Church of England · Diocese of Ely

Somersham, Woodhurst, Pidley-cum-Fenton & Old Hurst

Data privacy notice

On behalf of the Parochial Church Council (PCC) of St John’s, Somersham. Last updated September 2025.

1. Your personal data — what is it?

Personal data is data that relates to a living individual who can be identified from that data. Identification can be by the information alone or in conjunction with any other information in the data controller’s possession or likely to come into such possession. The processing of personal data is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR). The notice says Annex 1 provides details of what personal data is stored and what it is used for.

TODO: content needed Annex 1 is mentioned and was not on the page. The data register described in section 4 was also not published.

2. Who are we?

The PCC of St John’s Somersham is the data controller (contact details below). This means it decides how your personal data is processed and for what purposes.

3. How do we process your personal data?

Your privacy and personal data is important to us. We comply with our obligations under the GDPR by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by only collecting data and information from you that we really need; by protecting your personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure; and by ensuring that personal data stored on computers is stored securely using properly protected software.

We use your personal data to help us to:

  • Provide a voluntary service for the benefit of the public in the Somersham parish in accordance with the church’s mission
  • Administer records for safeguarding purposes, including DBS checks for those undertaking certain roles
  • Administer membership records such as the church electoral roll
  • Manage our contractors and volunteers
  • Maintain our own accounts and records
  • Inform you of news, events, activities and services running at St John’s
  • Process Gift Aid applications

St John’s PCC is a not-for-profit body with a religious aim. We will rely on one of the following legal justifications:

  • Your explicit consent, where you are asked to consent to a specific use
  • A legitimate interest, where we believe you would reasonably expect us to process your data and the privacy impact is minimal
  • A legal obligation to maintain the data

We maintain a register which lists all of the personal data that we collect, what it is used for, how long we keep it and how we store and process it. This can be obtained through the contact information below.

5. Sharing your personal data

We will not share your personal data with third parties, other than when we are legally required to do so.

6. How long do we keep your personal data?

We will keep your data only for as long as is necessary for the purpose for which we process it. In some cases we have a statutory duty to retain data for a specific period. For example, we retain electoral roll data while it is still current, and Gift Aid declarations and associated paperwork for up to six years after the calendar year to which they relate.

When your data is no longer required, we will destroy it securely and permanently so that it cannot be recovered. Paper records are shredded. Data held on computer media is securely deleted.

7. Your rights and your personal data

You have the following rights with respect to the personal data we hold about you:

  • The right to request a copy of your personal data
  • The right to request that we correct any personal data if it is found to be inaccurate or out of date
  • The right to request that your personal data is erased
  • The right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time
  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office

8. Updates to this notice

We will revise and publish this notice if the law changes, or if we change the way in which we process personal data.

9. Contact details

To obtain more detailed information, exercise any of your rights, or raise a query or complaint, please in the first instance contact the PCC secretary, Kevin Lorimer, at parishsec@somershamparishes.org.

You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office on 0303 123 1113, via ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/, or at the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

TODO: content needed This notice covers St John’s Somersham PCC only. No privacy notices were published for Woodhurst, Pidley or Old Hurst.