Chatteris Parish Church
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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 19 July 2026

Chatteris Parish Churchis the “data controller” responsible for the personal data described on this page — that means we decide why and how it’s used, under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. This site and our internal church management tools run on the Qahal platform, which acts as our “data processor”: it stores and processes data on our instructions and doesn’t use it for its own purposes.

Note for church administrators:this is a starting template, not a substitute for legal advice. Please review it — especially the data-controller, retention and contact details below — and have it checked before relying on it, particularly if you collect data beyond what’s listed here. You can set your data protection contact and ICO registration number under Church Settings, or replace this whole page with your own wording via Pages.

What data we collect

  • Contact details you give us directly — e.g. via our contact form, prayer requests, or group/event sign-ups.
  • Membership and pastoral information held in our church database (names, contact details, group and rota involvement, attendance).
  • Giving records, including Gift Aid declarations where you’ve asked us to claim Gift Aid, which we’re legally required to keep for HMRC.
  • Payment information when you give online — this is collected and processed by our payment provider, Stripe; we don’t store your card details ourselves.
  • Basic technical data (like error reports) if something goes wrong on the site, so we can fix it.

Special category data

Church membership data can reveal religious belief, which UK GDPR treats as a “special category” needing extra care. Where relevant, we rely on the condition in the Data Protection Act 2018 for not-for-profit religious bodies to process this data about our own members, congregation and regular contacts, with appropriate safeguards in place. Where we hold safeguarding information about children or adults at risk, we rely on the substantial public interest (safeguarding) condition and handle it with additional care under our safeguarding policy.

Why we process your data

  • Contract / legitimate interests — running church life: communications, rotas, groups, events.
  • Legal obligation — Gift Aid records, safeguarding duties.
  • Consent — marketing communications you can opt out of at any time, and optional embedded media/maps on this website (see our Cookie Policy).

Who we share it with

We use the following processors to run this site and our church systems. None of them may use your data for their own purposes:

  • Qahal — the software platform itself.
  • Supabase — database hosting and sign-in.
  • Vercel — website hosting.
  • Stripe — online giving/payment processing.
  • Resend — sending emails on our behalf.
  • Sentry — error monitoring, to help us fix problems with the site.
  • YouTube, Vimeo — only if you choose to load their embedded content; see our Cookie Policy.

Some of these providers are based in the United States. Where data leaves the UK, it’s protected by the UK’s International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or an equivalent safeguard.

How long we keep it

We keep personal data for as long as it’s needed for the purpose it was collected for — for example, Gift Aid records must be kept for HMRC for at least the current tax year plus 6 years. [Add your church’s specific retention periods here, or refer to your retention schedule.]

Your rights

Under UK GDPR, you have the right to:

  • ask what personal data we hold about you, and get a copy of it;
  • ask us to correct inaccurate data;
  • ask us to delete your data, or restrict how we use it, in certain circumstances;
  • object to processing based on legitimate interests;
  • withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on it (e.g. marketing emails, embedded media);
  • ask for your data in a portable format, where applicable;
  • complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data.

Contact us

To exercise any of these rights, or ask us anything about your data, please contact us using the details on our Contact page. [Add your ICO registration number under Church Settings if you have one.]