Privacy Policy

Everyone who has any connection with Christ Church Abingdon is important to us. To serve you in the best way that we can, Christ Church needs to hold certain items of personal data about you. We have certain legal obligations in the way that we process this personal data, and you have certain rights. These are described below.

Above all, this notice is to assure you that any information we have about you is securely protected, and will never be shared with any third parties unless you give your informed consent or there is a lawful basis for doing so.

Christ Church Abingdon is the church of the Parish of North Abingdon. The North Abingdon Parochial Church Council (PCC) is the data controller for the personal data we hold. Christ Church Abingdon is a registered charity, number 1153844.

What do we mean by ‘personal data’?

This is any information that can be used to identify you. It can include your name and age, your contact details and any Gift Aid data we may have on you. In short, if we hold this information in our files then it probably counts as personal data.

What do we mean by ‘processing’?

‘Processing’ is the overall term that covers the way we store, handle and use your personal data.

What do we do with this personal data?

The personal data lets us serve you as your church. In particular it lets us maintain our electoral roll, church directory and church email lists; operate as a charitable organisation in the service of the Parish of North Abingdon and its people; manage our finances; operate as a responsible employer; and abide by other legal requirements.

What don’t we do?

Your personal data is strictly confidential. It is only shared with other members of the church in order to carry out specific services to you or to other church members. It is only shared with third parties, inside or outside the parish, with your explicit consent, unless there is a lawful basis for doing so.

We do not acquire or retain any personal data that is not relevant to any of our purposes, and we do not acquire personal data speculatively on the grounds that it might come in handy one day.

Children and young people

Under data protection law we must have parental consent to hold personal data on any child under 13. To keep in line with our Safeguarding Policy, we also ask for parental consent to hold personal data for anyone under 18, except for 16 and 17 year olds who can legally give their own consent for their name and address to be on the Electoral Roll, and young people over 13 who have recently started attending a church youth group, for whom we will hold a name and emergency contact number while we wait to receive a parental consent form.

What are our obligations?

Our obligations and your rights are set out by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. We are also guided by the Church of England’s advice on looking after parish records, ‘Keep or Bin: Care of Your Parish Records’.

Personal data is gathered for specific purposes that help us perform our activities as a church, and is only used for those purposes. If a new purpose arises then we will contact every individual whose personal data we hold, inviting their explicit consent for the new use. Personal data that is not needed is deleted.

We protect your personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure. If your personal data changes or is inaccurate then we will correct or update it promptly.

Personal data is time-limited, and is reviewed or deleted once that limit has been reached. Specifically:

• Electoral roll data is reviewed annually and updated where necessary. Personal data of anyone who has left the parish must remain on electoral roll copies for the last complete review plus six years.
• Gift Aid declarations and associated paperwork are kept for up to six years after the calendar year to which they relate.
• Parish registers (baptisms, marriages and funerals) are kept permanently. This is a legal requirement.
• Data relating to safeguarding and children’s activities (including registers and DBS checks) is kept permanently.

Using our website

This section explains how personal data is handled when you use this website.

Information you send us. Our website does not have its own contact forms. When you get in touch by email or phone, we use your details only to respond to you and to provide what you have asked for. Some links on our website take you to forms and services run by our partners, which collect information on our behalf:

• ChurchSuite runs our church database, events listings and calendar, sign-up and enquiry forms, online giving and the members’ area. Information you enter there is held securely by ChurchSuite for Christ Church and handled in line with this notice.
• Google Forms is used for our Prayer Request Form. Prayer requests are passed to our Intercessory Team so that they can pray for them.
• Parish Giving processes regular giving through the Parish Giving Scheme, including Gift Aid declarations.

Embedded content. Some pages include content from other websites, such as our events and calendar from ChurchSuite, videos from YouTube, sermon recordings from SoundCloud and our social media feed (provided by Elfsight). Embedded content behaves in the same way as if you had visited the other website. These websites may collect data about you, use cookies and track your interaction with the embedded content, particularly if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Cookies. Cookies are small text files placed on your device. Our website uses a small number of essential cookies to make the site work and to remember your cookie choices. Other cookies are only set by the embedded content described above, and you can choose whether to accept these using the cookie banner on our website. You can change your choice at any time, and you can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings.

Security. To keep our website safe, our security software records the IP addresses of visitors and the pages they request, so that we can block suspicious activity. These records are used only to protect the website.

Links to other websites. Our website links to other websites, such as the Diocese of Oxford, Abingdon Deanery and Church in Abingdon. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these websites, so please read their own privacy notices.

What are your rights?

This is not a full list of all your rights, but these are the ones most likely to apply to you.

• You can ask for a copy of the personal data which we hold about you, and we will provide it within one calendar month.
• You can ask us to correct any personal data that is inaccurate or out of date. If there is any dispute about its accuracy, or the way we process it, you can request that a restriction is placed on further processing until the matter is resolved.
• You can ask us to erase your personal data when it is no longer necessary for us to retain it, if we have not already done so. Please note that we cannot erase data which we are legally required to keep.
• You can withdraw your consent to our processing your personal data at any time.
• You can object to the way in which we process your personal data.

Finally, if you are dissatisfied with our handling of your personal data and you feel we are not addressing your concerns properly, you can lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about our processing of your personal data, please contact the Parish Administrator in our Church Office:

Church Office, Christ Church, Northcourt Road, Abingdon, OX14 1PL
Phone: 01235 539172
Email: office@cca.uk.net

Alternatively you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office on 0303 123 1113 or at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this notice

This notice is based on our Data Privacy Notice, approved by the North Abingdon PCC on 14 May 2018, and was updated for our new website in October 2026. It is reviewed by the PCC at least every three years. Our full Data Protection Policy can be found on our Safeguarding & Policies page.