PRIVACY POLICY

 
 

At the Parish of Blockley in the Vale and Cotswold Edge Team in the Diocese of Gloucester, we do our best to protect the privacy of anyone whose data is entrusted to us. Please read this privacy notice which explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal information.

Who we are

The Parish of Blockley is one part of a team of Church of England (CofE) churches which together make up the Vale and Cotswold Edge Team (VACE).   The VACE team is part of the CofE Diocese of Gloucester and is served by three clergy, led by the Team Rector, who is legally the Incumbent of all the parishes in the team.

One of those clergy is Team Vicar of Blockley and is referred to in this privacy notice as “the Vicar.”  The Vicar has responsibility for leading the spiritual life of the church in Blockley. She is aided in this work by the Parochial Church Council (PCC) who share in the spiritual leadership of the church and act as trustees of the church building, operations and finance.  The Churchwardens are members of the PCC and have certain statutory responsibilities for the building and in the event that the Vicar is unable to be present.  The PCC appoints a Ministry Enabling Team (MET) whose members assist the vicar in pastoral, discipleship and liturgical leadership. The PCC also appoints a Safeguarding Officer.

As the Church is made up of all of these people, office-holders and organisations working together, it would be impossible to operate effectively if personal data were not shared between them to the extent that it is necessary for the good functioning of the church and its ministry.

For this reason, this privacy notice covers the way that the Incumbent, the Vicar and the PCC jointly use personal data.  Together we are joint data controllers.  This means we are all responsible to you for how we process your data.

Only those people who need to see your data will have access to it.  For example, the Vicar needs to know the names of the parents and godparents of the child to be baptised but there is no need for the PCC to have this information.

Contacting us

If you would like to make an enquiry about data protection, update the information we hold about you, request or opt out of receiving communications from us or change the way we process your information, you can let us know in the following ways:

Email: blockleychurch.office@gmail.com
Post: The PCC Secretary, c/o The Vicarage, High Street, Blockley, GL56 9ES
Phone: 01386 700676

Whose data do we process

Those who come to our church or who otherwise interact with the church community, or where necessary, those who do the same in another parish in the VACE team.

Those who volunteer for the church, or who are on its payroll or, where necessary, the payroll of another parish in the VACE team.

The Vicar, both formally and informally, plays a leadership role in the community. At times this will require her to process contact details of those beyond the church community, including for example school governors, relevant councillors etc.

Where we obtain information about you

Personal information is collected directly from you when you interact with us, for example joining the Electoral Roll, volunteering, coming to us for a baptism, wedding or funeral, hiring our premises, making a gift, sending us an email, making an enquiry, participating in a service or an event or signing up for a newsletter. Information may be collected in person, over the phone, through our website, social media or from something you’ve posted to us.

Personal information may be given to us by someone else. For example a parishioner might tell the vicar that someone was taken into hospital and would appreciate it if she organised someone from church to visit.  If you use the Parish Giving Scheme to make gifts to us, and have not withheld your name from its monthly report, we will receive data on how much and when you gave and whether or not you have Gift Aided your donations.

The information we hold about you

The information will always include some combination of your name, postal and /or email addresses, your phone number, and may include social media information if you interact with us in that way. We may record similar information about your close family and friends, especially if they are also connected with us.  An example would be the information we need to organise a wedding or a memorial service.

If you support us financially, or hire our premises or have other financial transactions with us then we will record relevant information to ensure we can process these properly and comply with audit requirements.

If you volunteer for us, or are elected to a position in the church then we will hold information relevant to your volunteering activity – e.g. what role you are undertaking, details of rotas etc. CofE safeguarding policy requires some volunteers to have DBS checks and in this case we will need to collect information relevant to such a check.

If you are on the payroll of this parish or another parish in the VACE team then your contract will contain details of the way in which we process your data for the fulfilment of that contract.

Data Protection legislation affords special protection to certain categories of data. Of relevance are religious affiliation and information about health.  If you attend church, or join its Electoral Roll, or in some other way affiliate yourself with us, then we may be processing data about your religious affiliation.  If you tell us you need gluten-free wafers, or special access to church, or to use our hearing loop, then you are giving us information about your health.  With the exception of processing in relation to criminal records in the context of DBS checks, we are very unlikely to process any other information which falls in to the categories requiring special protection. We explain below the legal basis for processing any such data.

What we do with your data

We use your personal data for some or all of the following purposes:

The spiritual life of the church

  • To carry out all the work necessary to organise and publicise a regular cycle of services together with baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals, interment of ashes, services of remembrance and blessing, etc.

  • To organise pastoral and spiritual care which may include home or hospital visiting by the Vicar, or some other appropriately authorised person

  • To manage volunteering in an appropriate and efficient manner for example by organising rotas, meetings etc.

  • To organise appropriate opportunities for discipleship, service and spiritual development, for example house groups, Lent groups, mission related activity, hospitality, church trips etc.

  • Such other activities which enable us to carry out our mission in our community, to love our neighbour and to tell the world about Jesus.

The administrative work of the church

  • To enable us to meet our legal and statutory obligations including maintaining and publishing our Electoral Roll in accordance with the Church Representation Rules and passing details of elected role holders (e.g. Churchwardens, Deanery Synod reps, PCC secretary and treasurer) to the North Cotswolds Deanery (of which we are a part) and to the Diocese of Gloucester

  • To comply with safeguarding procedures in order to ensure that all children and adults at risk are provided with a safe environment

  • To maintain our own accounts and records, to fundraise and to process donations (including Gift Aid information)

  • To send you communications about the church (which may be sent via electronic, non-electronic and social media means)

  • To administer our commercial activities, including hire of the Church Room and the church itself

  • To use CCTV in order to protect the security of the church property and all who use it.

Who we share your data with and why

We only share data if it is necessary to do so. The community life of the parish itself, and the interconnected nature of the Church of England (as described in the section “Who we are”) means that we sometimes have to share data with other parts of the church.  We will share data in the following circumstances:

  • Within the VACE clergy team and with appropriate lay people. For example, the organisation of a joint wedding preparation day run by VACE clergy team, or circumstances where one clergyperson is standing in for another at a service or meeting.  Sometimes other licensed clergy or lay people may also fulfil this role.

  • The Electoral Roll containing its members’ names and addresses is a statutory public document and we must publish it each year in a public place.  In exceptional circumstances you can ask for your address to be redacted from the list. The roll is available for inspection at all times on request.

  • Being elected to an office in the church, e.g. Churchwarden, Treasurer, Secretary, Deanery Synod representative or PCC member similarly carries with it a degree of openness. The results of elections for these offices must be published in public and are available for inspection by anyone resident in the parish.

  • If you are on a rota to carry out a volunteering role in church we will share this rota with others on the rota and in church. If you are not on the electoral roll, we will ask for your consent to publish your name on the rota, or remove your name from the public rota.

  • We use the Parish Giving Scheme (PGS) to administer our direct debit giving. If you fill in a PGS direct debit form and give it to us rather than sending it direct to PGS we will disclose this information to PGS.

  • On occasion, we may disclose data to other churches with which we are carrying out joint events or activities, for example the name of a volunteer who will lead the prayers at a joint service in the VACE team or elsewhere in the diocese.

  • In some circumstances, for example a confirmation or the wedding of someone previously divorced, it will be necessary for the Vicar to disclose the names of those concerned to the diocesan Bishop. This may also happen if the Vicar or other minister needs some specific pastoral support.

  • DBS Checks are carried out in conjunction with the Diocesan Safeguarding Team which will disclose relevant data to the Parish Safeguarding Officer.

  • In the process of pastoral work, the Vicar, other clergy or lay people may encounter a situation where the law requires them to disclose data to a statutory authority. In this case their legal obligation will be paramount.

  • We may disclose data to organisations acting as Data Processors. For example, we may ask a commercial provider to send out newsletters on our behalf, or to maintain database software. In these cases a contract is in place and a Data Processor may not carry out any action not authorised by us.

Children’s information

The law does not require us to have consent to hold data on children simply because of their age.  However, where we collect data on children under 13, we will always check with a parent or guardian that they are happy for us to collect and use the information.

Your rights and our responsibilities

Seeing the information we hold about you

This is known as a Subject Access Request, and you have the right to ask for a copy of all of the information related to you that we are processing. You can request this using the ‘Contacting us’ section above.

How to ask us to amend or delete your information

If your information is incorrect, out of date or if you believe there is no longer justification for us to hold it, you can ask for it to be updated, removed or blocked from our use.  Some information must be retained by us for audit, safeguarding or other statutory purposes (e.g. registers) and we will not be able to accede to a request to delete it.

How to request your information so that you can use it elsewhere

You can ask for a copy of any personal information that you have provided to us in the past. We will provide it in a clear and easy to follow format. (Note that this relates to your right to have access to your information. Duplicate entries from the registers attract a statutory fee.)

Our legal basis for using your personal information

Where we have a legal obligation to process your data, for example to create the Electoral Roll, to administer the governance work of the PCC and to process Gift Aid claims, we do so because we have a legal obligation.  Certain aspects of the Vicar’s work, for example relating to the administration of baptisms, weddings and funerals are also subject to legal obligations.

Some data will be processed because we have a contract with you. This is most likely to relate to some form of commercial transaction or employment.

Occasionally, the law requires us to have consent to process data. Sending you electronic marketing is one example, and publishing your name on a church rota if your religious affiliation is not already in the public domain via the electoral roll is another.  Where this is the case we will seek your consent before carrying out the processing, and you may withdraw this consent without prejudice at any time.

In other cases, we process data because it is in our legitimate interest.  When we do this, we take responsibility for upholding your rights. This means we must tell you what we do with your data, and ensure that what we do would not cause undue prejudice to you or override your rights and freedoms. You have the right to ask us to stop any form of processing carried out in this way.

Although data on religious beliefs enjoys special protection, religious organisations are themselves permitted to process information about those who belong to them or are associated with them without having to seek specific consent.

How long do we keep your personal data?

We will keep some records permanently if we are legally required or it is prudent to do so.  Safeguarding matters and the need for long term records relating to safeguarding are discouraging the deletion of data.  Other records have statutory retention periods, for example, HMRC requires financial records to be kept for a minimum period of 7 years.  However, in general, we will keep data only for as long as we need it.

Deleting your data

You can ask us to stop processing data, but there will still be certain types of data including the Electoral Roll, Gift Aid claims, certificates of baptism or marriage, safeguarding etc. where we will have an obligation or requirement to continue processing, sometimes in perpetuity.

Transfer of Data Abroad

We use service providers like Dropbox and Gmail which are outside Europe. Where we do so, we will only use those which have security measures giving equivalent protection of personal rights either through international agreements or contracts approved by the European Union.  Our website is also accessible from overseas so on occasion some personal data (for example in a newsletter) may be accessed from overseas.

Complaints

If you do not like the way we are processing your data, please tell us. Contact details are above.  You also have a right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.  See here for more information