PRIVACY STATEMENT FOR WEST OF ENGLAND BAPTIST ASSOCIATION  

Purpose of this Statement

West of England Baptist Association (referred to as we, us or our) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We think it is extremely important to keep any personal information we hold secure and confidential.

Laws apply to our use of anyone’s personal information and everyone has rights regarding how their personal information is handled.

We have published this statement to tell you:

• What information we may collect about you;
• How we store your personal information;
• What we use your personal information for; and
• Who (if anyone) we pass it on to and for what purposes.

In this statement when we refer to our Partners we mean the organisations listed at the end of this statement.

Personal Information we may collect from you

When you first come into contact with us (which may be for a variety of reasons) we may collect your name and contact details for use by us and by our Partners. Other information we may collect from you will depend on the reason for the contact and these are detailed below.

In respect of the Annual Return Form

• The names and contact details of relevant people in your church as supplied by the person who completes the form. This information is entered into the National Baptist Database which can be accessed by staff working for us and for all our Main Partner Organisations.

For accreditation*, training, employment or pension purposes:

• Detailed personal information such as full name including any former names, age, gender, date of birth, ethnicity, nationality, particular needs or preferences so that we can understand your relevant circumstances
• Additional personal information including marital status, previous marital status, dependants under 18, educational history and attainments, full employment history, Christian journey, church experience, interests and financial position
• Information we gain from others while processing your application, such as references, medical, criminal records information from UK and overseas, life insurance details where relevant
• We may obtain information (including fact and opinion) from members of any Baptist Union or denomination in the UK or overseas who are members of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), World Council of Churches (WCC), or other churches educational establishments, denomination or partner organisations if appropriate
• Where required we will collect your bank details to enable your salary, pension, expenses or BUGB funding grants to be paid

To provide pastoral or other support for ministers and church members

• We may take a written note of any conversation you have with us and the information you share as part of that conversation
• We may keep copies of communications you send to us
• We may obtain information (including fact and opinion) from others, for example from a mentor, supervisor, colleague or other person
• We may obtain information (including fact and opinion) from any person for investigating or dealing with issues raised or complaints concerning ministers

• We may exchange information with any of our Main Partner Organisations or charity trustees as deemed necessary for providing adequate support for you.

For raising the profile of our organisation and its work

• With your consent, we may use photo or video footage of you, or your story, for use in our various publications and on our website.

For managing or reviewing our work as organisations

• Any information about complaints about our service or other individuals

When using the website

• We may collect personal identification information from you in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to, when you visit our website, place an order, subscribe to a newsletter, respond to a survey, fill out a form, and in connection with other activities, services, features or resources we make available on our site.
• You may be asked for, as appropriate, name, email address, mailing address, phone number and credit card information.
• We will only collect personal identification information from you if you voluntarily submit such information to us.

[For information about the use of non-personal information and web browser cookies please see our Appendix]

If appropriate, we may get the information, or related information, from

• you, your family, other church members, friends, colleagues or former colleagues, educational establishments you have attended;
• each other or our partner organisations; or
• public information sources including the Disclosure and Barring Service or similar organisations in other countries.

If we already have contact with you we have most likely already collected any/all of this information.

Where we store your personal information

We are committed to holding your personal information securely. This means only those of our staff (and staff of our Main Partners) that need to see it have access.

We may store your information electronically, in paper form, or both.

The National Baptist Database is held on a server at Baptist House in Didcot. Secure remote access to this is provided to authorised users working outside Baptist House. Such access is controlled by the Database Officers.

All our computers including laptops are password protected. Laptop computers and other mobile devices which contain confidential information are also encrypted.

Our paper files which hold personal information (other than names and contact details) are kept in securely locked cupboards.

We will hold and use your personal information until it is no longer required for our purposes.

In connection with our website, we adopt appropriate data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures to protect against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information, username, password, transaction information and data stored on our site.

What we use your personal information for

·       To enter into the National Baptist Database which holds

–        Names and contact details of key people in our churches and partner organisations. This information is accessible by all our staff and all staff in our Main Partner Organisations. Our other Partners do not have access to our database.

–        Names and contact details of individuals applying for accreditation as Ministers or Church workers. This information is accessible by all our staff and all staff in our Main Partner Organisations. Our other Partners do not have access to our database.

–        Career history details for ministries team and pension office purposes. This information is accessible as needed by our staff and staff in our Main Partner Organisations. Our other Partners do not have access to our database.

·       To produce (as required) a Directory of churches and ministers which is a public document

·       To process any application from you, for accreditation, training, pensions or grant funding

·       To enable us to be more effective in providing help and support for students, ministers, charity trustees and other church contacts

·       To provide the Baptist Ministers Fellowship and members of the Baptist Union Council with appropriate administrative details relating to changes to the Registers of Nationally Accredited Ministers and Church Workers

·       To process transactions made through our website using only the information you have provided when placing an order.

·       To send periodic emails to you if you subscribe to one of our mailing lists or have made an order through our website. You will always have the option to unsubscribe to further emails using the unsubscribe instructions at the end of each email.

·       Maintaining contact with you, inviting you to events, and offering and booking appointments with you

·       To enable us to respond to you when you use the ‘contact us’ or response facility on our website. Data collected in this way will not be used for any other purpose.

·       Meeting our legal obligations and exercising any legal rights

·       Other purposes for which we may anonymise your information so that it cannot be linked to you. In that case we may use the data for any purpose including for example statistical analysis

We use your information in line with our Data Protection Policy and the policies and procedures that apply to our use of your information. All staff members are required to sign a statement to confirm their awareness and personal acceptance of the policy.

Who else we may pass on your information to

Normally, only we and our Main Partner Organisations will be able to access your personal information. However there may be times when we disclose your details to others, as follows.

Our closely allied Associate Partners whose purposes dovetail with ours

In response to specific requests from church members and others, we will pass on contact details of

·     BUGB accredited ministers and church workers

·     Those people listed on our database as a Church Secretary

Those organisations and people who enable us to provide our services to you, or who provide services on our behalf. This may include

·     Payroll (for staff) and pensions

·     Consultants, professional advisors and occasional volunteers (on a need to know basis)

·     Third party service providers who help us operate our website or administer activities on our behalf such as sending out newsletters or surveys by email or post. Your information will be shared with these providers for these limited purposes unless you specifically request us not to.

In relation to matters of accreditation – members of any Baptist Union or denomination in the UK or overseas who are members of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA), World Council of Churches (WCC), or other churches educational establishments, denomination or partner organisations if appropriate. Such information will not be sent outside the European Economic Area without your specific consent.

The Psalms and Hymns Trust to enable them to provide appropriate pastoral support for

1. the surviving spouses and children of deceased ministers, missionaries and accredited church workers of the Baptist denomination
2. retired ministers, retired missionaries and retired accredited church workers of the Baptist denomination

Others who may request information from us for their own purposes

·     For crime prevention or detection, risk assessment, resolution of complaints or other issues

·     Local authorities, Safeguarding Boards, regulators, Government departments and other public authorities

·     The Police, fire service, health authorities or medical practitioners

We may sometimes be obliged or permitted to disclose your personal data by law such as by a regulator with appropriate legal authority, court order or for other legitimate purposes.

We can process information about you (including receiving and disclosing personal data about you) in relation to any risk of children, young people or vulnerable adults suffering harm or potential harm. The source of the personal information for these purposes will be:

·       Disclosure and Barring Service

·       Up to date intelligence from the Police or other law enforcement agencies

Such information may be disclosed by us to:-

·       The Minister and Trustees of the relevant church

·       The Safeguarding Officer or appropriate senior staff member of any relevant partner Association

·       Safeguarding officers of any third party

·       The Police or other law enforcement agencies

We do not give anyone else access to your information for their marketing or commercial purposes [without your specific permission.]

We will not share your personal information with anyone who claims to represent you unless we are satisfied that you have appointed them or they act in some recognised official capacity. There may be a delay to us dealing with requests whilst we confirm the caller’s identity, or check that we have your approval to deal with them.

Confidential information

Where you have given us information expressly in confidence we will keep this information confidential. This means we will store it securely and not share it with other parties unless you have given us explicit permission to do so or there is a statutory duty or court order to disclose. Where we cannot provide our services or support for you unless we can share this information with others, we will require that any information we do share is in turn kept confidential by those other persons.

Others may supply information to us which is confidential, particularly for accreditation purposes or our pastoral support for ministers. Where information is confidential we may not be able to share the information or the source with you.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal information. However you will need to understand that we may be unable to provide our services to you if we are unable to record and process certain details. You can ask us to amend or correct your personal data.

Changes to our Privacy Statement

This Statement may change. We will display the current Statement on our website at www.webassoc.org.uk

Contacting us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, the practices of our web site, or your dealings with the site, please contact us at:
West of England Baptist Association

Little Stoke Baptist Church

Kingsway

Bristol

BS34 6JW

Tel: 0117 965 8828

MAIN PARTNER ORGANISATIONS

Baptist Union of Great Britain

Bristol Baptist College

Central Baptist Association

East Midland Baptist Association

Eastern Baptist Association

Heart of England Baptist Association

London Baptist Association

North Western Baptist Association

Northern Baptist Association

Northern Baptist College

Regent’s Park College

South Eastern Baptist Association

South Wales Baptist College

South Wales Baptist Association

South West Baptist Association

Southern Counties Baptist Association

Spurgeon’s College

Yorkshire Baptist Association

ASSOCIATE PARTNER ORGANISATIONS

BMS World Mission

Baptist Union of Scotland

Baptist Union of Wales

North Wales Baptist College

Retired Baptist Ministers Housing Society

Scottish Baptist College

APPENDIX

FURTHER DETAILS ABOUT USE OF INFORMATION COLLECTED FROM OUR WEBSITE
(WWW.BAPTIST.ORG.UK)

• Non-personal identification information
  We may collect non-personal identification information about you whenever you interact with our Site. Non-personal identification information may include the browser name, the type of computer and technical information about your means of connection to our Site, such as the operating system and the Internet service providers utilized and other similar information.

• Web browser cookies
  For the normal day-to-day operation of our website we may set a number of cookies which are stored on your machine when browsing our website. Cookies are pieces of data (normally text files) that get stored on your computer’s hard drive. Our website may use these cookies to record your trends, enhance user functionality. At present these only apply to logged in users but this may change over time. Cookies currently in use are listed on page 7 of this document. Please note that cookies are not used to store any personal data relating to you as an individual. They are only used to store your trends so we are able to analyse which aspect of our website that you visit the most and work on ways to improve the parts that you don’t visit very often.

• Cookie Law Opt-out

We understand if you want your data to be private and we don’t penalise any user for that decision. You are still, and always will be able to browse our website without being penalised for your decision (although some aspects of our website requires cookies to be set). If you have decided to stop our website from storing cookies on your machine we will have to set one which stops our ‘cookie notification’ script from being displayed.

• Third party websites
  You may find other content on our Site that link to the sites and services of third parties. We do not control the content or links that appear on these sites and are not responsible for the practices employed by websites linked to or from our Site. In addition, these sites or services, including their content and links, may be constantly changing. These sites and services may have their own privacy policies and customer service policies. Browsing and interaction on any other website, including websites which have a link to our Site, is subject to that website’s own terms and policies.

• Your acceptance of these terms

By using our site, you signify your acceptance of this policy and terms of service. If you do not agree to this policy, please do not use our Site. Your continued use of the Site following the posting of changes to this policy will be deemed your acceptance of those changes.

WEB COOKIES USED BY OUR WEBSITE (www.webassoc.org.uk)