Bank Top URC Privacy Notice 2023

Bank Top United Reformed Church, Bolton

Personal data

Personal data relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data.  Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. The processing of personal data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (the ‘GDPR’).

Data Controller

The eldership (serving elders) of Bank Top United Reformed Church is the data controller (contact details below).  This means it decides how your personal data is processed and for what purposes.

 How do we process your personal data?

The eldership of Bank Top United Reformed Church complies with its obligations under the “GDPR” by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure and by ensuring that appropriate technical measures are in place to protect personal data.

We use personal data for the following purposes: –

  • to administer membership records;
  • to maintain our financial accounts and records (including the processing of gift aid);
  • to provide news and information about events, activities and services at the church;
  • to fundraise and promote the interests of the church;
  • to manage [employees and] volunteers;
  • to enable the church to provide voluntary services for the benefit of the public in our local community;
  • to provide contact details of officers and others with specific responsibilities (eg DBS signatories) to the synod office and Church House. This enables the synod and national administration of the United Reformed Church.

What is the legal basis for processing your personal data?

  • Processing is carried out where it is in the Legitimate Interest of Bank Top United Reformed Church (for example maintaining a list of church members); or
  • It is necessary for carrying out our legal obligations to comply with a common law or statutory obligation (for example processing Gift Aid claims); or
  • Explicit consent of the data subject has been given.
  • Processing of special category data is carried under the legitimate interest of a not-for-profit body with a religious where: –
    • the processing relates only to members or former members (or those who have regular contact with it in connection with those purposes); and
    • there is no disclosure to a third party without explicit consent.

Sharing personal data
Your personal data will be treated as strictly confidential and will only be shared with other members of the church in order to carry out a service to other church members or for purposes connected with the church. We will only share your data with third parties with your consent except where necessary for carrying out our legal obligations to comply with a common law or statutory obligation (for example, HMRC and Gift Aid)

How long do we keep data?

We retain data on the following basis:

Record Type Retention Period
Membership rolls Indefinitely
Members, adherents and friends contact details 24 months after the last contact
Junior Church roll Until the child/young adult reaches the age of 21.
Junior Church contacts 24 months after the last contact
Cradle roll Indefinitely
Gift aid declarations and paperwork 6 years after the calendar year to which it relates
Registers of Marriage As required by the Registrar General
Register of Baptisms Indefinitely
Register of Funerals Indefinitely
Personal data relating to events for which additional information is gathered eg Church holidays Disposed of immediately after the event unless anything has occurred (eg an accident) which indicates that records should be retained for a longer period.
Records of attendance of children/young people and helpers Indefinitely for safeguarding purposes
Photographs and videos of events 24 months after the event – selected items retained for historical records
Insurance Records Indefinitely
Safeguarding matters Indefinitely or until advised otherwise by authorities
Accident Books 3 years from the date of the last entry (or, if the accident involves a child/ young adult, then until that person reaches the age of 21)
Complaints (non -safeguarding) 3 years after resolution of complaint (unless further action is anticipated)
Minute Books Indefinitely

Your rights and your personal data

Unless subject to an exemption under the GDPR, you have the following rights with respect to your personal data: –

  • The right to request a copy of the personal data which Bank Top United Reformed Church holds about you (a Subject Access Request or ‘SAR’);
  • The right to request that the eldership of Bank Top United Reformed Church corrects any personal data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date;
  • The right to request your personal data is erased where it is no longer necessary for Bank Top United Reformed Church to retain such data;
  • The right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time;
  • The right to request that the data controller provides you with your personal data and where possible, to transmit that data directly to another data controller.
  • The right, where there is a dispute in relation to the accuracy or processing of your personal data, to request a restriction is placed on further processing;
  • The right to object to the processing of personal data;
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioners Office.

Further processing

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Data Protection Notice, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this new use prior to commencing the processing and setting out the relevant purposes and processing conditions. Where and whenever necessary, we will seek your prior consent to the new processing.

Contact Details

To exercise all relevant rights, queries or complaints please in the first instance contact the Church Secretary at Bank Top URC, Ashworth Lane, Bolton, BL1 8RX or email her at: [email protected]

You can contact the Information Commissioners Office on 0303 123 1113 or via email https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/ or at the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire. SK9 5AF.

The Elders

Bank Top United Reformed Church

28 May 2018

Reviewed December 2021 – AG

Reviewed March 2023 – AG

Privacy Notice for users of the Website

Like most organisations with a presence on the Internet, we have a responsibility to make you aware of what data we might collect about you and how we might use that data. We also have a responsibility to ensure that the content of our site accurately represents us and is not adversely compromised by comments that may be posted by you or others.

Cookies:

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

Cookie Name Purpose
Cookie preference viewed_cookie_policy This cookie is set when you Accept our privacy notice shown on the banner at the bottom of the page when you first landed on our site.
Commenters information comment_author
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These cookies are used for convenience should you enter comments on any page or post on our site, so that you won’t need to re-type all your information again when you want to leave another comment. They expire approximately 1 year from the time they are set. Click here to get an overview of all cookies used by WordPress sites. Note that the majority of cookies indicated on the page are only applicable to site administrators and not regular users.
Google Analytics _utma
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These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Click here for an overview of privacy at Google
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These cookies are used by the Wordfence firewall to perform a capability check of the current user before WordPress has been loaded; to notify the Wordfence admin when an administrator logs in from a new device or location and to manage a feature for a site visitor to bypass country blocking by accessing a hidden URL. This cookie helps track who should be allowed to bypass country blocking.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

To get more information on the EU e-Privacy Directive, visit the UK Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Comments:

Comments made on any page or post on this site by visitors will be reviewed periodically and may be edited or removed at the discretion of the site administrators. Any visitor who’s comments are affected in this way may be contacted by the site administrators to indicate why a comment was removed or edited, assuming that contact information included in the comment was valid.

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

How long we retain your data on comments – If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognise and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.

For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.

What rights you have over your data for comments – If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

Social Media

We encourage open and frank discussion on many topics that may affect the life of the church. However, in a similar way to review and removal of comments on the website, posts and comments on our Facebook page, or Tweets that include our Twitter handle or similar hashtags may be subject to moderation and we reserve the right to remove posts and comments, block posters and followers, and if deemed necessary report posters or followers to the relevant bodies.

Disclaimer

Details of events, contacts and other material on this site were correct at time of publication based on information received by the site administrators.

The views expressed are those of the individual contributors and may not represent the view of Bank Top URC or its Elders.