Welcome to The Rectory Society’s privacy notice

Welcome to The Rectory Society’s privacy notice.

The privacy and security of your personal information is extremely important to us. This privacy policy explains how and why we use your personal data to make sure you stay informed and can be confident about giving us your information.

This policy applies if you are a member of the Rectory Society or visit our website or email, call or write to us.

We will never sell your personal data (and will only share it with organisations we work with when it is necessary and the privacy and security of your data is assured).

Who are ‘we’?

In this policy, whenever you see the words ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’, ‘Rectory Society’ or ‘Society’, it refers to The Rectory Society, a company limited by guarantee in England and Wales under number 06016526, a not-for­ profit organisation formed to help further interest in all former and existing rectories, parsonages and other clergy dwellings. This is the entity which is the controller and responsible for your personal data.

If you have any questions in relation to this privacy policy or how we use your personal data they should be sent to the Administrator of the society at ali@everington.net or addressed to The Administrator, The Rectory Society, Orchard House, Frating Road, Ardleigh, Colchester, CO77SU.

What personal data do we collect?

Your personal data (any information which identifies you, or which can be identified as relating to you personally for example, name, address, phone number, email address) will be collected and used by us. We will only collect the personal data that we need.

We collect personal data in connection with specific activities such as membership requests, booking a place or places on one of our events/excursions, attendance at our annual general meeting, contributing articles or information (including property images) for the purposes of our newsletter or archive compilation, database development on an anonymised basis, conducting historical research in the public interest and for comparable purposes.

You can give us your personal data by filling in forms on our website or by completing and returning membership application forms manually, subscribing to take part in research on our website, entering a competition, promotion or survey or by corresponding with us (by phone, email) or otherwise by joining as a member.

This personal data you give us may include name, title, address, date of birth, age, gender, employment status, demographic information, email address, telephone numbers, personal description, photographs, attitudes, opinions, usernames and passwords.

Personal data provided by you:

Any data you give us we will hold, for the duration of your membership, on a database referred to as ‘Active Database’ A.

This includes information you give when interacting with us, for example joining or registering or communicating with us. For example:

  • personal details (name, date of birth, email, address, telephone, and so on) when you join as a member or supporter
  • financial information (payment information such as credit or debit card or direct debit/standing order details or information ascertainable from a settlement by cheque)
  • your opinions and attitudes about the Rectory Society, its activities and interests and your experiences of its events.

If you buy membership as a gift your details will be recorded and your association with that relationship will be recorded.

We may collect the following information:

  • technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet, your login information, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and if you access our website via your mobile device we will collect your unique phone identifier
  • information about your visit, including, but not limited to the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL) and query string, clickstream to, through and from our website (including date and time), products you viewed or searched for, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as but not limited to, scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), methods used to browse away from the page, and any phone number used to call our customer service number
  • information about your attendance at any event or excursion including but not limited to number in your party and membership ID (this will likely be obtained (“on site”)
  • the terms that you use to search our website.

Please note that certain services on our website will not be available to you until you have joined the Society as a member.

Personal data created by your involvement with us:

Your activities and involvement with us will result in personal data being created. In addition to joining one or more of our events and excursions, this could include details of how you have helped us by contributing background material to features in our newsletter or archive material to our database of clergy dwellings.

Information we generate:

We conduct research and analysis on the information we hold, which can in turn generate personal data. For example, by analysing your interests and involvement with our work we may be able to build” a profile which helps us decide which of our communications are likely to interest you.

How we use your personal data:

We will only use your personal data on relevant lawful grounds as permitted by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (from 25 May 2018)/UK Data Protection Act and Privacy of Electronic Communication Regulation (“the “Regulation”). The lawful grounds for processing personal data are variously to enable performance of a contract with you (membership subscription), to comply with a legal obligation, necessary for our legitimate interests (e.g. interaction with members, event organising, research activities and database and archive development).

Personal data provided to us will be used for the purpose or purposes outlined in any fair processing notice in a transparent manner at the time of collection or registration where appropriate, in accordance with any preferences you express. If asked by the police, or any other regulatory or government authority investigating suspected illegal activities, we may need to provide your personal data.

Your personal data may be collected and used to help us deliver our activities as a heritage organisation
(including development of a clergy property database on an anonymised basis) and/or to complete your order or request in connection with any of our events.

When your membership with us expires:

When your membership with the Rectory Society expires, we will transfer your data from Active Database A and retain it for an indefinite period on a separate archive database referred to as ‘Passive Database’ B. We will keep such parts of the data you have given us that are for the sole purpose of the creation and development of a national historical archive in the public interest. This information will only ever be used for the purposes of historical research. We will not keep any data that is not relevant to these purposes. We will also never give any of your data to any third party other than for the purpose of historical research only.

This ‘Passive Database’ B is stored securely by us. If we retain any data on paper it will either be destroyed or stored securely by us.

Your rights

Under the Regulation, you have various rights in relation to your personal data. All of these rights can be exercised by contacting us at ali@everington.net or addressed to The Administrator, The Rectory Society, Orchard House, Frating Road, Ardleigh, Colchester CO77SU.

You have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

Rights Details
Right of access You have the right to obtain from us confirmation as to whether your personal data is being processed, and, where that is the case, access to such personal data.
Right to Rectification We will use reasonable endeavors to ensure that your personal information is accurate. In order to assist us with this, you should notify us of any changes to the personal information that you have provided to us by sending us a request to rectify your personal data where you believe the personal data we have is inaccurate or incomplete.
Right to erasure / ‘Right to be forgotten’ Asking us to delete all of your personal data will result in us deleting your personal data without undue delay (unless there is a legitimate and legal reason why we are unable to delete certain of your personal data, in which case we will inform you of this in writing).
Right to restriction of processing You have the right to ask us to stop processing your personal data at any time.
Right to data portability You have the right to request that we provide you with a copy of all of your personal data and to transmit your personal data to another data controller in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, where it is technically feasible for us to do so.
Right to complain You have the right to lodge a complaint to a supervisory authority such as the Information Commissioner’s Office in the UK (see www.ico.org.uk). Although we encourage our customers to engage with us in the event they have any concerns or complaints.

We will not ordinarily charge you in respect of any requests we receive to exercise any of your rights detailed above; however, if you make excessive, repetitive or manifestly unfounded requests, we may charge you an administration fee in order to process such requests or refuse to act on such requests. Where we are required to provide a copy of the personal data undergoing processing this will be free of charge; however, any further copies requested may be subject to reasonable fees based on administrative costs.

Where you request us to rectify or erase your personal data or restrict any processing of such personal data, we may notify third parties to whom such personal data has been disclosed of such request. However, any such third party may have the right to retain and continue to process such personal data in its own right, for example to comply with its legal obligations.

Change in policy

We reserve the right to change the terms of this policy at any time upon posting reasonable notice to that effect on this website.