Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026  |  Print this page

1. Who we are

CESRA (the Central England Society of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning) is a professional membership body representing engineers, technicians and businesses in the refrigeration and air conditioning sector.

For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, CESRA is the data controller for the personal information we hold about you.

Contact details:
Central England Society of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning (CESRA)
76 JILLCOT ROAD
SOLIHULL
WEST MIDLANDS
B92 8JG
Email: info@cesra.org
Website: www.cesra.org

Our data controller registration number with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is: ZC278487. Download our ICO registration certificate (PDF).

2. The information we collect

When you apply for membership

• Full name, email address, phone number
• Business / employer name and job title
• Postal address
• Membership grade applied for
• Professional qualifications and experience (if provided)
• How you heard about CESRA

When your membership is active

• Everything collected at application
• Your CESRA membership number, grade and renewal date
• CPD (Continuing Professional Development) activity records you submit
• Payment records (when payment functionality is enabled)

When you apply to become a mentor

• Professional biography and areas of expertise
• Years of experience in the RACHP industry
• Mentoring availability and maximum mentee capacity
• Notes recorded during active mentoring relationships

When you register to find a mentor (mentee registration)

• Full name, email address, phone number
• Professional goals and current experience level
• Preferred areas of expertise in a mentor
• Availability for mentoring contact

When you register for the Consultant Register

• Professional headline and biography
• Areas of expertise (selected from a defined list)
• Years of experience in the RACHP industry
• Availability status (e.g. project-based, part-time, full-time)
• Location (city or region)
• A contact email address for consultancy enquiries (if different from your membership email)
• Website URL and LinkedIn profile URL (if provided)

If you do not provide a separate contact email, your membership email address will be used as your public contact for enquiries.

When you submit a member article

• Article title and written content
• Your display name (attributed publicly if the article is approved and published)
• Date and time of submission

When you sign up to our launch notification list

• Name and email address

Automatically when you visit our website

• IP address (via web server logs and Google Fonts — see Cookies section)
• Browser type and version, operating system
• Pages visited and time on site

CESRA does not currently use website analytics tools (such as Google Analytics).

3. How we use your information

Membership administration — lawful basis: contract

We process your membership data to manage your membership, issue your membership certificate, send renewal reminders, maintain the member directory, and provide access to member benefits and the online portal.

CPD records — lawful basis: contract / legitimate interests

We process CPD submissions to maintain your professional development record and issue CPD certificates where applicable.

Mentorship programme — lawful basis: contract / legitimate interests

We process mentor and mentee application data to facilitate the CESRA mentorship programme — including reviewing and approving mentor applications, matching mentors with mentees, and communicating introductions between paired participants. Mentor profiles (bio, expertise areas and availability) are shared with the mentee they are matched with and vice versa. See Section 4 for more detail on what is shared and with whom.

Consultant Register — lawful basis: contract / legitimate interests

We process consultant profile data to manage listings in the public CESRA Consultant Register on the Careers Page. This includes reviewing and approving applications, publishing approved profiles so they are visible to any member of the public visiting the Careers Page, and enabling enquirers to contact consultants directly using the contact email in their profile. By submitting a consultant profile you consent to this public processing for as long as your profile remains active and approved.

Member communications — lawful basis: legitimate interests

We send renewal reminders, important membership notices, and information about CESRA events and activities. You may opt out of non-essential communications at any time by contacting us.

Website operation — lawful basis: legitimate interests

We process server log data (including IP addresses) for security, abuse prevention and troubleshooting.

Member articles — lawful basis: consent

When you submit an article for publication on the CESRA community blog, we process your written content and display name for the purpose of publishing it on our public website. Submission of an article constitutes your consent to this processing. You may request removal of a published article at any time by emailing info@cesra.org.

Launch notification list — lawful basis: consent

We use your email address and name solely to notify you when the CESRA website and membership portal go live. You may withdraw your consent and request removal from this list at any time by emailing info@cesra.org.

4. How we share your information

Member Directory

If you are an active member, your name, membership grade, company, job title and city/county may be displayed publicly on our Member Directory. No email address, telephone number or postal address is shown publicly. You can request to be excluded from the directory at any time by emailing info@cesra.org.

Consultant Register (public directory)

If you submit a consultant profile and it is approved by CESRA, the following information will be published publicly on the CESRA Careers Page and visible to any member of the public:

• Your name
• Professional headline and biography
• Areas of expertise, years of experience and availability
• Location (city or region)
• A contact email address for consultancy enquiries
• Your website URL and/or LinkedIn URL (if provided)

Your profile will remain publicly visible until you request removal, your membership lapses or is terminated, or CESRA removes your listing. You can request removal at any time via the member portal or by emailing info@cesra.org. We will action removal requests promptly; however, residual copies may remain in search engine caches for a period outside our control.

Published member articles

If you submit an article and it is approved by the committee, your article and your CESRA display name will be published publicly on our website and may be indexed by search engines. You can request removal of a published article at any time by emailing info@cesra.org. We will action removal requests promptly, though residual copies may remain in search engine caches for a period outside our control.

Mentorship programme — paired participants

When a mentor and mentee are matched, each party is introduced to the other by email. The introduction includes the other party’s name, email address and relevant profile information (for a mentor: bio and expertise areas; for a mentee: goals and experience level). This sharing is necessary to facilitate the mentoring relationship and both parties consent to it by participating in the programme. No mentorship data is shared publicly.

Web hosting provider

Our website is hosted in the UK. Our hosting provider processes web server logs and has access to stored data as a data processor acting on our instructions, under a data processing agreement.

Google Fonts

Our website loads fonts from Google’s servers (fonts.googleapis.com). When your browser requests these fonts, your IP address is transmitted to Google Inc. Google states it does not use this data for advertising and does not set cookies via Google Fonts. For details, see Google Fonts Privacy FAQ. We intend to switch to locally-hosted fonts in the near future to eliminate this transfer.

Payment processing (future)

When payment functionality is enabled, card payments will be processed by Stripe Inc. CESRA does not store card details — all payment data is handled by Stripe under their own privacy policy and PCI DSS compliance framework.

Legal requirements

We may disclose your information where required to do so by law, court order, or in connection with legal proceedings.

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information to any third party.

5. How long we keep your information

Data	Retention period
Active member records	Duration of membership + 7 years
Pending applications (not approved)	12 months
Lapsed or cancelled member records	7 years from last activity
CPD records	7 years
Mentor profiles and application data	Duration of active mentor status + 3 years
Mentee registration data	Until matched and mentorship completed, or 12 months if unmatched
Mentorship relationship records	3 years from date of completion or cancellation
Consultant Register profiles	Duration of active listing + 3 years after removal or lapsing of membership
Member article submissions (pending or rejected)	Deleted immediately on rejection or withdrawal
Published member articles	Until you request removal or until your membership ends, whichever is earlier — unless CESRA has a legitimate reason to retain the record
Launch notification list	Until you request removal or until the list has been used for its stated purpose
Web server logs	30 days

6. Cookies

Please see our Cookie Policy for full details. In summary:

• We use strictly necessary cookies to manage your login session when you access the Member Portal.
• We do not use advertising, tracking or analytics cookies.
• Our website loads fonts from Google’s servers, which involves a transfer of your IP address (see above).

7. Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the following rights:

• Right of access — You can request a copy of the personal data we hold about you (a “subject access request”).
• Right to rectification — You can ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Right to erasure — You can ask us to delete your personal data where there is no overriding legal reason to keep it.
• Right to restriction — You can ask us to limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
• Right to data portability — You can request a copy of your data in a structured, machine-readable format.
• Right to object — You can object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Right to withdraw consent — Where we rely on your consent (e.g. the notify list or consultant profile), you can withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing before withdrawal.

CESRA does not make automated decisions about individuals (including profiling) that have a legal or similarly significant effect.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at info@cesra.org. We will respond within one calendar month. We may ask you to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

8. International transfers

Your personal data is stored on UK-based servers. The only transfer of data outside the UK currently is the IP address transfer to Google when loading fonts (see Section 4). Google operates under standard contractual clauses and other safeguards approved under UK GDPR for international transfers.

When Stripe is enabled, payment data will be transferred to the United States under Stripe’s standard contractual clauses.

9. How to complain

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK’s supervisory authority:

Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
Website: ico.org.uk
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Post: ICO, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

We would always appreciate the opportunity to resolve any concern directly — please contact us at info@cesra.org in the first instance.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or applicable law. We will post the updated policy on this page with a new “last updated” date. Where changes are significant, we will notify active members by email. We encourage you to review this page periodically.