Your data,
looked after.

Romford United FC (“the club”, “we”, “us”) is a grassroots youth and adult football club based at Mawney Park, Romford RM7 7HL. We run the website at www.romfordutd.com, including the Player / Parent / Guardian Portal, the shop, bookings, camps and memberships.

For UK data protection law, the club is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice. That means we decide why and how it is used, and we are responsible for looking after it.

• Legal name and type of organisation: [Club legal entity name and type]
• Registered or correspondence address: [Club registered address]
• ICO registration number: [ICO registration number]

This notice explains what we collect, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Email hello@romfordutd.com with “Data protection” in the subject line, or use our contact page. Your request is handled by [Data protection lead name and role].

For a concern about a child’s welfare, contact our Club Welfare Officer at [Club Welfare Officer email], or see our safeguarding page. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.

What we hold about you depends on how you use the club and the website. We only ask for what we need for each thing you do.

Parents and guardians

• Your name, relationship to the child, email address and phone number.
• Your Portal login: email, a securely hashed password (we never see or store the password itself), when you verified your email and when you last logged in.
• Optional profile details you choose to add: photo, date of birth, sex, home address, and an emergency contact (name, phone, relationship).
• Emergency contact details given when you register a child.
• Your choices: marketing emails, WhatsApp notifications, the photo, video, medical and development consents you give for your child, and whether their PlayerDNA badges may appear on the club’s public honours board.
• Messages you send through the Portal chat, the contact form or the website and WhatsApp assistant, and any rating or comment you leave about a coach.

Players (children and adults)

• Name (we store the first name and surname initial by default; a full surname only if you choose to show it), date of birth, age group, squad, shirt number, position and preferred foot.
• Trial details: experience, preferred position, the trial slot you booked and our notes on the outcome.
• Medical information you choose to tell us (for example allergies or conditions a coach should know about), and dietary needs for camps.
• Profile content: bio, nickname, photos, short videos, a 360-degree photo rotator, highlights, achievements, previous clubs and teams.
• Match information: appearances, goals, assists, minutes played and attendance. Stats sent in by a family are only added once a coach approves them.
• PlayerDNA development records: monthly tasks and whether they were done, points, badges, goals, quiz answers, training logs, match reflections (including whether a player reported pain or discomfort), monthly development reports and coach awards.
• Height and weight measurements, if a parent or guardian agrees to record them. Any body mass figure calculated from them is shown to parents and guardians only.
• A record of important changes to the player’s profile, such as who turned photo consent on or off and when.

A young person may also have their own Portal login, set up and linked through a parent or guardian. In that case we hold their name, email, hashed password and activity in the same way as for an adult account.

Coaches, staff and volunteers

• Coach applications: name, date of birth, sex, email, phone, the age groups or squads you want to coach, who invited you, your FA qualification level, your DBS check status, a short note on why you want to coach, a photo, and that you accepted our terms.
• Staff accounts: name, email, hashed password, role and permissions, phone number, WhatsApp opt-in, profile photo, start date and accreditations (for example DBS check and FA coaching badges, with expiry dates).
• For coaches who offer 1-on-1 sessions: the public profile you publish, including photo, qualifications, biography and availability.
• A log of when staff open a Portal chat for safeguarding oversight, recorded against the person who looked.

Customers and bookers

• Shop orders: name, email, phone, delivery address, what you bought, discount codes used, and order and delivery status.
• Camp sign-ups, 1-on-1 coaching bookings and open-session purchases: your name, email and phone, the child’s first name, surname initial and date of birth or age, any notes, medical or dietary information you give us, and what you paid.
• Memberships: which player the membership is for, the monthly amount, status and billing dates.
• Payment references from Stripe, such as customer, payment and subscription IDs. We never see or store your full card details.

Everyone who uses the website

• Contact form enquiries: name, email, optional phone, subject, message and the page you sent it from.
• Bug reports and suggestions: what you tell us, the page address, your browser type, an optional screenshot, your name and email if you give them or are logged in, and a copy of the browser’s developer console log from that page, which can include technical messages about what you were doing on the site.
• Anonymous “improve your club” suggestions, which are stored without your name.
• Technical information needed to run the site securely, such as server error logs and page-speed measurements. These do not include your name.
• The small number of cookies and browser storage items described in our cookie policy.

• From you, when you register, book, buy, create a Portal account, fill in a form, message us or upload content.
• From a parent or guardian, about their child.
• From coaches and club staff, who record attendance, match stats, awards, development notes and trial outcomes.
• From Stripe and Hiyya, who confirm whether a payment or membership went through.
• From public sources: we read public fixture and results pages on The FA’s Full-Time website to show our teams’ fixtures. These list team names and scores, not individual players.

The law says we need a lawful basis for each use of your information. Here is what we do and the basis we rely on.

Health information and other sensitive data

Some information is “special category” data under the law and needs extra protection. For us this means medical and dietary information, reports of pain or discomfort in match reflections, and height and weight records. We use it:

• with your explicit consent, which you give on the registration and sign-up forms and in the Portal, and can withdraw at any time;
• where needed to protect someone’s vital interests in an emergency, if they cannot consent; and
• where needed to safeguard children, under the “safeguarding of children and individuals at risk” condition in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

Information about DBS checks is criminal offence data. We record only the check status and expiry, not the certificate contents, and we process it under the same safeguarding condition in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018. [Confirm the club holds an appropriate policy document for this processing.]

Most of our players are under 18. We take extra care with their information:

• A parent or guardian registers a child and gives the consents on their behalf. For children under 13, we always rely on the parent or guardian, including for any online service.
• Public player profiles show a first name and surname initial by default. A full surname is only shown if a parent or guardian chooses it and the club approves it.
• Photos and videos of a child are only shown publicly while photo or video consent is switched on. Changes that a family proposes to a profile are checked by the club before they go live.
• PlayerDNA is private to the family. A child’s PlayerDNA badges only appear on the public honours board if a parent or guardian switches on badge sharing for that child, and badges about height or weight never appear publicly.
• A child’s height, weight and any body mass figure are shown to their parents and guardians only, not to other families or on the public site.
• When our internal activity feed records a login or event, children are never named.
• As children get older and can understand their own data rights, we will listen to them directly as well as to their parents.

Some of the website can be seen by anyone, without logging in. This is what it can show about a player, and what decides it.

Shown on the public website

• The player’s profile and the squad pages: their name, in the form the family chose and the club approved (first name and surname initial unless you ask for more), age group, squad, shirt number, position, and the football details added to the profile, such as the write-up, coach’s quote, match statistics and previous clubs.
• Awards the club gives, such as Man of the Match, cups and medals, with any write-up and award picture. These appear on the player’s profile and the honours board, and some are featured on the home page.

Only if you switch it on

• Photos, including the 360 rotator and photo gallery: photo consent.
• Videos, including the highlight reel: video consent.
• PlayerDNA badges on the honours board: badge sharing, switched on separately for each child. A badge card shows the badge, when it was earned, and the player’s name, age group, squad, shirt number and position, with a link to their profile. Their photo appears on the card only if photo consent is on as well.

Never shown publicly

• Date of birth, medical information, contact details and home address.
• PlayerDNA tasks, points, goals, quiz answers, training logs, match reflections, monthly reports, and height and weight measurements.
• Badges about height or weight, such as the one for recording a first measurement. These stay private even when badge sharing is on.

How to switch them on or off

A parent or guardian whose Portal account the club has linked to the player can change each of these at any time: log in to the Portal, go to My players, choose Open profile for the player, and use the switches under Account info → Consent. Badge sharing can only be switched on once PlayerDNA has been set up for that player, and the trophy cabinet in PlayerDNA shows whether it is on, with a link to the switch. A change reaches the public site straight away: switch something off and it comes off the profile and the honours board at once.

Where a child has more than one guardian, either can change a setting and the most recent change applies. We keep a record of who changed each setting and when. You can also ask us to change a setting for you by emailing hello@romfordutd.com. To change how a player’s name is shown, change it under Account info on the same page and send it to the club for review.

We do not sell your information. We share it only with the organisations below, and only what each one needs. Service providers act on our instructions under a contract.

We may also share information with the police, children’s social care, the County FA safeguarding team or other authorities where the law requires it or where it is needed to keep a child safe.

Our database and file storage are in the EU (Ireland), which the UK recognises as giving adequate protection. Some of our providers are based in, or can access data from, the USA and other countries. When that happens we make sure the transfer is protected by one of these:

• a UK adequacy decision, including the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified;
• the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA); or
• the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum.

Contact us if you would like more detail on the safeguards for a particular provider.

We keep information only for as long as we need it:

You have the right to:

• Access a copy of the information we hold about you.
• Rectification: ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete. Many details can be changed in the Portal yourself.
• Erasure: ask us to delete your information where we no longer need it or you withdraw consent.
• Restriction: ask us to pause using your information while a concern is looked into.
• Objection: object to uses based on legitimate interests, and to direct marketing at any time.
• Portability: receive information you gave us in a common digital format, or have it sent to another organisation.
• Withdraw consent at any time, for example switching off photo consent, PlayerDNA badge sharing or WhatsApp notifications in the Portal, or unsubscribing from emails. This does not affect anything done before you withdrew it.

Parents and guardians can use these rights on behalf of their children. To use any of them, email hello@romfordutd.com. We may need to confirm your identity first. We will reply within one month, or tell you within that month if we need longer because the request is complex. There is normally no charge.

Some rights have limits. For example, we may need to keep safeguarding and financial records even if you ask us to delete them.

We do not make any decision about you or your child based solely on automated processing that has a legal or similarly significant effect. Squad selection, trial outcomes, awards and safeguarding decisions are always made by people.

PlayerDNA monthly reports

A PlayerDNA monthly report is put together automatically from the records already in the Portal: tasks completed, points, badges, goals, quiz results and any change in height and weight. The numbers are calculated by our own system, not by AI. If AI is switched on, we send the player’s first name and those monthly facts to OpenAI, which only rewords them into friendlier language. We check the reworded text and fall back to our own wording if it adds anything it should not. The report is for encouragement only and does not decide anything about the player.

Website and WhatsApp assistant

If you use the assistant on our website or message the club on WhatsApp, your messages are sent to OpenAI to write a reply. The assistant only gives general club information. You can ask for a person at any time, and your enquiry is passed to the club.

• Passwords are stored as secure one-way hashes. Every account must verify its email address before it can be used.
• Connections to the website are encrypted (HTTPS), and login cookies cannot be read by scripts on the page.
• Staff only see what their role needs. Coaches only see their own squads, and staff must confirm their password again before opening the club’s payment settings.
• Card details go straight to Stripe and never touch our systems.
• Access to Portal chats for safeguarding reasons is logged against the person who looked.

No system is completely secure. If a personal data breach is likely to put you at risk, we will tell you and, where required, the ICO.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first at hello@romfordutd.com so we can try to put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator: ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.

We will update this notice when the way we use information changes. The date at the top shows when it was last updated. If we make a significant change, we will tell Portal users by email or in the Portal. See also our cookie policy and terms of use.