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Privacy Notice

This privacy notice tells you how we use and look after the personal information you give us. This includes the information you provide when you make a booking with us or use our services, the choices you have about our communications with you and the marketing offers you want to receive. This notice tells you about the privacy rights you have.

1.0 Who we are

1.1 Your information will be held by Recreational Sporting Ltd.

1.2 References to “our website” in this Privacy Notice are to www.playfootball.net , and other subdomains including but not limited to portal.playfootball.net

1.3 You may contact our privacy officer by emailing [email protected] or by writing to: Privacy Officer, PlayFootball, Building 2, Guildford Business Park, Guildford Business Park Road, Guildford, GU2 8JZ

2.0 What the Data Protection law says

2.1 PlayFootball can only use the personal information that you share with us if we have a valid lawful reason to do so.

These are the reasons that we use your personal data:

  • When we are fulfilling a contract with you (for example, when you are making a booking with us or come to use one of our services)
  • When it is our legal duty for business reasons (for example, to keep records of our sales for our accounts)
  • When it is our legal duty for operational, health and safety and safeguarding reasons (for example, for our accident reporting procedures and to comply with safeguarding legislation)
  • When it is in your vital interests (for example, if we need to share medical or contact information with the emergency services should you have a serious accident whilst playing football or using our services)
  • When it is in our legitimate interests (for example, record keeping consistent with operating a leisure business and feedback to help us improve our services)
  • When you have consented to it (for example, so that we can send you details of offers or promotions)

3.0 What are the PlayFootball services?

3.1 We refer to services; we mean the things you can do when you come to a PlayFootball venue or join a league. We offer:

  • Football and futsal leagues and tournaments
  • A ringer service (players who are available to join teams on an ad-hoc basis)
  • Block and casual booking of pitches
  • Pay and play football
  • Football Camps
  • Coaching
  • Children parties
  • Venue hire for events
  • Further onsite activities such as Zorbing and Trampolining
  • Public internet access
  • Education campus activities
  • Corporate events and meetings

4.0 What personal data to we collect and why?

4.1 When booking services:

  • When you purchase services from us, we ask you for your name, your contact telephone number and your email address. We use your information to manage your booking, handle your enquiries and prepare our sites and staff ready for your booking
  • If you pay by credit or debit card, we take that information and pass it to a third-party payment processor to complete the payment. We do not store credit or debit card details in our systems.
  • If you choose to pay for an ongoing service by credit or debit card, we use a facility provided by a third-party subscription processor to take those future payments when required

4.2 When booking Junior Activities:

  • We take parent or guardian’s contact details of children who attend a junior activity. We take the child’s name and date of birth. When you attend we will ask you to supply some medical information about your child. We require this medical information for Health and Safety purposes. We will store your contact details to confirm your booking with us

4.3 When attending Junior Activity:

  • We take parent or guardian’s contact details of children who attend a Junior activity. We take the child’s name and date of birth. When you attend we will ask you to supply some medical information about your child. We require this medical information for Health and Safety purposes

4.4 When applying for a Community membership:

  • We take a parent or guardian’s contact details of children who are applying for a Community membership. We take the child’s name, address, date of birth and a photo. We will store both these contact details in a closed system to confirm your membership with us

4.5 When attending a Community session:

  • We ask to see the child’s Community membership card before allowing them onto the pitches
  • On the card is the child’s name, photo, school year and child’s postcode. Once this has been verified, we allow them onto the pitches

4.6 When participating in a PlayFootball league:

  • If you join one of our leagues, we use your information to help operate the teams within the league. This includes keeping track of who is in each team, acquiring player contact details, recording who has scored in league games and to enable our referees to report disciplinary offences to the Football Association (FA) when required by FA rules

4.7 CCTV:

  • Our partner venues may have CCTV to help keep you safe on site. Where they do, there will be CCTV notices clearly displayed at the venues. CCTV footage may be passed to law enforcement agencies and used to investigate crimes or anti-social behaviour. CCTV footage is destroyed no later than 30 days provided there have been no reported incidents which require investigation. CCTV footage may be destroyed prior to 30 days dependant on local storage resource availability. If there are incidents requiring investigation the data will be kept for a minimum of 3 years.

4.8 IP Address:

  • This is a string of numbers unique to your internet connection that is recorded by our webserver when you request any page or component on the website. We use this to monitor your usage of the website so that we can check which parts of the website are working the best, and work out how to improve our service to you.

4.9 For marketing purposes:

  • Whenever you contact us, we will ask you whether you would like to receive details of offers and promotions from us or from selected PlayFootball partners. If you consent to this, we will use this information to tailor offers we believe are appropriate to the services you have used.
  • Sometimes we put in place broadcast, filming, photography and/or recording equipment at the Centres. We only take pictures of players who play on block booked pitches or who play in league teams or have given consent to being recorded via contract or consent. If there is a photographer on site they will ask whether you consent to having your photo taken. Sometimes this is displayed as a ‘consent to photography notice’. These photographs are used in PlayFootball marketing promotions.

4.10 We do not:

  • Use the information you provide to make any automated decisions or profiling that might affect you
  • Sell your data.

4.11 AI Customer Service:

  • When you enquire to join a PlayFootball league your details will be shared with our UK-based AI service provider. This is to provide you with an enhanced customer service experience, enabling us to respond to you swiftly and efficiently.
  • You can read below to find out more details.

4.12 When working with Venue Partners:

We work with a number of venue partners (each a “Principal Partner”) to deliver pitch bookings and related services on their behalf. In these cases, we act as a disclosed agent and the data controller for any personal data you provide to us.

We may share limited personal data with the Principal to enable them to manage your booking, support the delivery of services at the venue, or monitor financial performance. This sharing is carried out on the basis of our legitimate interests and/or to fulfil our contract with you. The Principal is a separate data controller and is responsible for their own use of your personal data.

Principals may combine this data with other information they already hold about you and may contact you for service-related purposes. They may also contact you for marketing purposes, but only if you have given your consent directly to them.

See Appendix A for a current list of our data partners and the nature of our relationship with each. For more information on how each Principal uses your data, please refer to their privacy policies or contact them directly.

4.13 When working with Joint Controller Partners:

In some cases, we work in partnership with other organisations (each a “Principal Partner”) to provide services at specific venues. Where we and our partner jointly determine the purposes and means of processing your personal data — for example, to manage bookings, collect payments or administer customer communications — we act as joint controllers under data protection law.

These arrangements are governed by agreements that define each party’s responsibilities for compliance. While we typically take the lead in collecting and managing your data, our partner may also use the data for their own operational, reporting or service delivery purposes.

Both parties remain independently responsible for complying with applicable data protection laws. You can exercise your data rights against either party.

See Appendix A for a current list of our data partners and the nature of our relationship with each. For more information on how each Principal uses your data, please refer to their privacy policies or contact them directly.

Appendix A – Data Partners and Controller Relationships

We work with the following venue partners (each a “Principal Partner”) to deliver services. Our relationship with each partner is outlined below:

Name Relationship Type Partner Privacy Policy
Better Joint Controller View Here
CIC Garon Park Joint Controller View Here
Roko Health Clubs Ltd (York) Independent Controller View Here
Indoor Football Ltd (Preston) Independent Controller View Here
Halo Leisure Joint Controller View Here
Fusion Leisure Independent Controller View Here
Griffin Primary School Independent Controller View Here
Seven Capital Independent Controller View Here
Freedom Leisure Independent Controller View Here
Abbeycroft Leisure Joint Controller View Here
More Leisure Community Trust Joint Controller View Here
Vision RCL Joint Controller View Here
Tower Hamlets Joint Controller View Here
South Downs Leisure Joint Controller View Here
School Hire Solutions Joint Controller View Here
Kirklees Active Leisure Joint Controller View Here
Active Stirling Joint Controller View Here
EverLast Independent Controller View Here
Everyone Active Independent Controller View Here

5.0 Data Sharing with Third-Party AI Services

To enhance customer service and respond quickly to your inquiries, we share limited personal data with Ambitions Web Ltd, our UK-based AI service provider, for automated follow-ups and support. Here’s how it works:

5.1 What We Share: Your name, email address, phone number, and inquiry details (e.g., booking requests or questions about PlayFootball services).

5.2 How It’s Used: Ambitions Web Ltd uses this data to contact you via phone, SMS, or email through their AI system (powered by RetellAI). The AI may ask for more details to assist you, transfer you to a human PlayFootball agent if needed, or help finalise a booking/sale.

5.3 Who It’s Shared With: Ambitions Web Ltd manages the service, using GoHighLevel (CRM) and Make.com (automation) alongside RetellAI. These tools may process data in the US, protected by the UK-US Data Bridge to meet UK GDPR standards. We don’t share your data for marketing or unrelated purposes.

5.4 Safeguards: Data is encrypted during transfer (TLS 1.2) and storage (AES-256), and access is limited to authorised staff. We will not use your data to train AI models unless you explicitly agree—we will contact you separately for that.

5.5 Retention: We keep your data only as long as necessary to respond to your inquiry or as per our booking terms. Ambitions Web Ltd. deletes it within 6 months unless we instruct otherwise.

5.6 Your Choices: Opt out of AI contact by replying 'STOP' to SMS, clicking 'unsubscribe' in emails, or emailing [email protected]. Request your data, corrections, or deletion at the same email—we’ll reply within 30 days. Ask for a human agent anytime during an AI interaction.

5.7 Legal Basis: We use this data with your consent (e.g., via form submissions) or our legitimate interest in efficient service delivery—you can withdraw consent anytime using the options above.

5.8 Contact Us: Questions? Email us on [email protected] or link to click here to raise a ticket which we will pick up.

6.0 What do we do with your personal information?

6.1 Your information is stored in our systems which are based within the European Union.

6.2 We use an international third-party payment processor for credit and debit card payments, who is based in the USA and certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

6.3 We use an international third-party subscription processor for scheduled credit and debit card payments, which is based in the USA and certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

6.4 We use an international third-party payment processor for automated credit and debit card payments, which is based in the USA and certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

7.0 How long do we keep your personal information for?

We keep your information only for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which we obtained it.

Information that is no longer needed is destroyed securely.

7.1 When booking services:

  • When you book a service with us, we retain that data until the service is fulfilled plus three years to deal with any queries or claims thereafter.
  • We keep records of financial transactions for seven years to meet our obligations to HMRC.
  • In relation to any information where we reasonably believe it will be necessary to defend or prosecute or make a claim against you, us or a third party, we may retain that data for as long as that claim could be pursued.

7.2 When participating in a PlayFootball league:

  • We keep records of players participating in our league until the league is over, plus three years to deal with queries and to facilitate organising subsequent leagues.
  • We keep league agreements for six years because they are classified as financial documents.
  • We retain details of FA disciplinary offences (red cards) for three years after the event.

7.3 When attending Junior Activities:

  • We retain participant and their parent or guardian’s contact details for three years after the activity. This is in case of any claims relating to the activity.

7.4 When attending a community session:

  • We retain participant and their parent or guardian’s contact details for three years after the activity. This is in case of any claims relating to the activity.

7.5 When attending a Zorb Activity:

  • When participating in a Zorbing activity with us, we retain that information until the service is fulfilled plus three years to deal with any queries or claims thereafter.

7.6 For marketing purposes:

  • If you tell us you wish to receive details of marketing offers and promotions, you have the right to remove or modify this consent at any point. We make it easy for you to change your preferences by reminding you how every time we contact you.
  • If we don’t hear from you again or you don’t book a service after two years we remove your data from our marketing database

8.0 WHO DO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH?

PlayFootball manages pitches and venues owned by other parties, often local authorities. We will share some of your personal information with these parties when required to do so for Health and Safety reasons.

8.1 We provide pitch booking services on behalf of:

  • Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL), who operate sports and leisure facilities for local authorities under the “Better” brand.
    • Garon Park Community Interest Company.
  • Roko Health Clubs Ltd.
  • Seven Capital (Swindon) Limited
  • Indoor Football Ltd.
  • Griffin Primary School.
  • Halo Leisure Services Ltd.
  • Active Life Limited.
  • Schools Plus Limited.
  • Wealden Leisure Limited (T/A Freedom Leisure).
  • Abbeycroft Leisure.
  • Fusion Lifestyle.
  • More Leisure Community Trust.
  • Vision Redbridge Culture & Leisure.
  • The London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
  • South Downs Leisure.
  • School Hire Solutions.
  • Kirklees Active Leisure.
  • Active Stirling.

When a pitch booking is made under a GLL venue, PlayFootball and GLL act as joint data controllers for the customer(s) connected to the booking. Booking information may be shared with our Partner for the following purposes:

  • Delivery of the booked service (personally information).
  • Participation reporting and insights (pseudonymized data).
  • Regulatory financial obligations (financial data).
  • Legal obligations (personal contact, financial and any other relevant data).

Our Partners may have additional data sharing arrangements and You are advised to review the Partners’ own Terms and Conditions available on the links provided at the time of booking.

If our agreement to provide booking agent services to a Partner terminates, or a specific venue is removed from the partnership agreement then data necessary to service any future booked services will be transferred to the Partner. The Partner in turn may, have additional obligations to share data with the venue owner, for example the Local Authority.

8.2 We work in partnership with The FA to grow girls and women’s football nationally. The initiative we work on is FA Wildcats. As part of this programme we share information with The FA, this includes child’s name and date of birth and contact information.

8.3 From time to time we may work with a third-party booking agent to deliver casual bookings. We do not share your personal information with the third-party booking agent.

8.4 If you take part in a PlayFootball league, PlayFootball will share your name and telephone number with our FA accredited referees. Some of these are independent from us and work for us on contract.

8.5 PlayFootball use booking system software provided by a 3rd party service provider. All data is held on PlayFootball servers and encrypted at rest. Data may be transferred to our service provider for backup and support purposes. The access and use of this data is strictly controlled by a Data Protection Agreement in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR.

8.6 PlayFootball may from time to time provide limited data access to carefully selected service providers in order that we may improve and develop the services we provide to you. Any data access and data usage will be strictly governed by a suitable Data Protection Agreement in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK GDPR. Service providers will not be permitted to use any data they have been granted access to, except for the express purpose for which they have been granted access and only for as long as the service provider requires access. The service provider will not be permitted to use or retain any data beyond the end of the period for which they were required to provide service.

9.0 Rights over your personal information

9.1 By law, you have the following rights:

  • You can ask us what information we hold about you and you can ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate. We will respond to you within 30 days
  • You can ask us to give you a copy of the information
  • You can ask us to stop using your information if you believe we are not doing so lawfully
  • You can ask us to erase your information provided we do not need to keep it for overriding regulatory, contractual, health and safety purposes, or for our legitimate interests such as defending a personal injury claim

9.2 If you would like to request a copy of any information that we currently hold about you, please send your contact details including address to: Privacy Officer, PlayFootball, Building 2, Guildford Business Park, Guildford Business Park Road, Guildford, GU2 8JZ

10.0 Your right to complain

10.1 If you have a complaint about our use of your information, please do get in touch with us. Let us know the details of your complaint, plus your contact details including address by writing to us at the address below or by emailing: [email protected]

10.2 You may also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about our use of your personal data. You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office via their website at www.ico.org.uk/concerns or write to them at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

11.0 Document Control

11.1 This Privacy Notice will be formally reviewed on an annual basis, as a minimum, or if required changes are identified to address one or more of the following:

A change in business activities, which will or could possibly affect the organisation’s ability to fully comply with GDPR and other related data protection requirements

A change in the way in which the Company manages personal data, or specifically the activities related to data processing which are outsourced to third party data processors

A change in data protection regulations or associated legislative requirements related to the use of third party data processors, or the legal bases for their engagement

An identified shortcoming in the effectiveness of this Procedure for example as a result of a data breach, Supervisory Authority investigation, formal review or an audit finding

The current version of this Procedure, together with its previous versions, shall be recorded below.

Version Description
1 Date Live 5th April 2018
2 Date Live 24th May 2018
3 Date Live 13th December 2018
4 Date Live 10th January 2019
5 Date Live 4th February 2019
6 Date Live 5th February 2019
7 Date Live 18th October 2024

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