Privacy Policy

1. Welcome to the Young Rail Professionals (YRP) privacy notice. This covers our members, but also some non-member partners such as Rail Week contributors and subscribers.
2. Membership to the Young Rail Professionals is activated through submission of a membership application on our website and terminated either by deletion of a membership profile on our website, or by email request to the Chief Technical Officer (cto@youngrailpro.com).
3. When non-members subscribe to a YRP event or mailing list or submit data in support of a YRP sponsored activity, they are classified as a YRP partner. We afford YRP partners the same privacy policy and commitment to data protection as our members.
4. We respect your privacy and are committed to protecting your personal information, which we shall call "personal data". This privacy notice will tell you how we look after your personal data and about your privacy rights. It supplements any other notices and is not intended to override them.

Who We Are

5. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (www.ico.org.uk). We would appreciate the chance to address your concerns first.

Changes

6. This version was last updated on 17/03/2026 and historic versions can be obtained by contacting us.
7. If you wish to keep your YRP information up to date then you can do so using the "edit profile" service on the YRP members website. Alternatively you can email the Data Protection Officer (DPO) to update the information on your behalf.

How We Collect Your Personal Data

8. We collect personal data when:
   • You submit your application to become a YRP member through our website.
   • You change your personal details or preferences via our website or by email to the DPO.
   • You subscribe to an event, mailing list, or activity as a non-member partner.
   • You submit to us a survey or feedback form by email, post or Microsoft Form, unless the survey is anonymised.
   • You submit an expense claim through YRP's expenses system.
   • You attend a YRP event.

What Personal Data Do We Collect?

9. Below we have listed the data we hold on all YRP members, and data we may optionally hold:

Personal Data

Professional Data

Sensitive Personal Data

We collect the following types of more sensitive personal information for diversity monitoring to ensure that YRP is accessible to everyone. Diversity monitoring data is never made accessible to YRP members and is restricted to select YRP Committee Members.

10. When you attend a YRP Webinar, it may be recorded and shared with the attendees and wider YRP community, including on the public YRP website and Social Media platforms. Any verbal or publicly written communication can be captured and shared in this recording. If you would prefer not to be included in the recording, please let the organiser know in writing prior to the event, otherwise we will take acceptance to participate/attend as acceptance of these terms.
11. When you attend a YRP event, we may take photos for marketing and promoting YRP. Please let the organiser of the event know in advance if you do not wish for your photo to be used.

Posts on YRP Website and Social Media Platforms

12. When you post information, photographs and upload files on YRP's Website or Social Media platforms, or comment on an article, the information you post may be publicly accessible. This information can be viewed online and collected by other people. We are not responsible for the way these other people use this information.
13. We strongly recommend you avoid sharing any personal details and confidential information that is the property of your employer, and especially information that can be used to identify you directly such as your name, age, address and name of employer. We are not responsible for the privacy of any identifiable information that you post on our online platforms.

How We Use Your Personal Data

14. We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to.
15. We have set out below how and why we plan to use your personal data:

Promotional Offers from Us

16. We will use your personal data to form a view on what we think you may want or need, or what may be of interest to you.
17. Material may be provided by our marketing department by a third party, for instance an academic institution or conference provider, but will always be reviewed and sent from a YRP email address.

Other Marketing

18. We will never share your personal data with a third party for marketing purposes.

Opting Out

19. To stop receiving material from us you can terminate your membership at any time by emailing cto@youngrailpro.com.

Cookies

20. 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. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the "lifetime" of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.
21. We use cookies in the following ways:
    1. To help us recognise you as a unique visitor (just a number) when you return to our website and to allow us to tailor content or advertisements to match your preferred interests;
    2. To track user traffic patterns to see how effective our navigational structure is in helping users reach that information and to help us ensure that its structure is workable; and
    3. To compile anonymous, aggregated statistics that allow us to determine the usefulness of our Website information.
22. You cannot be identified personally from a cookie. Cookies cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites.
23. You have the ability to accept or reject cookies by modifying the settings in your browser when it alerts you to its presence. To change your cookie settings within your Internet Explorer or to reject or request permission for cookies, click on Tools/Internet Options/Privacy. More information about cookies, including how to block them and/or delete them, can be found at AboutCookies.org.
24. You do not need to have cookies turned on to use or navigate through many parts of our Website, however this may limit some of the functions available on the Website and you may not be able to use all the interactive features.

Change of Purpose

25. Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.
26. However, if we need to use your personal data for a new purpose and the law allows us to do so, we will notify you and explain the legal basis for our actions.

Third-Party Links

27. Our website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our Website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.

Disclosure of Your Personal Data

28. We never share your personal data with third parties.

International Transfers

29. The data that we collect from you 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 fulfilment of your order, the processing of your payment details, and the provision of support services. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing, or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Data Security

30. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those YRP committee members or third parties (for example, our web engineer contractors) who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
31. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

How Long Will We Use Your Personal Data For?

32. We will hold your information for the length of your membership plus our standardised archiving rule — our archiving rules have been built in line to satisfy legal, accounting and external reporting requirements.
33. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data, and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
34. You can ask us about the retention periods for different aspects of your personal data by contacting our Data Protection Officer (dpo@youngrailpro.com).
35. In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

Your Legal Rights

36. You have the right to:
    • Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
    • Request correction of the personal data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you be corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
    • Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to object to processing, where we may have processed your information unlawfully, or where we are required to erase your personal data to comply with local law.
    • Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal data for direct marketing purposes.
    • Request restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it; where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise, or defend legal claims; or you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
    • Request the transfer of your personal data to you or to a third-party. We will provide to you, or a third-party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
    • Withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your personal data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally, it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex, or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (www.ico.org.uk). We would appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns first.