The British Menopause Society (“BMS”, “we”, “our”, “us”) is committed to keeping your personal information safe and meeting our responsibilities under privacy law. Given that your personal information can be used to identify you, we want you to be confident that we are using it responsibly.
This Privacy Policy gives you detailed information on why and when we collect your personal information when you use our websites (including thebms.org.uk; ecommerce.thebms.org.uk; mylearning.thebms.org.uk; womens-health-concern.org; bms-whc.org.uk) and other services, how we use your personal information, how we keep it secure, and how you can let us know if you would like us to change how we manage it.
If you are accessing the Members’ forum more details about the forum’s privacy policy are available in the Guidelines on using the Members’ forum in the Members’ area.
- Who we are
- What personal information we may hold about you
- Where we obtain your personal information
- How we use your personal information
- Our lawful bases
- Retaining your personal information
- How we share your personal information
- International data transfers
- How we keep your personal information safe
- Your rights
- Other websites
- Cookies
- Updates
- Contact us
1. Who we are
BMS is a charity with the following charitable objects: advancing education about the menopause, facilitating the study of the menopause, promoting high standards of training for those working in the field, and relieving women suffering from gynaecological disorders. Our registered charity number is 1015144 and our registered company number is 2759439.
If you have questions regarding your personal information or its use, please contact us using the details set out in the Contact us section below.
2. What personal information we may hold about you
Personal information is any information that relates to an individual. It does not include information where the identity of the individual has been fully and effectively removed (anonymous data).
We collect the following personal information about you:
- Identity and contact details (e.g. name, address, email and telephone number)
- Login details (username)
- Information about the services you use
- Information about your devices and the technology you use
- Information about any purchases or financial transactions you make
- Financial information, such as payment card details and billing address.
- Information about any marketing contact preferences you give
- If you are a member of BMS or a BMS menopause specialist, information related to your membership or specialist registration
- Information you provide in contact forms (including meeting registrations, purchases and media enquiries)
- Information you share in the Members’ forum (including questions and replies you post)
- If you are a BMS menopause specialist, your location details and other information relating to your registration to be used in our BMS website search feature
- Any other information you share with us
- Information about you shared by third parties, such as your activities as a member of BMS or as a BMS menopause specialist.
If you contact us, for example to provide your feedback, we may keep a record of that feedback and correspondence, as well as your name and contact details.
When you access our websites, we also collect information about your computer, including, where available, your IP address, operating system, and browser type. We do this for system administration purposes, including to analyse trends and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use so that we can improve the site, and deliver customised, personalised content. We use security plugins and some data (including username, IP address, hostname, geographical location) is temporarily stored in security logs on the server and/or sent via email to alert the website administrator of critical problems or suspicious activities on the website.
Sensitive Personal information
Under data protection legislation, certain personal information is considered more ‘sensitive’ (e.g., information relating to race, religion, political affiliation and health). This is also known as ‘special category data’. We do not typically collect special category data in the course of day-to-day activities.
3. Where we obtain your personal information
We collect and retain personal information about you that you have given us in different ways, for example where you:
- create an account with us;
- place an order for goods or services, such as when you register for a course, meeting or conference
- apply for membership or other BMS services
- make a donation;
- complete a survey;
- use our websites;
- subscribe to our mailing lists;
- attend an event; or
- communicate with us via email, phone, in person or by post;
We may collect personal information about you from third parties, including:
- where you have told a third party you are happy to share your data;
- from publicly available sources; or
- if you are a member of BMS, we sometimes receive information about you from third parties outside BMS, such as members of the public or staff or members of a third-party organisation.
4. How we use your personal information
We may use your personal information where we:
- Contact you with important information relating to an event that you’ve booked
- Enable you to make use of our services
- Administer your membership and BMS menopause specialist registration
- Facilitate any transactions you wish to make with us, including purchase of our services and donations
- Send you updates and information about BMS and our events, or other services that we think might be of interest to you.
- Learn from your experience and feedback to develop our work
- Analyse and report on the impact and effectiveness of our work
- Administer the election of BMS Medical Advisory Council members
- Keep our database accurate, relevant and up to date
- Respond to your requests, including refunds, complaints and media enquiries
- Prevent fraud
- Track events and activity on the websites and monitor security and functionality. We have implemented reCAPTCHA v3 on our site as spam protection.
- Comply with our legal obligations
We will not sell, distribute or disclose your information to third parties.
5. Our lawful bases
We will only use personal information when the law allows us to (i.e., where we have a ‘lawful basis’). Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. For example, we have a legitimate interest in promoting our charitable objects (which involves advancing education about the menopause, facilitating the study of the menopause, promoting high standards of training for those working in the field, and relieving suffering from gynaecological disorders);
- Where it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you;
- Where it is necessary to comply with our legal obligations (for example, reporting to HM Revenue and Customs, Companies House or the Charity Commission);
- Where it is in someone’s vital interests (e.g. in case of a medical emergency at an event).
In some circumstances, we may ask for your consent to use your personal information for a specific purpose. In particular, we may obtain your consent before we send you any email marketing, newsletters or other communications about topics and events which we think might interest you. This may be regarding new research, BMS educational meetings and activities, and other BMS products and services.
You may unsubscribe from our email communications by following the instructions in any email that we send you, or you can withdraw your consent and request us to remove your personal information at any time by emailing us at admin@bms-whc.org.uk.
We do not carry out any automated decision-making using personal information which produces legal effects or otherwise significantly affects individuals.
6. Retaining your personal information
We will not keep personal data for longer than necessary for the purpose for which the data is processed. Once records containing personal data are no longer required, they will be securely destroyed. Please contact us at admin@bms-whc.org.uk for more details on our data retention policy.
To dispose of personal data, BMS will delete, shred or otherwise destroy the data. Any documents that contain sensitive or confidential information (and particularly sensitive personal data) will be disposed of as confidential waste and will be subject to secure electronic deletion.
You can also see, edit, or delete your personal information in your user profile for our log in services (Members’ and MyLearning areas) at any time (except that you cannot change your username).
7. How we share your personal information
We may share your personal information with others, including the following:
- members of the BMS board of trustees;
- members of the BMS medical advisory council;
- staff of BMS;
- contractors, suppliers, or other third parties that provide services on our behalf (such as IT and website service providers and payment service providers);
- as part of a sale, merger or acquisition, or other transfer of all or part of our assets including as part of a bankruptcy proceeding;
- pursuant to a subpoena, court order, or other legal process or as otherwise required or requested by law, regulation, or government authority programmes, or to protect our rights or the rights or safety of third parties;
- with our professional advisors such as lawyers, accountants and auditors; or
- any other third parties with your consent or as otherwise disclosed at the time of data collection or sharing (for example, with exhibitors at our educational events so that they can contact you directly to share information about their products or services).
8. International data transfers
BMS websites are hosted in the UK and we typically process your personal information within the UK. However, we may sometimes transfer your personal information outside the UK, for example when we use data centres located outside the UK to store your personal information. If we do so, we will take steps to ensure that your personal information is protected in accordance with appropriate safeguards. In particular, we will rely on standard data protection clauses to protect your personal information.
9. How we keep your personal information safe
To protect your privacy we will make sure your personal information is kept securely and disclosed only to relevant organisations or representatives who need to access it to perform their roles. While we seek to use appropriate organisational, technical and administrative measures to protect personal information within our organisation, unfortunately no data transmission or storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the Contact us section below.
10. Your rights
You have rights relating to your personal information. You may have a right to the following:
- to request access to the personal information we hold about you;
- to request that we rectify or erase your personal information;
- to request that we restrict the processing of your personal information;
- to object to our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances;
- under certain circumstances, to ask us to port personal information about you that you have provided to us to you or to a third party; and
- where we previously obtained your consent, to withdraw consent to processing your personal information.
To exercise these rights, contact us via the Contact us section below. Please be aware that we may be unable to provide these rights to you under certain circumstances, for example if we are legally prevented from doing so or can rely on exemptions.
Additionally, you have the right to lodge a complaint against us, which you can do by contacting the supervisory authority in your country of residence. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk/concerns.
11. Other websites
Our websites contain links to other websites. Please note that when you click on one of these links, you are entering another website for which we have no responsibility (even if you access the website via a link to one of our websites). We encourage you to read the privacy policies on all such websites.
12. Cookies
Our websites use cookies to enhance your experience while using those sites. Cookies are pieces of information that some websites transfer to the computer or device that is browsing that website and are used for record-keeping purposes at many websites. For further details about our use of cookies, please see our Cookie Policies – BMS website and WHC website.
13. Updates
This Policy may change from time to time – for example, to take into account changes at BMS or to reflect changes in regulation or legislation.
Updates to this Policy will be posted on this page – please check back from time to time. We will also use reasonable efforts to inform you of any significant changes by email where appropriate.
14. Contact us
If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or the way in which we handle your personal information, please email admin@bms-whc.org.uk.
You can also contact us at the following address:
British Menopause Society
First Floor, Spracklen House
Dukes Place
Marlow
Buckinghamshire
SL7 2QH
Privacy policy updated 9 April 2026