tracked. Other sites may use this data to inform their advertising algorithms. You can opt-out of this kind of tracking. Your web browser allows control of most cookies through the browser settings, and each account provider should have processes to manage your preferences. 
  4. Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for social media messaging services like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you may receive targeted advertisements through our use of social media audience tools. For example, Facebook’s ‘Custom’ and ‘Lookalike’ Audiences’ programmes enable us to display adverts to our existing supporters when they visit Facebook, or other people who have similar interests or characteristics to our supporters. We may provide your data (including your email address) to Facebook, so it can determine whether you are a registered account holder with them, or so that Facebook create a ‘lookalike’ audience or to exclude you from receiving ads. Our adverts may then appear when you access Facebook. We only work with social media networks that provide a facility for secure and encrypted upload of data, and who immediately delete any records not matching with their own user base. For more information, or to manage your social media ad preferences, please see Facebook’s ‘About Custom Audiences’ guide and its Data Policy.
  5. We use ‘cookies’ to collect data from your browser when you visit our website. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer via your web browser. This file allows us to temporarily store information about your website usage. For example, a cookie is created when you login, so that as you continue to navigate the website we can understand who you are and show you the appropriate content. Cookies are also created whenever you click ‘Remember me’ on a website. Next time you visit that website, it checks to see if there is a cookie in place – if there is, you don’t have to login next time. Cookies can also be used by third-parties, and sites such as Facebook can use them to see which websites you have visited. Our site has various cookies in place – see the rest of this policy for details of the organisations we work with, and how we ensure that your data is secure. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
  6. If you receive an email and you open it, or don’t open it, or click a link in it, we collect this information to ensure that the information we send to people is received and relevant.

Professional contacts

  1. We may collect data about professional contacts and partners with whom we work, or to whom we provide professional services – such as training, publications, or volunteer placement. Personal data collected in this way will be processed in accordance with data protection legislation and this policy.
  2. We may send our professional partners information and updates about our work (primarily by email). Such contacts can opt out of receiving this information at any time.

Our legal basis for processing personal data

  1. We need a lawful basis to collect and use your personal data under data protection law. The law allows for six ways to process personal data (and additional ways for sensitive personal data). Four of these are relevant to the types of processing that we carry out. This includes information that is processed on the basis of:
  2. a person’s consent (for example, to send you direct marketing by email)
  3. a contractual relationship (for example, to provide you with goods or services that you have purchased from us such as booking a place at camp)
  4. processing that is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation (for example to process a Gift Aid declaration, and carrying out due diligence on large donations)
  5. Camp Quest UK’s legitimate interests (please see below for more information)
  6. Personal data may be legally collected and used if it is necessary for a legitimate interest of the organisation using the data, if its use is fair and does not adversely impact the rights of the individual concerned.
  7. When we use your personal information, we will always consider if it is fair and balanced to do so and if it is within your reasonable expectations. We will balance your rights and our legitimate interests to ensure that we use your personal information in ways that are not unduly intrusive or unfair. Our legitimate interests include:
  8. Governance: including delivery of our association’s purposes, statutory and financial reporting, and other regulatory compliance purposes
  9. Administration and operational management: including responding to solicited enquires, providing information and services, research, events management, the administration of volunteers and employment, and recruitment requirements
  10. Fundraising administering campaigns and donations, sending direct marketing by post (and in some cases making marketing calls), sending thank you letters, analysis, targeting and segmentation to develop communication strategies, and maintaining communication suppressions
  11. If you would like more information on our uses of legitimate interests, or to change our use of your personal data in this manner, please get in touch with us via admin@campquest.uk

Security of your personal data

  1. We will not share any of your personal data with any third party – except where:
    1. the transfer is to a secure data processor, which carries out data processing operations on our behalf
    2. we are required to do so by law, for example to law enforcement or regulatory bodies where this is required or allowed under the relevant legislation
    3. it is necessary to protect the vital interests of an individual, including where is it necessary to safeguard you or another individual
    4. we have obtained your consent, for example to share your necessary details with a host campsite or activity centre.
  2. We will never share or sell your personal data to a third-party organisation for marketing, fundraising, or campaigning purposes.
  3. We use appropriate technical and organisational measures and precautions to protect your personal data and to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal data.
  4. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet cannot be guaranteed to be completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our website. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Retention of your data

  1. The length of time that your data will be kept may depend on the reasons for which we are processing the data and on the law or regulations that the information falls under, such as financial regulations, Limitations Act, Health and Safety regulation etc., or any contractual obligation we might have – such as with government contracts or if we have a business case, such as with research data.
  2. If you request to receive no further contact from us, we will keep some basic information about you on our suppression list to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future.

Your rights

  1. You have many rights under data protection legislation. These include:

Right of Access

  1. You have the right to know what information we hold about you and to ask, in writing, to see your records.
  2. We will supply any information you ask for that we hold about you as soon as possible, but this may take up to 30 days. We will not charge you for this other than in exceptional circumstances. You will be asked for proof of identity, as the person dealing with your request may not be the staff member you have met before. We need to be sure we are only releasing your personal data to you.
  3. This is called a data subject access request, and can be made by emailing: admin@campquest.uk

Right to be informed

  1. You have the right to be informed how your personal data will be used. This policy, as well as any additional information or notice that is provided to you either at the time you provided your details, or otherwise, is intended to provide you with this information.

Right to withdraw consent

  1. Where we process your data based on your consent (for example, to send you marketing texts or emails), you can withdraw that consent at any time. To do this, or to discuss this right further with us, please contact admin@campquest.uk

Right to object

  1. You also have a right to object to us processing data where we are relying on it being within our legitimate interests to do so (for example, to send you direct marketing by post). To do this, or to discuss this right further with us, please contact us using the details in the ‘Contact us’ section below.

Right to restrict processing

  1. In certain situations, you have the right to ask for processing of your personal data to be restricted because there is some disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.

Right of erasure

  1. In some cases, you have the right to be forgotten (i.e. to have your personal data deleted from our database). Where you have requested that we do not send you marketing materials, we will need to keep some limited information to ensure that you are not contacted in the future.

Right of rectification

  1. If you believe our records are inaccurate, you have the right to ask for those records concerning you to be updated. To update your records, please get in touch with us via admin@campquest.uk

Right to data portability

  1. Where we are processing your personal data because you have given us your consent to do so, in some circumstances you have the right to request that the data is transferred to an equivalent organisation.

Complaints

  1. If you have any complaints about the way in which we have used your data, please get in touch with us via admin@campquest.uk We would be happy to help and discuss your concerns.
  2. In addition, you are also entitled to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.