Privacy notice

Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institute based in London. Our mission is to help build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world.

Chatham House is comprised of both a charity and a trading company. In this policy wherever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’, it refers to both our charity and/or our trading company.

Our trading company is wholly owned and controlled by our charity. Any information we collect may be used by both our entities. Our trading company exists as a separate legal entity so that we can hold our conferences and provide some limited consulting services.

• Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs), registered charity no. 208223. Our main trading address is 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE. Our VAT number is 653 2181 53.

• Chatham House Enterprises Limited, registered company no. 2979061. Our main trading address is 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE. Our VAT number is 653 2181 53.

Both our charity and our trading company are registered as data controllers with the Information Commissioners’ Office under the UK Data Protection Act 2018:

• Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs): registration number Z1808639.

• Chatham House Enterprises Limited: registration number Z1808673.

We take great care to comply with the requirements of data protection law in force in the UK, relating to the processing of your personal data, including the UK Data Protection Act 2018 (‘The Act’), the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation 2018.

We may collect and process the following personal data about you:

Personal data that you provide by filling in forms on our Site. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Site, subscribing to our service, posting material or requesting further services and might include:

• First name

• Last name

• Gender

• Date of birth

• Email (for login)

• Address

• Postcode

• Telephone number

We may also ask you for:

• Information when you report a problem with our Site.

• Information relating to your area of expertise as a result of communicating with us.

• Information that we obtain from you when you are taking part in an event or making a donation may, in addition to the above, include credit card, debit card or bank account details, but such information will be securely stored and processed only by our payment provider, Opayo and will not be held by us.

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.

Sensitive personal data:

Information that we obtain from you when you apply for a role at Chatham House. This may include sensitive information which is anonymised and will not affect your application. This might include:

• Racial or ethnic origin

• Religious beliefs

• Disability

• Physical and mental health details

• Sexual orientation

• Social and economic status

• Age

• Commission of criminal offences and/or involvement in criminal proceedings

Information we get about your use of our Site and services:

We may also collect information about your usage of our Sites (see the section below entitled Cookies we use), which may include:

• Traffic data

• Location data

• Weblogs and other communication data

• The resources that you access, such as text journals, newspaper articles or our library catalogue

Information from third parties:

We may also receive information about you from third party event co-organizers or project funders. This can include your personal data such as:

• Your name

• Postal address

• Email address

• Emergency contact details

• Dietary requirements

• Telephone number

• Whether you are a taxpayer so that we can claim Gift Aid

• What browser you are using

• Your IP addresses

• The computer operating system you are using

From the public domain:

We may obtain some information from publicly available sources such as news articles or open postings on social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

During the recruitment process we collect personal data about you when;

• make an application with us or otherwise, adding personal data about yourself either personally or by using a third-party source such as LinkedIn, job boards or social media and;

• use the Service to connect with our staff, adding personal data about themselves either personally or by using a third-party source such as LinkedIn or social media and;

• provide identifiable data in the chat (provided through the website that uses the Service) and such data is of relevance to the application procedure.

In some cases, existing employees can make recommendations about potential applicants. Such employees will add personal data about such potential applicants. In the cases where this is made, the potential applicant is considered a User in the context of this Privacy Policy and will be informed about the processing.

We may use information held about you in the following ways:

• to enhance content on our Site and its technical performance

• to provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes

• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, for example if you take up employment with us. If you unsuccessfully apply for a job at Chatham House, your personal information will be held for 12 months after the recruitment exercise has been completed and will then be destroyed or deleted

• to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so

• to invite you to events ran by us or our co-partners

• to administer your donations or support your fundraising, including processing Gift Aid (we do not store or otherwise process your credit or debit card details)

• to notify you about changes to our service

• to fulfil orders for goods and services

• to administer your membership

• to carry out in-house research and analysis, marketing statistics or equal opportunities monitoring

• to approach you for charitable funding where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes

• to monitor customer traffic patterns, Site usage and related Site information in order to optimize your use of our Site; data collected in this way will be aggregated and anonymized and the statistics may be shared with a reputable third-party (but it will not include any information personally identifying you)

For virtual conferences, your name, job title and company name will appear on the participant list through the official conference networking system enabling participants to connect with you during the conference.

You can opt out of your data being used for any of the Purposes of Use by accessing our preference area.

The lawful basis we rely on when processing your personal data:

The processing of data is lawful when you have given us consent. Such as for marketing activities or during the recruitment process where we may retain your information to inform you of future opportunities with us. You can manage your preferences for data collected through the recruitment process by following this link.

Our processing of your personal data is lawful because it is necessary for us to hold and use your personal data so that we can perform our obligations under the contract we have entered into with you;

Our processing of your sensitive personal data is lawful when you are applying or have taken employment with us as this information is processed in line with Employment, social security and social protection or for the Equality of Opportunity or Treatment under article 9 of the UK GDPR.

• Our processing of your personal data (including data received from third parties) is lawful because it is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by us and /or our web developers in order to keep the Site up to date, organize events and functions and provide additional services to our users from time to time.

Legitimate interest:

We may process your personal data relying on legitimate interests basis for certain business purposes which we believe will benefit not only us but also our supporters and people who we identify as potential supporters of the Institute.

Those carefully considered and specific purposes might for example include the following:

• inviting potential speakers and participants in a business / professional capacity to our meetings or events.

• engaging with individuals holding relevant policy-making positions, hand-picked experts, corporate professional individuals, journalists and those working in other relevant sectors in a business / professional capacity.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your devices when you visit our website via internet browsers. Our use of cookies is to primarily help enhance your user experience and improve the efficiency of our website.

What cookies do we use?

Essential cookies – These make our websites work and provide the basic functions of the website.

Performance cookies – Performance cookies also allow us to see if there are any technical issues on our websites and if you are experiencing any issues using our websites. We use Analytics cookies to help us understand how you use our services. They also allow us to look at usage statistics and performance.

Targeting cookies – We use these types of cookies and similar technologies to provide adverts that we think may be more relevant to your interests. This can be based on your browsing activity and is known as Online Behavioural Advertising or OBA. Cookies are placed on your browser, which remembers what websites you’ve been to. Advertising based on what you have been viewing is then displayed.

Types of cookies

If the cookie comes from our site it is a first party cookie. If it comes from another site, such as our marketing services or ad technology providers or business partners, it is a third party cookie, specifically chosen by us to provide a service, such as a more personalised visit for example from our website service providers, advertising partners and social media service providers.

How long do cookies last?

Different cookies can last for different lengths of time.

• Persistent cookies consist of a text file sent by a web server to a web browser, which will be stored by the browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). Persistent or tracking cookies are employed to store user preferences and allow to customize how we present information through site layouts or themes.

• Session cookies are used by the server to store information about user page activities only during a session and will expire when the web browser is closed.

The table below explains what cookies we use on our websites and why. These websites include:

• chathamhouse.org

• circulareconomy.earth

• americas.chathamhouse.org

• eliteperceptions.chathamhouse.org

• accelerator.chathamhouse.org

• resourcetrade.earth

For careers.chathamhouse.org please see our separate cookie notice here.

Table of cookies we use and why:

Consent to use cookies and managing cookies settings

The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are essential to the operation of the Site. Essential cookies enable core functionality such as page navigation and access to secure areas. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and they can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.

To set all other cookies, we need your permission. Consent for non-essential cookies is sought when you first access the Site and can be managed via the Cookie settings link in the footer of our Site. You can follow that link to turn these cookies off.

You can also manage which cookies you receive via your web browser. Most browsers have built in privacy settings that provide differing levels of cookie acceptance, expiration time, and disposal.  can set your browser settings not to accept cookies - please follow your browser provider’s instructions to do so.

You can find more information about cookies, including how to manage and delete them, at www.aboutcookies.org, www.allaboutcookies.org or www.civicuk.com/cookie-control/browser-settings.  However, please note that some of our Site features may not function as a result of removing cookies.

If you would like to know more about what cookies we use on our site, please get in touch.

We aim to ensure that there are appropriate physical, technical and organisational controls in place to protect your Data. Within our offices, all of our staff receive training on handling personal data, including data security.

Where we use external companies to collect or process data on our behalf, your personal data may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (‘EEA’). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff may be engaged in, among other things, the provision of support services.

The purpose for such transfers can be a combination of a number of things: the costs of data storage may be lower in countries based outside the EEA; our support teams may be based there (again, usually for reasons of cost; or one of our subsidiary companies which deal with your personal data may be based outside of the EEA.

However, we will meet our obligations under data protection legislation by ensuring that your personal data receives the level of protection equivalent to that required within the EEA because we or our service providers have entered into model EU clauses with any sub-processors we or they use based outside the EEA or such processors have established a set of binding corporate rules with its foreign subsidiaries who are based outside the EEA or the Information Commissioner has made a positive finding of adequacy in relation to the territory in which the processor or sub-processor is based and where your personal data may be processed.

We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal data is processed securely, in compliance with data protection laws and in accordance with this privacy notice.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our Site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share your password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our Site; any transmission is at your own risk.

Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security measures to prevent unauthorised access.

• We may share your personal data with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries:

  • Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs): registration number Z1808639.

  • Chatham House Enterprises Limited: registration number Z1808673.

We may also share your personal data with third parties in the following circumstances:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. In such circumstances, we will ensure that our processing of your personal data is fair and lawful and your rights and freedoms in respect of the processing of your personal data are adequately and appropriately protected.

• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Chatham House, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of terrorism, fraud protection and credit risk reduction

• We may need to use certain service providers to carry out work on our behalf such as, for example, fulfilment companies, event partners or program funders. Where we enter into a relationship with an external party that would involve the processing of your personal data on our behalf, any such arrangements will be subject to a formal agreement between Chatham House and that organization, aimed to protect the security of your data

• Hotels, airlines and travel agencies should Chatham House arrange your travel and accommodation, for example, if you are an invited guest speaker for one of our events

• When working with partners to deliver an online or physical event, registration details may be shared with event partners for the purposes of monitoring attendance.

Whenever we share your personal data with third parties, it will be done lawfully, fairly and transparently and we will ensure that your rights and freedoms in respect of the processing of your personal data are adequately and appropriately protected. We will not sell your data to any third party.

Withdrawing your consent:

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing and donation request purposes. We will always inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes and, where required, we will seek your consent.

You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by accessing our preference area.

Our Site may, from time to time, contain links to and from external websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Accessing and managing your personal information

You have the right to request a copy of your personal data by making a ‘subject access request’ under UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR) and to have any inaccuracies corrected.

You also have the following rights:

• to request us to erase your personal data

• to request us to restrict our processing of your personal data

• to object to the way in which we are processing your personal data.

Should you wish to exercise these rights, we will require you to prove your identity. To help us deal with your request in the most efficient manner, please address your request to the Data Protection Officer, Chatham House, 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE and we will respond within thirty days of receipt of your request and confirmed ID.

Alternatively, you can log a request directly using our online Subject Access Request Form.

Please provide as much information as possible about the nature of your contact with us to help us locate your records.

If you are not happy about the way in which we have processed your personal data or dealt with your request, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Complaining to the ICO

You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you think there is a problem with the way we handle your data.

We will hold your personal data on our systems for as long as is necessary to operate the service in accordance with legal requirements and tax accounting rules.

Where your information is no longer required, we will ensure it is disposed of in a secure manner.

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last reviewed and updated on 22 September 2022.

Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email.

By continuing to use our site, you shall be deemed to have accepted such changes.

If you have any questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice you can email us or write to:

Data Protection Officer
The Royal Institute of International Affairs
Chatham House
10 St James’s Square
London SW1Y 4LE