Privacy Policy

We are Hospice UK, the charity for hospice care in the UK, working closely with our members to support their work and to advocate for and raise awareness of hospice care. Hospice UK is a registered charity (no. 1014851 in England and Wales, and no. SC041112 in Scotland) and company limited by guarantee (no. 2751549).

The registered address is Hospice House, 34-44 Britannia Street, London, WC1X 9JG. The Hospice UK Group comprises Hospice UK and its wholly owned trading subsidiary Help the Hospices Trading Limited.

For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation, the Data Protection Act 2018, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003, together referred to in this policy as the “Data Protection Rules”, the data controller is Hospice UK. We will hold and use the information you provide in accordance with the Data Protection Rules, including to supply services you have requested or products you have ordered.

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example when you register for one of our networks/communities or to receive one of our newsletters, when you contact us to make a donation, enquire about our services or apply for a job.

What information is collected from you?

We collect only the personal information we need for the purposes described in this policy. Depending on the activity, we rely on consent, contractual necessity, compliance with a legal obligation or our legitimate interests. Where we rely on legitimate interests, we balance those interests against your rights and freedoms.

Examples of the information we collect might include your contact details and information regarding your activity relating to our services, such as web statistics.

If you make a donation online or purchase something from us, your card information is not held by us; it is collected by our third party payments processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions. If you are accessing any of our services as a hospice or palliative care professional we may also collect information such as your job title and the organisation you work for.

We may use your information to:

• process a donation that you have made;
• process orders that you have submitted;
• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts made between you and us;
• seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
• notify you of changes to our services;
• send you communications that you have requested or that may be of interest to you, including information about campaigns, appeals, fundraising and professional topics. We may send electronic marketing where you have consented or where the charitable purposes soft opt-in applies. You can opt out at any time;
• process a grant or job application;
• ensure staff and volunteers have the information they need to carry out our work.

We regularly review how long we keep personal information. We retain it only for as long as necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, to meet legal or regulatory requirements, or for the period required by a relevant contract. Our retention schedule sets the applicable period for each category of information.

To make our fundraising more effective and relevant, we may use information already held in our supporter database with information from reputable public sources to understand a supporter’s interests and potential to make a significant donation.

Sources may include charity and corporate websites, annual reports, public social media accounts, the electoral register and Companies House. We may also use specialist suppliers to analyse public information and socio-economic data.

We respect communication preferences, do not make solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects through this activity, and you can object at any time by emailing Hospice UK or calling 020 7520 8200.

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for their marketing purposes, unless you explicitly opt-in to receive marketing from third parties.

We use service providers to process personal information on our behalf where necessary to deliver our services. We share only the information they need, require them by contract to follow our instructions, protect the information and comply with applicable data protection law, and do not allow them to use it for their own purposes.

We may disclose personal information where required or permitted by law, including in response to a valid request from the police, a court, a regulator or another public authority. We assess each request before disclosing information and share only what is necessary.

You can choose whether you wish to receive marketing communications from us. When we collect your contact details, we will explain whether we intend to use them for electronic marketing and provide a clear and simple way for you to opt out.

Where we ask for consent, you can choose whether to give it. Where the charitable purposes soft opt-in applies, we may send relevant communications unless you opt out. You can change your preferences or opt out at any time.

We may contact you by email, text message or other electronic message for fundraising and other direct marketing where you have given us consent or where the charitable purposes soft opt-in applies. We may rely on the soft opt-in only where the communication solely furthers one or more of Hospice UK’s charitable purposes, we obtained your contact details when you expressed an interest in or offered or provided support for those purposes, and we gave you a clear and simple opportunity to opt out when collecting your details.

Every subsequent communication will include a simple way to opt out. We will not apply the soft opt-in retrospectively where the required initial opt-out was not provided, and we will not contact you for fundraising marketing by post if you have asked us not to.

You can change your communication preferences at any time by emailing Hospice UK, or by contacting us on 020 7520 8200.

If you are an employee or trustee of a hospice or other organisation that is a Hospice UK member or subscriber, we may use your work contact details to send information relevant to your role and your organisation’s membership. You can opt out at any time by emailing Hospice UK or calling 020 7520 8200.

All information you provide to us is stored securely. Any payment transactions will be encrypted. 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 a password with anyone.

Hospice UK employees and representatives will be responsible for ensuring that all proper and appropriate data care procedures are fully and conscientiously followed.

We take appropriate steps to protect personal information when it is transmitted to and stored by us. However, no internet transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against accidental or unlawful loss, disclosure, alteration, destruction or access. Access is limited to staff, volunteers and suppliers who need the information for their work and who are subject to appropriate confidentiality and security requirements.

You have rights over your personal information, including rights to access it, correct inaccurate information, request erasure or restriction, object to processing, receive certain information in a portable format and withdraw consent where we rely on it.

These rights are subject to legal conditions and exemptions. To exercise a right, please email Hospice UK or call 020 7520 8200. You may also complain to us using these contact details or to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

A cookie is a text-only string of information that a website transfers to the cookie file of the browser on your computer's hard disk so that the website can remember who you are.

We use cookies and similar technologies to operate secure areas of our websites, remember choices, understand how our websites are used and improve their functionality. Some technologies are essential and do not require consent; we use non-essential technologies only where consent or another applicable PECR exemption permits us to do so.

You can manage your choices through our cookie settings and find details of each technology, its purpose and duration on our cookies page.

We provide a tool called PopNAT (Population-based needs assessment tool) that has been created to support hospices, local decision makers and other service providers across health and social care to plan for the future, identify unmet need and to innovate services based on intelligence about the end of life and palliative care needs of the local population.


When you use PopNAT we do not know who you are. We do know your IP address. It is sometimes possible to identify a person from their IP address, but we do not and will not attempt to do this.

We log users’ actions so that we can improve the service and fix errors. Errors can sometimes occur because of a particular sequence of actions; by keeping the data we improve our chances of spotting such sequences. We keep such data for up to twelve weeks after which time it is unlikely to assist in error fixing, and it is either deleted or the IP address anonymised. After this time we no longer have your IP address.

Hospice UK often provides links to, and utilises websites run by other organisations. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other websites even if you access them using links from Hospice UK.

Our websites and services are not generally directed at children. If you are under 18 and provide personal information, we may take additional steps to confirm that its use is fair and appropriate and, where required, obtain consent from a parent or guardian.

Some of our suppliers may process personal information outside the UK. Where this results in a restricted transfer, we use a lawful transfer mechanism, such as UK adequacy regulations, approved contractual safeguards or an applicable legal exception, and take additional measures where required. Contact Hospice UK by email if you would like more information about the safeguards used.

We may make changes to this privacy policy from time to time. If we make any changes, we will publish them on this page. Please revisit this policy when you provide Hospice UK with personal information. This policy was last updated in October 2026 to reflect changes introduced by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, including the charitable purposes soft opt-in.

For questions or complaints about how Hospice UK uses your personal information, contact us at Hospice UK, Hospice House, 34-44 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JG, email Hospice UK or call 020 7520 8200.