Privacy Policy

Community Church Longton

Last updated: 28 July 2026

A word before the detail

We know almost nobody reads a privacy policy for pleasure. But if you fill in a form on this website, you are trusting us with something personal, and you deserve a straight answer about what happens next. So we have tried to write this in plain English rather than legal language.

The short version: we only ask for what we need, we use it to get back to you, we do not sell it or pass it around, and you can ask us to delete it at any time.

Who we are

Community Church Longton is a church and a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1098345. You will find us at Caroline Street, Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, ST3 1DE.

Under data protection law we are what is called the "data controller" for the information collected through this website. That simply means we are the ones responsible for looking after it.

How to contact us about your information

For anything to do with your personal information — a question, a request, or a complaint — please contact:

Andy King, Pastor

andy.king@longtoncc.org.uk

If your question relates to a safeguarding concern, or to information you have shared through our safeguarding form, please contact:

Angie King, Safeguarding Lead

angie.king@longtoncc.org.uk

Judy Roebuck, Safeguarding Trustee

judy.roebuck@longtoncc.org.uk

You can write to any of us at the church address. We would always rather you asked us directly than wondered.

If your concern is about someone in our leadership. Please contact Judy Roebuck directly as our Safeguarding Trustee. You can also go outside the church altogether and speak to Thirtyone:eight, the independent Christian safeguarding charity we work with, on 0303 003 1111. Their helpline is open to anyone with lived experience of abuse, they are not part of this church, and they do not record calls. Nobody here will think less of you for going to them first.

What we collect, and why

We only collect information that you choose to give us. There are four forms on this website, and each one asks for something slightly different.

If you contact us through the "Get in Touch" form

We ask for your name, email address, phone number and your message.

We use this to reply to you. That is the whole of it. Our lawful basis is what the law calls "legitimate interests" — you have written to us, and it is plainly in both our interests that somebody writes back.

If you tell us you are coming to a service

We ask for your name, email address, phone number, when you are planning to visit, whether you are coming with anyone, and whether there is anything we can help with.

We use this so that someone is expecting you, knows your name when you arrive, and can sort out anything you have mentioned — a space for a wheelchair, a question about children, whatever it may be. Again, our basis is legitimate interests: you have told us you are coming, and we would like your visit to go well.

If you take a next step with Jesus

We ask for your name, email address, phone number, what you would like to do, and anything you want to tell us.

Some of what you write here may say something about your religious beliefs. Under data protection law that counts as "special category" information, which gets extra protection. We treat it that way. Because you have chosen to share it with us, we handle it on the basis of your consent, and you can withdraw that consent at any time by asking us to delete it.

We use this information so that a member of our team can get in touch and help you take that step. Nothing more.

If you report a safeguarding concern

This form is different from the others, and it deserves its own explanation. Please see the next section.

Safeguarding information

Our safeguarding form asks for detail — who you are concerned about, what has happened, when and where, and whether anyone is in immediate danger. You can attach a file. You can also submit the form without giving us your name.

This is the most sensitive information anyone can send us, and we treat it accordingly.

How we handle it. Safeguarding reports go to our Safeguarding Lead and our Safeguarding Trustee. They are not shared with the wider leadership team, the trustees as a body, or anyone else, unless doing so is necessary to protect someone.

Who we may pass it to. If a child or an adult at risk may be in danger, we will share what we know with the people who can help. That may include the police, the local authority's children's or adult social care teams, and Thirtyone:eight — the independent Christian safeguarding charity we work with, whose helpline we use for advice on how to respond. We will do this whether or not you have asked us to, and in some cases whether or not the person concerned agrees. Protecting someone comes before confidentiality.

Our lawful basis. For information of this kind we rely on the safeguarding provision in the Data Protection Act 2018 (Schedule 1, Part 2, paragraph 18), which exists precisely so that organisations can protect children and adults at risk. Where the law requires us to report something, we also rely on legal obligation.

If you report anonymously. You are welcome to. It does mean we cannot come back to you for more detail, and we cannot tell you what happened next — and it also means that if you later ask us to delete your information, we will have no way of identifying which report was yours.

You are doing the right thing by speaking up. Please do not let a privacy policy put you off.

Children and young people

We run activities for children and young people, and we know that our website may be read by people under 18.

We do not ask children to submit personal information through this website. Our forms are intended for adults. Where a young person does contact us — and sometimes a young person will, particularly through the safeguarding form — we treat their information with the extra care their age calls for, and we think about what is in their best interests before we do anything with it.

If you are a parent or carer and you would like to know what information we hold about your child, please ask.

Who else can see your information

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with anyone for marketing. A small number of organisations do handle it on our behalf, because they provide the systems we use:

• UKChurches, who built and host this website, and the form software running on it, including the spam filtering that stops our inboxes filling with junk.
• Microsoft, whose Microsoft 365 service carries our email and stores our files.
• Planning Center, the church database we use to keep track of who is part of our church family, where we may record your details if you become part of the life of the church.
• Google and YouTube, whose fonts load on pages of this website, whose map is embedded on our “New Here?” page, and whose YouTube videos may be embedded elsewhere on the site. When these services load, your browser may send information such as your IP address, the page you are visiting and device/browser information to Google, and cookies may also be used depending on your settings.

Each of these organisations acts on our instructions and is not permitted to use your information for their own purposes.

Separately, we work with Thirtyone:eight, an independent Christian safeguarding charity. We may speak to their helpline for advice about a safeguarding concern, and we use them for criminal record (DBS) checks on those who work with children and young people. They are a safeguarding organisation in their own right, not simply a supplier acting on our instructions, and they keep their own records of what we discuss with them.

We may also share information where the law requires it, or to protect someone — see the safeguarding section above.

Information sent outside the UK

International transfers

Some of the organisations listed above are based outside the UK or may store information on servers outside the UK. Where personal information is transferred internationally, we use the protections required by UK data protection law, such as UK adequacy arrangements or appropriate contractual safeguards.

How long we keep things

• Enquiries, visit notifications and next-step forms: we keep these for twelve months after we last had contact with you, and then delete them — unless you have become part of the church family, in which case your details move into our church database.
• Church database records: we keep these while you are part of the life of the church, and for up to two years after you stop being in contact, so that we can welcome you properly if you come back.
• Safeguarding records: these are kept securely for the long term rather than routinely deleted. Concerns sometimes only make sense years later, when another piece of the picture appears, and destroying records too early can leave someone unprotected. Our trustees are agreeing the exact retention period as part of a wider review of our safeguarding policy. Until that review is complete, we retain safeguarding records securely and do not delete them.

If you would like us to delete information we hold about you, please ask. We will do so where the law allows, but there are circumstances where we may need to keep certain records.

Keeping your information safe

Our website uses a secure connection, so what you type into a form is encrypted on its way to us. Access to our email and our church database is protected by passwords and additional sign-in checks, and only the people who need to see your information can reach it. Safeguarding records are held separately from everything else, with access limited to our Safeguarding Lead and Safeguarding Trustee.

No organisation can promise that nothing will ever go wrong. If a personal data breach occurs, we will investigate it promptly and will notify the Information Commissioner’s Office, and anyone affected, where data protection law requires us to do so.

Your rights

Data protection law gives you a set of rights over your own information. In plain terms, you can ask us to:

• tell you what we hold about you, and give you a copy
• correct anything that is wrong or out of date
• delete it, where the law gives you that right
• stop or restrict our use of it in certain circumstances
• object to certain uses of your information
• receive certain information in a portable format, where the law gives you that right
• withdraw your consent, where consent is what we relied on

There is normally no charge for exercising these rights. We will usually respond within one month, although the law allows longer in some complex cases.

There are limits in a few places. We may not be able to delete safeguarding information, for the reasons set out above, and we cannot act on a request about an anonymous submission because we have no way of knowing which one is yours.

Cookies and this website

This website does not set any cookies of its own. There are no advertising cookies, no tracking pixels, and no analytics following you from page to page. We are not interested in profiling you, and we have not installed anything to do it. That is also why you will not find one of those consent pop-ups when you arrive — we have nothing to ask your permission for.

There is one exception we should be straight about. The map on our "New Here?" page is embedded from Google Maps, and Google may set cookies of its own inside that map. We have no control over those and cannot see them. If you would rather avoid it, simply don't visit that page — the same address and directions are written out in plain text in the footer of every page on the site.

Our forms may briefly use storage that is strictly necessary to keep your submission secure while you fill it in. That does not require your consent, because without it the form would not work.

You can block and delete cookies through your browser settings. Doing so may stop the map or our forms working properly, but nothing else will break.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first — most things are sorted out quickly once someone knows about them. Contact Andy King at andy.king@longtoncc.org.uk, or write to us at the church address.

We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and give you a full response as quickly as we can.

If you are still not satisfied, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's independent authority for data protection:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Helpline: 0303 123 1113

ico.org.uk

You can go to the ICO without coming to us first. We would simply rather have the chance to put things right.

Our registration with the ICO

Community Church Longton is a not-for-profit organisation, and we process personal information for the purposes of our own church family and the activities we run. We do not operate CCTV. On that basis we rely on the not-for-profit exemption from the ICO's annual data protection fee. We keep this under review, and we will register and pay the fee if our circumstances change.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Where a change matters to you, we will say so plainly rather than quietly editing a paragraph.