Reading Family Church Privacy Policy

Who are we?

Reading Family Church (RFC) is a charity and company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales. Our charity registration number is 1147465 and our company registration number is 8039827.

We are committed to protecting your data and processing it in accordance with the law. This privacy notice explains how we do this.

What type of information we have

The personal information we process varies depending on the context in which you have given us information. It may include some or all of the following:

  • Personal identifiers and contacts such as name and contact details, including those of emergency contacts, demographic information such as gender, date of birth, education and employment history, qualifications, family composition, marital status and nationality

  • Transaction records, such as details about payments made to and from you

  • Financial data, including bank account details

  • Photographs and video footage

  • Membership of serving teams and life groups and attendance at events

  • Marketing and communications preferences

  • Any other information you provide us with as per the ‘How we get your information’ section below

Some of the information we process may come within the definition of special category data. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines special category data as personal data revealing or concerning an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetics and biometrics, health, sex life and sexual orientation. We also process criminal offence data where it is necessary, for example we carry out DBS checks for those volunteering to serve on our children’s teams. We will make it clear to you when we collect special category data or criminal offence data and why. 

How we get your information

Most of the information we process is provided to us directly by you when you:

  • Set up a profile in RFC’s ChurchSuite database

  • Fill in a Welcome card

  • Fill in a membership form or gift aid declaration

  • Apply for a staff role or sign up for a voluntary/serving position

  • Sign up for and attend an event or course

  • Register your children or young people to attend a children’s or youth session or event

  • Register or attend one of our community initiatives, such as the Just Talk English conversation cafe or Rainbows toddler group

  • Apply for a grant

  • Submit an enquiry to us via email or other method

We may also receive information about you indirectly when you choose to donate to the church through an intermediary such as the Charities Aid Foundation. 

Why we have your information and what we do with it

RFC collects and processes information to enable us to:

  • Manage, administer and promote the life of the church

  • Connect you with the church community and send you communications you have requested

  • Implement comprehensive safeguarding procedures to protect the children and adults at risk we work with

  • Process a grant application or application for a role

  • Manage our employees and volunteers

  • Carry out our community activities

  • Administer our events or courses

  • Process financial transactions and donations

  • Meet our legal and regulatory obligations

  • Deal with enquiries or complaints 

Under the GDPR, the lawful bases we rely on for processing your information are:

  • your consent; or

  • we have a contractual obligation; or

  • we have a legal obligation; or

  • we have a legitimate interest in performing our charitable activities such as to provide you with a church community, services and events, provide community initiatives and administer grants.

Where you have given your consent for the processing of your data you may withdraw it at anytime by contacting churchoffice@readingfamilychurch.org.uk and you can opt out of receiving certain communications from us by updating your privacy settings in ChurchSuite or selecting the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of our communications. 

How we store your information

We have taken appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that your data is processed securely. We limit access to your data and implement further safeguards as appropriate. We only keep your personal data for as long as is necessary, at which point it will be deleted. The retention period for some information is determined by legal requirements, such as holding onto gift aid records for 6 years after the end of the relevant accounting period. 

Who we share your data with

We sometimes use external third parties to process data on our behalf, such as outsourced payroll and accounting providers, payment providers, church management systems (ChurchSuite) and electronic marketing and communications providers. We ensure that we have an appropriate agreement with any such organisation and that they treat your data in accordance with the law. Where our external third parties are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA), for example some cloud-based or online systems, and their processing of your data involves a transfer of data outside the EEA, we ensure that there is an EU Commission ‘adequacy decision’ regarding the territory or suitable safeguards in place. We may also share some of your data with HMRC and other regulators or authorities based in the UK when required. For example we share information required to verify a gift aid claim with HMRC. In addition we may share your information with our professional advisors including auditors/examiners, pensions and insurance consultants and providers, bankers and lawyers. You may also choose to make some of the information you enter into ChurchSuite available to other RFC contacts on the database. If you have signed up to join a serving team or life group, attend an event or apply for a grant or position with us then we may share relevant information about you with trusted members of the church who lead the teams or organise the events or are on assessment panels. 

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access - you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

Your right to rectification - you have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

Your right to erasure - you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to restriction of processing - you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.

Your right to object to processing - you have the the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability - you have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. 

Cookies

Cookies are used to gather information about your visits to websites. They collect information about your visits, such as your location, device-type and times and dates.

We don’t use our own cookies on our website but we do use Google Analytics cookies to occasionally measure the performance of our website. We don’t store or collect any personal information as a result of this. You can find out more about Google Analytics by reading their overview and you can opt-out of Google Analytics cookies by using their tool. 

How to contact us

If you have any questions or concerns about how we process your data or would like to exercise one of your rights under GDPR then please contact the Data Manager at:

churchoffice@readingfamilychurch.org.uk or write to Reading Family Church, 448a Basingstoke Road, Reading, RG2 0RX if you wish to make a request.

If you have a complaint we would ask that you first raise this with us as we would hope to be able to resolve it with you. However, you may also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s contact details are:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Last updated: 20 August 2024