AHDB privacy notice

This Privacy notice describes how the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) collects, uses, processes and stores the personal information that we collect.  

Date of last revision: 26 February 2026

At AHDB we take the privacy and security of your personal information very seriously. We will never sell your information to third parties, and the sensitive business information you provide will be treated as ‘commercial in confidence’ by us.

We commit to protect and respect any personal information you share with us, or that we legitimately get about you from other organisations. We will be clear when we collect your information to not do anything you wouldn’t reasonably expect.

This Privacy notice only applies to AHDB’s activities and any personal information that we collect through our websites.   

Where links are provided from our websites to third party websites or partnership websites, AHDB is not responsible for those websites and a link to them does not imply endorsement.   

This Privacy notice shall be governed by the laws of England and Wales.

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) is a statutory UK levy board set up by Parliament. We are funded through a levy paid by farmers, growers and others in the supply chain. Our headquarters is in Coventry, United Kingdom.

Our purpose is to equip levy payers with independent, evidence-based information and tools that help their business to grow and become more competitive and sustainable. Established in 2008 and classified as a Non-Departmental Public Body, we support meat and livestock (cattle, sheep and pigs) in England and cereals and oilseeds in the UK.

If you have a query and you think you know the team or person you want to contact, visit ahdb.org.uk/contact-us

Alternatively you can contact us at: Data Protection Officer (DPO), AHDB, Middlemarch Business Park, Siskin Parkway East, Coventry, CV3 4PE or email data.protection@ahdb.org.uk  

The independent supervisory authority in the UK to uphold information rights is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

‘Personal information’ is information that identifies you as an individual or relates to an identifiable individual. Personal information we may collect through our levy returns, event booking and feedback forms, sign-up forms, surveys, websites, competitions, public databases and third parties includes:  

• Your title, first name, surname, business name, postal address and postcode, email address, telephone and mobile numbers
• Your social media handles
• Levy payer bank/direct debit details
• Supplier bank details
• Field locations and ownership
• Information regarding your dealings with us, including details of your attendance at events and engagement with our programmes
• Any preference you have in relation to our publications and services
• Any information you may voluntarily submit to us by completing any paper or web-based form or job application
• Details of your visits to and usage of our websites
• Details of whether you have opened our emails, clicked on a link or watched our videos
• Membership of panels, committees, bodies and organisations
• In some instances, we may also request date of birth and demographic information

At AHDB we collect and use personal information for the purpose of delivering the statutory functions bestowed on us by Parliament under the AHDB Order 2008 No.576.

These statutory functions are to collect levies and to use the funds to improve the competitiveness and sustainability of the agriculture and horticulture industries through research, knowledge exchange, skills development, production of market information and statistics, export and domestic market development.   

If we were unable to contact and communicate with our levy payers and other industry stakeholders, we would be unable to fulfil our statutory functions.  

See below for how we use the personal information we collect.

• For statutory levy collection, verification and audit purposes
• To enable AHDB to carry out research on behalf of the industry
• To contact our stakeholders to inform about ways in which they can engage with and benefit from research, knowledge exchange, skills development, benchmarking, statistics, sustainability and market development activity
• To contact our stakeholders to explain how the levy is being spent
• To issue disease and related alerts
• To contact industry organisations to collaborate and work in partnership on projects and to keep them informed on progress with projects and innovations which affect the industry
• We may use the information you give us along with details about the publications you order or download, your attendance at events and the products and services you use, as well as data from other appropriate third parties, to help us make our information, services and communications more relevant for you
• To identify usage trends on our websites and social media channels to enhance, improve or modify our websites and to facilitate your participation in interactive features you may choose to use on our websites and social media; also to personalise your user experience by presenting content tailored to you
• We produce aggregated and anonymised reports to enable the industry to make better trading and business planning decisions. For example, market reports on planted areas; on area by variety and on average livestock prices. The aggregated information will also be used in the calculation of national production, yield and stock estimates

• To provide health, nutrition and recipe information to you in response to your specific requests for information
• To identify usage trends on our websites and social media channels to enhance, improve or modify our websites and to facilitate your participation in interactive features you may choose to use on our websites and social media; also to personalise your user experience by presenting content tailored to you

For business purposes to administer our pre-contract and contractual supplier/customer obligations.

Public task – as a statutory levy board, processing personal information is necessary in the exercise of the official authority vested in AHDB by Parliament to impose a levy and to deliver the functions bestowed on it by Parliament under the AHDB Order 2008 No.576. These tasks (levy collection, research, statistics, knowledge exchange, skills development, sustainability and market development) are in the public interest to deliver a sustainable industry and food security. 

Contract – where we have contractual relationships with suppliers and customers, processing is necessary to administer the pre-contract and contractual obligations for the performance of a contract. 

Legitimate interest – we may use your personal data where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests as an organisation.

We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests.

We do not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

Legal obligation – we process and share some information because it is necessary to comply with laws and regulations to do with running our organisation, such as health and safety legislation, tax laws, human rights, etc.   

Consent – The provision of information to consumers, which may include direct marketing, will be done when the data subject has consented to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes.

Consent will also be used for the main subject of photography and recording (video and audio).  

We collect personal information in the following ways:

You may give us your personal information in your levy return, when you provide feedback or sign up online or offline to receive information, when you participate in competitions or when you register to participate in benchmarking or other services we provide, or when you join one of our committees, panels or boards.   

Your information may have been shared with us by third parties. These third parties may be other public sector organisations, such as the Rural Payments Agency and the Food Standards Agency, where information has been shared to help enable AHDB to fulfil our statutory functions.

We may get data from third party organisations to whom you may have provided permission through your privacy settings or the responses you have given them.

We will also purchase data from satellite and other field scanning technologies to help combat levy avoidance and to assist with making our information, services and communications more relevant and timely.  

We may supplement the information you provide with data from the public domain, such as Companies House and other public databases.  

We use Hootsuite for community management and depending on your settings for social media and messaging services like Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter,) you might give us permission to access information from those accounts or services.   

Like most websites, ours use ‘cookies’ to help us make our websites, and your user experience, better. Cookies mean that a website will remember you. They are small text files that sites transfer to your computer/tablet/smartphone and make interacting with a website faster and easier. There are more details in our Cookie Policy  

We will also track the Internet Protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet; computer connection information such as browser type and version; and time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions; operating system; and download history, which we sometimes aggregate with similar information from other contacts to improve the navigation and services we provide.

During some visits we may use software tools such as JavaScript to measure and collect session information, including page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks and mouse-overs) and methods used to browse away from the page.  

On mobiles we may use location tracking to understand when and where our services are being accessed. Most mobile devices provide users with the ability to disable location services if they wish.

If you have questions about how to disable your device's location services, we recommend you contact your mobile service carrier or your device manufacturer.   

AHDB will never sell your personal information to third parties and we will not release your personal information to any company outside of AHDB for their mailing or marketing purposes.  

We may disclose your personal information to third parties for the following reasons:  

As part of our service delivery, we contract with reputable suppliers to help process requests and provide you with information. For example: 

• Sending you the latest factsheets on research results
• To undertake industry research, and on occasion we may ask them to contact you on our behalf with regard to participation in relevant research
• To deliver our skills training courses and workshops
• To help deliver some of our conferences and events, for example to facilitate online registration or payment. If it is a joint event and delegate contact information is to be made available to the other organisation, you will be asked to consent to the proposed uses at the time you register for that event

AHDB requires all such third parties to treat your personal information as fully confidential.  

If required, for regulatory or animal/plant health purposes, we will share levy payer information with the Chemicals Regulation Division (CRD), Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), Food Standards Agency (FSA), The Rural Payments Agency (RPA), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) or its equivalents in the devolved governments or their appointed agents to enable them to assess risk and to contact you.  

If required, to respond to requests from courts or law enforcement agencies.  

We ensure that there are appropriate and proportionate controls in place to protect your personal information. For example, we use encryption, where appropriate, and we store data within AHDB’s secure network and cloud environment. Both of these are independently audited. We also limit and control who has access to the personal information we hold.  

Where we use third party suppliers or partners to process personal data, we put a contract in place that sets out our expectations and requirements, especially regarding how they manage and securely transfer the personal information and fully comply with all applicable UK data protection laws’.    

AHDB’s own systems and storage are within the UK or European Economic Area (EEA).

Some of our suppliers or partners process personal information on our behalf outside the UK and EEA. In such circumstances, AHDB shall ensure that a recognised data security protocol is in place between the UK and the third country, or that another such other data transfer mechanism is in place in accordance with UK data protection laws (e.g. the UK–US Data Bridge or Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs)).

We use information you provide to us through your various interactions with AHDB to keep your personal information up to date.  

We also use sources such as postcode look-up to ensure we have the correct address for you, Companies House, Mortascreen and information provided to us by other organisations as described in the section Our lawful bases for processing personal information, to maintain and improve the information we hold.  

If your details change, please email us at comms@ahdb.org.uk  

We will retain your personal information for no longer than necessary for the purpose it was obtained, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. We may retain your personal data for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.

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, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.

The law states that information relating to levy collection can generally be kept for 10 years, unless it is geospatial data, which may be retained indefinitely.   

In some circumstances we will 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.

By law you have certain rights over your personal data that we hold about you, and these are summarised below. Some of the rights are complex and not all the detail is included in our summaries; you should therefore read the relevant guidance on the Information Commissioner’s Office website

To enquire about exercising any of these rights, please contact the Data Protection Officer using the details given the section on Who we are and how to contact us

We may need to verify your identity before implementing your request. We will try to comply with your request as soon as reasonably practicable.   

Access: You (data subjects) have the right to ask for a copy of the personal information held about you – known as a Subject Access Request (SAR). Responses are usually made within 30 days, unless an extension is required.  

Rectification: You have the right to ask us to correct any errors in the personal information held about you.   

Objection: You have the right to make an objection (based on your specific situation) to how we are processing or profiling your personal information.   

Erasure: Please note that the personal information we hold for ‘public task’ purposes is not eligible for erasure.

Personal information obtained through consent is eligible and each request we receive will be treated on a case-by-case basis.

It should be noted that we will retain enough information to ensure the individual is not contacted again. On occasion, some data may also have to be retained for legal record-keeping purposes, and we will always inform you when this is the case.  

Withdraw consent: Where processing is based on your consent, then that consent can be withdrawn at any time. AHDB uses consent for the provision of information to consumers and for a main subject’s participation in photography and recording.  

Make a complaint: You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK’s independent supervisory authority for upholding information rights – the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). 

We may change this Privacy Notice. The effective date of this Privacy Notice, given at the beginning, indicates the last time this notice was revised. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information, we will communicate this to you.