Scottish Women’s Football (SWF) is an Affiliated National Association (ANA) of the Scottish FA and is the membership organisation responsible for the governance and development of girl’s and women’s football in Scotland. We are the “controller” of the personal information provided to us by our members, spectators, volunteers and service users, collected through the Scottish FA Live system, our members’ online portal.

We take your privacy seriously and this privacy notice sets out how we will use your data, who we will share it with, how we will keep it secure and your rights as a data subject.


What we need from you – Members

When you register as a member of SWF, or renew your membership (including if you are registering or renewing on behalf of a child under the age of 16, we will ask you for the following personal information:

  • Contact details – name, address, email address and phone number
  • Date of Birth – to confirm your eligibility for competitions and coach education
  • Membership category – youth coach, senior coach, parent helper, first aider
  • Participation details – which club are you connected to
  • Equality information – gender, disability, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation
  • PVG membership number (if applicable)
  • First aid certificate number (if applicable)

What we need from you – Volunteers

When you register to volunteer with SWF, we will ask you for the following personal information:

  • Contact details – name, date of birth, address, email address and phone number
  • Participation details – which club you are connected to (if applicable)
  • Equality information – gender, disability, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation
  • PVG membership number (if applicable)

Why we need your personal information (contractual purposes) – Members

We need to collect our members’ personal information so that we can manage your membership. We will use our members’ personal information to:

  • Provide you with core member services, including regular communications by email in relation to essential membership services (including but not limited to) Annual General Meeting notices, membership renewals, membership fee information, as well as competitions, courses and event news
  • Set up your online membership account which enables you to manage your membership
  • Organise and promote competitions, courses and events to enhance your member experience If you do not provide us with all of the personal information that we need to collect then this may affect our ability to offer the above membership services and benefits.

Why we need your personal information (legitimate interests) – Members

We also process our members’ personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests to:

  • Promote and encourage participation in football by sending members’ communications and booking information for upcoming competitions, courses and events. Our competitions, courses and events may be filmed for live streaming purposes and your personal information may also be used in images captured from our competitions, courses and events, which we use for promotional education and development purposes
  • Provide competition in football by accepting and managing entries for our National competitions and checking your personal information to ensure you are entered into the correct category
  • Monitor and develop participation in football by monitoring members’ engagement and participation through our digital campaign activity and inviting our members to participate in surveys for researching and development purposes
  • Celebrate achievement in our sport by publishing results of our competitions, and inviting our members as award winners or guests to our annual awards ceremony. This includes asking our members and clubs to nominate clubs, teams and individuals for awards and shortlisting such clubs, teams and individuals to select the winner, who we will then contact by email
  • Develop and maintain our members’ qualifications, including sending email communications to members to inform you of upcoming courses, renewal requirements and verify that you have completed any mandatory training and PVG/child protection requirements
  • Respond to and communicate with members regarding your questions, comments, support needs, complaints or concerns in relation to girls’ and women’s football in Scotland.

Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact us on swf@scottish-football.com. If we agree and comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you as a member.


Why we need your personal information (legitimate interests) – Participant, Event Attendees, Service Users

When you book a place or tickets with us for and attend a course, competitions, event, match, training course etc., we need to collect your personal information so that we can honour your booking and to enable you to participate (in the course, competition, event, match, training course etc.).

Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact us on swf@scottish-football.com. If we comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you as a participant / attendee / service user.


Why we need your personal information (legitimate interests) –Volunteers

We will need to collect personal information relating to criminal convictions or alleged commission of criminal offences where you are required to complete a PVG check under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007. This information will include your PVG certificate number, PVG membership number, date of issue and any relevant information in relation to your membership of the PVG scheme.

If your PVG certificate is not clear, we will have a legitimate interest to collect references and any other applicable information to allow us to consider whether or not you can volunteer in a regulated role with children and/or vulnerable adults.

Where we process your personal information in pursuit of our legitimate interests, you have the right to object to us using your personal information for the above purposes. If you wish to object to any of the above processing, please contact us on swf@scottish-football.com. If we comply with your objection, this may affect our ability to undertake the tasks above for the benefit of you as a volunteer.


Why we need your personal information (legal obligations)

We are under a legal obligation to process certain personal information relating to our members, volunteers, players and service users etc. for the purpose of complying with our obligations under:

  • The Companies Act 2006 to maintain a register of our members, which includes our members’ name, address, the date they were admitted to membership and the date on which they ceased to be our member, and hold Annual General Meetings, including issuing notices and voting arrangements
  • The Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 to check that our coaches and volunteers are able to undertake regulated work with children and vulnerable adults
  • The Equality Act 2010, which requires us to process personal information to make reasonable adjustments where necessary

Why we need your personal information (equality monitoring requirements)

We use aggregated and anonymised reports of personal information relating to gender, disability, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation for equality monitoring purposes, enabling us to evaluate and promote equality of opportunity within our sport.


Other uses of personal information

We may ask you if we can process your personal information for additional purposes. Where we do so, we will provide you with an additional privacy notice with information on how we will use your information for these additional purposes.


Club members’ personal data

SWF member clubs provide us with personal information about their members in order to register players, purchase insurance and other member benefits. By storing and using this personal data, SWF become the “controllers” of this personal data. Clubs have a responsibility to provide their members with both the SWF Privacy Notice and their own. SWF can provide our clubs with templates of a Privacy Notice for their use, please email swf@scottish-football.com to submit your request.


Who we share your personal information with

If your personal information is included in any images or videos taken by us at our competitions, courses or events, we may share this on our website and social media channels, with media outlets, with external organisations such as the Scottish FA and the BBC for promotional and/or journalistic purposes.

We may be required to share personal information with statutory or regulatory authorities and organisations to comply with statutory obligations. Such organisations include the Health & Safety Executive, Disclosure Scotland, and Police Scotland for the purposes of safeguarding children, and UK Antidoping for the purpose of eliminating doping in our sport.

We may also share personal information with professional and legal advisors for the purpose of obtaining advice.

SWF employs third party suppliers to provide services such as (but not limited to) IT providers, Scottish FA, membership service providers, workforce and volunteers. These suppliers may process personal information on our behalf as “processors” and are subject to written contractual conditions to only process that personal information under our instructions and protect it.

In the event that we share personal information with external third parties, we only share such information strictly required for the specific purposes and take reasonable steps to ensure recipients shall only process the disclosed personal information in accordance with those purposes.


How we protect your personal information

Your personal information is stored in our membership database which is protected in a secure environment within the EU. Our own servers and email accounts are based in the UK/EU and is accessed by our staff for the purposes set out above.


How long we keep your personal information

We will only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to provide you with membership services. Unless you ask us not to, we will review and possibly delete your personal information where you have not renewed your membership with us for 6 years.

We will keep certain personal information of members for longer in order to confirm your identity, when you were a member of SWF and for how long. We need to do this to comply with the Companies Act 2006, which requires us to keep a register of members, or in the event of a claim against SWF.


You have the right to:

You can exercise any of the following rights by writing to us at Scottish Women’s Football, Hampden Park, Glasgow (G42 9DF) or by emailing swf@scottish-football.com


Your rights in relation to your personal information are:

  • You have the right to request access to the personal information that we hold about you by making a “subject access request”
  • If you believe that any of your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you have a right to request that we correct or complete your personal information
  • You have a right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information for specific purposes
  • If you wish us to delete your personal information, you may request that we do so.

Any requests received by SWF will be considered under applicable data protection legislation. If you remain dissatisfied, you have a right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk