Privacy notice

The Parochial Church Council (PCC) of St Mary’s Eastrop Basingstoke

Data Controller: The Parochial Church Council (PCC) of St Mary’s Eastrop Basingstoke, registered charity number 1130650, known as St Mary’s Eastrop Basingstoke. (contact details below).

This is the privacy statement and data protection policy for St Mary’s Eastrop Basingstoke. It covers how we will process (use and store) your data, the data that we hold, your individual rights and how you can interact with us about your data. If you have any questions please contact us, the contact details are at the end of this document.

1. Your personal data – what is it?

“Personal data” is any information about a living individual which allows them to be identified from that data (for example a name, photographs, videos, email address or address). Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information. The processing of personal data is governed by the Data Protection Act 2018, which is the UK’s implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) this is referred to in this notice as the “Data Protection Legislation”.

2. Who are we?

The PCC of St Mary’s Eastrop Basingstoke is the data controller. This means it decides how your personal data is processed and for what purposes.

3. How do we us and process your personal data?

The PCC of St Mary’s Eastrop Basingstoke complies with its obligations under the Data Protection Legislation 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 your personal data for the following purposes:—

  • To enable us to deliver our Church’s mission to our community, and to carry out any other voluntary or charitable activities for the benefit of the public;

  • To administer membership records of adult and child members;

  • Help you grow as a disciple and to minister to you and provide you with pastoral and spiritual care (such as visiting you when you are gravely ill or bereaved) and to organise and perform ecclesiastical services for you, such as baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals.

  • To enable us to follow up membership, course and event enquiries

  • To fundraise and promote the interests of the PCC, a registered charity;

  • To manage our employees and volunteers;

  • To maintain our own accounts and records (including the processing of Gift Aid applications);

  • To inform you of news, events, activities, and services running at St Mary’s;

  • To enable us to meet all legal and statutory obligations including sharing your contact details with the Diocesan office or Charity Commissioners where required (see paragraph 5 below);

  • To comply with and facilitate our comprehensive Safeguarding Policies and procedures (including safer recruitment and complaints handling in accordance with best safeguarding practice from time to time with the aim of ensuring that all children and adults-at-risk are provided with safe environments;

  • Communicate with you about your views or comments;

  • Update you about changes to our services, events, role holders and any matters of interest related to you church community;

  • Send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you. These may include information about campaigns, appeals, other fundraising activities

We use computer systems (including ChurchSuite) to keep all this data safe and to help us comply with data protection regulations.

Our processing also includes the use of CCTV systems for the prevention and prosecution of crime.

The information that we keep usually consists of:

  • your name,
  • adult/child,
  • date-of-birth
  • sex, and
  • family connections.

If you have provided them to us then we will also keep your

  • address,
  • telephone (landline and mobile),
  • email addresses,
  • occupation,
  • website,
  • company, and
  • allergies.

If the church is involved in your pastoral care, then information relating to this may be stored.

We will also store information regarding membership of groups or committees within the church, such as being an attendee of a congregation or small group.

We may also process and store information on any invitations we have sent to you for activities or events, your attendance at any activities or events, details of any church-related subscriptions and all information we may have requested for the purposes of DBS checks.

It will also be necessary to store information about ministries you are involved with and the dates and times of any duties associated with those ministries.

We may “profile” the information we collect about you and use automatic processing particularly for the purposes of choosing how relevant a church activity is to you based on group membership, age, sex, or address.

If you are involved with a ministry at the church we may email you about this ministry, for instance with rota updates or information about what’s coming up. If you opt-in to receiving emails about new activities or events then we can keep you advised of those things that may interest you.

4. What is the legal basis for processing your personal data?

  • We process some data to carry out legal obligations, examples of this are retaining safeguarding records and Gift Aid declarations, or under employment law. We also have legal obligations under Canon Law and Church of England rules, including processing data in relation to the Electoral Roll.

  • Most of our data processing is carried out as a legitimate interest by a not-for-profit body with a religious aim to enable our charitable and missional aims. For example, maintaining membership records, safeguarding our children, recording our financial donations and operating team rotas for the effective function of Sunday services.

     provided:—

    • 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 consent.
    • We may also process data if it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you, or to take steps to enter into a contract.

  • As a religious organisation, we are permitted to process information about your religious beliefs to administer membership or contact details

  • Where your information is used other than in accordance with one of these legal bases, we will first obtain your consent to that use. (If you opt-in to receiving emails about new activities or events then we can keep you advised of those things that may interest you.)

5. Sharing your personal data

Your personal data will be treated as strictly confidential. It will only be shared with third parties where it is necessary for the performance of our tasks or where you give us your prior consent. It is likely that we will need to share your data with some or all of the following (but only where necessary):

  • 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 outside of the parish with your consent.

  • We have a legal obligation to notify the Diocese of Winchester of the names and contact details of Office Holders such as Churchwardens, Deanery Synod members, PCC Treasurer, Gift Aid administrator, PCC Secretary as well as sharing personal data for the purposes of obtaining DBS checks. We also are required to notify the Charity Commissioners of the members of the PCC.

  • If you opt in to allowing your data to be shared with other church members on the ChurchSuite system then they will have access to read the parts of your contact details for which you give permission. Annually a hard copy of the directory is produced and distributed which will contain the details for which permission has been given of all church members who have opted in to the sharing of their details on ChurchSuite.

6. How long do we keep your personal data?

Our general rule is to keep data no longer than necessary. Where you continue to actively engage with our church services, activities and events, we will retain the appropriate membership data for you so that we can best serve your involvement. We operate to an annual process of review, by which we assess who is actively engaging in church membership, and where this is not the case we will remove your data. Additionally;

  • We will keep some records permanently if we are legally required to do so. For example this covers service, wedding, baptism registers and some safeguarding records.

  • We may keep some other records for an extended period of time. For example, it is current best practice to keep financial records for a minimum period of 7 years to support HMRC audits.

In general, we will endeavour to keep data only for as long as we need it. This means we may delete it when it is no longer needed.

7. Your rights and your personal data

Unless subject to an exemption under the Data Protection Legislation, you have the following rights with respect to your personal data:—

  • The right to request a copy of your personal data which the PCC of St Mary’s holds about you. At any point you can contact us to request the information we hold on you as well as why we have that information, who has access to the information and where we obtained the information from. Once we have received your request we will respond within one month. There are no fees or charges for the first request but additional requests for the same data may be subject to an administrative fee;

  • The right to request that the PCC of St Mary’s corrects any personal data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date. If the data we hold on you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect, you can inform us and your data will be updated. You also have access as a church member to be able to update aspects of your personal data directly via our members portal (My ChurchSuite or otherwise);

  • The right to request your personal data is erased where it is no longer necessary for the PCC of St Mary’s to retain such data. If you feel that we should no longer be using your data or that we are illegally using your data, you can request that we erase the data we hold. When we receive your request we will confirm whether the data has been deleted or the reason why it cannot be deleted (for example because we need it for our legitimate interests or regulatory purpose(s));

  • 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. You have the right to request that we stop processing your data. Upon receiving the request we will contact you and let you know if we are able to comply or if we have legitimate grounds to continue to process your data. Even after you exercise your right to object, we may continue to hold your data to comply with your other rights or to bring or defend legal claims.

  • The right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time for any processing of data to which consent was sought. You can withdraw your consent easily by telephone, email, or by post (see Contact Details below);

  • The right to object to the processing of personal data where applicable. You have the right to request that we stop processing your data. Upon receiving the request we will contact you and let you know if we are able to comply or if we have legitimate grounds to continue to process your data. Even after you exercise your right to object, we may continue to hold your data to comply with your other rights or to bring or defend legal claims.

  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. 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

8. 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.

9. Contact Details

To exercise all relevant rights, queries of complaints please in the first instance contact the PCC Secretary / Operations Director at .

The full detail of your rights can be found on the Information Commissioners Office website. 

Approved 16 September 2025

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