Our Privacy Policy and Use of Cookies

Personal Data

Personal data as used by this website and by our church is defined as information which can be used to identify you personally as an individual.  This would include items such as your name, address and other contact details such as email address and telephone number.  We receive this via the website when you send a message to us using one of the contact forms, by email or any of the other contact methods we make available.

We are just as concerned about privacy and the use, and potential misuse, of this kind of information as you are.  We make a point of only asking for as much information as we need for its intended use, and only keeping it for as long as it is needed.  On our website we use this information to contact you about your query or request.  If you explicitly ask us to we may use this information to contact you, for example to keep you informed of future events in which you express an interest, or by subscribing you to our weekly email newsletter, SPARK.

We promise never to pass on your contact details to a third party outside of the church, or in some other way cause it to be used in a way which would be inappropriate or incompatible with the purpose for which it was originally collected.  Any new use we make of your personally identifiable information is based on the principle that we do not have permission to use it until you opt-in.

Removing your details from our database.

You have the right to be forgotten completely, or to remove permission for a specific use of your information.

You also have the right to receive a copy of all the information we hold about you and to have us correct it if there are errors.

If at any time, for any reason, you wish to have your details removed from our records or updated or to unsubscribe from a mailing list, you may do so by sending a request specifying the actions you wish us to take.  If you have signed up for our SPARK email newsletter or are on one of the other mailing lists we maintain you may unsubscribe or update your details yourself by clicking the link in the footer of an email.  Please send other requests using the contact form on our website, giving enough detail to identify you, e.g. by the name or email address you originally used to register your details.  This action will be performed manually, and may involve contacting other people within the church who maintain their own lists, so you should allow a few days for this to be completed.  When it has been done you will be informed by email that your request has been completed.

Cookies, and their use on this website.

Cookies are small text files that are used to store information and preferences about your use of the websites you visit on your computer.  It is a legal requirement that organisations that have websites that serve Europe declare what cookies are used and give visitors the option to opt out of receiving non-essential first party cookies.  We have tried to keep our use of cookies to the minimum and only use cookies that are needed to achieve the desired functionality on our website.  These are known and defined as 'essential cookies'.  Where third party software or services are used to enhance this functionality, wherever possible when arranging these services we specify that the third party should use the highest privacy settings and minimal use of cookies too.

Essential cookies are used on our website to remember actions which you have performed during your visit, record your preferences, e.g. when viewing video clips what resolution you prefer to use, and to perform analysis of our visitors activities, e.g. what pages you have viewed, files you have downloaded and to ascertain whether or not a returning visitor has viewed our website recently.  This information could be used to identify what IP address the computer you have used to visit our site was using at the time of your visit, but will not record any other personally identifiable information.

The following list gives some detailed information about the cookies used and may be updated from time to time when changes are made to the website.

First Party Cookies

These are cookies that originate directly from the site you are currently visiting.  The site will have direct control and the consequent responsibility over these cookies and the way they are used.

Third Party Cookies

These are cookies that originate from services that are provided to the website you are currently visiting by other websites run by unrelated organisations.  The table above may be incomplete or inaccurate where third party cookies are concerned, and their useage may change between one visit and the next.  More information about third party cookies may be obtained from the site from which they originate.  The following text by way of example, is from YouTube, and explains their use of cookies.  Most of our video clips are hosted on YouTube.  We embed these video clips within our pages using the privacy-enhanced mode described below.

"Like most web properties, YouTube uses what are known as cookies to collect information.  Cookies can be used to store data about the user's computer or the user watching a video.  YouTube uses cookies to help maintain the integrity of video statistics, prevent fraud and to improve the site experience, among other things.  We use cookies on both youtube.com and on videos embedded from youtube.com.

We've been working to give our users more options and control over these cookies.  One such option is the privacy-enhanced mode for our embed player.  This mode restricts YouTube's ability to set cookies for a user who views a web page that contains a privacy-enhanced YouTube embed video player, but does not click the video to begin playback.  YouTube may still set cookies on the user's computer once the visitor clicks the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode."