Internal Data Protection Policy

In this document CTC will stand for Cornerstone the Church or Cornerstone Ministries.

Eight Basic Principles of the Act

The details of the Data Protection Act are quite complex, but at the heart of it are eight common-sense rules known as the Data Protection Principles.

These require personal information to be:

fairly and lawfully processed
processed for limited purposes
adequate, relevant and not excessive
accurate
not kept longer than necessary
processed in accordance with your rights
kept secure
not transferred abroad without adequate protection

Organisations using personal information ('data controllers') must comply with these Principles.
The Act provides stronger protection for sensitive information about ethnic origins, political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union membership, health, sexual life and any criminal history.

Confidentiality Clause

CTC treats your personal information as private and confidential at all times and does not disclose any data about you to anyone other than the pastoral leadership on a need to contact basis, department leaders with restricted access only on a need to contact basis. Information and data stored by the church Administration Office will not be distributed in any form such as digital, hard copy or any other form which might breach the data protection Act. The Administration office of the church in order to facilitate the administration and day-to-day operations of the church will have access.

Your personal information will not be given or sold to any other person, company or church organisation.

There are four exceptional circumstances to the above permitted by law:

where we are legally compelled to do so
where there is a duty to the public to disclose
where disclosure is required to protect our interests
where disclosure is made at your request or with your consent

Using Your Personal Information

CTC will use your data for three main purposes;

The day-to-day administration of the Church

Examples – pastoral care and oversight including calls and visits preparation of ministry rotas maintaining financial records of giving for audit and tax purposes.

Contacting you to keep you informed of church activities and ad hoc Events

Example – mailings of event details

Statistical Analysis

Example – gaining a better understanding of church demographics NB: although collated church data may be passed to a third party, such as numbers of Small Groups or House group attendance, no personal data will be disclosed.

Photographs

Photographs taken at CTC events may include individuals or groups of individuals attending these events. These photographs will be used solely for the purpose of CTC advertising, marketing and public relations, and may thus appear in any advertising internal and or external, website or other publicity material.

The Data Protection Act DOES apply where photographs are taken for official use, such as for identity passes, and these images are stored with personal details such as names. Where the Act does apply, it will usually be enough for the photographer to ask for permission to ensure compliance with the Act.

Photographs taken at CTC purely for personal use are exempt from the Data Protection Act. This means that parents, friends and family members can take photographs for the family album of their children and friends participating in church events.

From the “Information Commissioner’s Office”

Subject Access Rights

The Act, with some exceptions, gives a person the right to find out what information is held about them by organisations. This is known as the 'right of subject access'. On written request, they are entitled to be supplied with a copy of all the information an organisations holds about a person.

Privacy Statement

The CTC website does not automatically capture or store personal information, other than logging the user's IP address and session information such as the duration of the visit and the type of browser used. This is recognised by the Web server and is only used for system administration and to provide statistics, which CTC uses to evaluate the use of the site.

You may be asked for personal information if you want to take advantage of specific services we offer such as online updates. In each case we will only use the personal information you provide to deliver the services you have told us you wish to take part in.

This privacy policy only covers the CTC Website at cornerstonethechurch.com. Other links within this site to other websites are not covered by this policy.