Privacy Policy

 

Last Updated: October 2026

This Privacy Policy governs the data processing practices of our unified software ecosystem. This includes our public-facing Church Mobile Application (for congregants, newcomers, and team serving) and our internal Operations Management Application (for staff, trustees, and operational leadership), both built across the Base44 secure cloud network. It also applies to our online room and hall hire booking form.

We are committed to protecting the privacy, dignity, and personal data of our church family, volunteers, visitors, hirers, and staff members.

1. Important Information and Who We Are

Data Controller

For the purposes of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, the Data Controller is ‘Darlington Vineyard Church’ (referred to as "we", "us", or "our" in this policy). We operate and maintain both software applications and the room and hall hire booking form.

Contact Details

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our data protection practices, please contact our administrative team:

  • Email: info@darlington.church

  • Postal Address: Darlington Vineyard Church, Salt Yard, Darlington, County Durham, DL3 7DX

2. The Legal Basis for Processing Your Data

Under UK GDPR, we process personal data under the following legal frameworks:

  • Explicit Consent: When you sign up for an account, agree to serve on a rota, submit a connect card, or sign up for an event via ops.darlington.church.

  • Legitimate Interests: For the day-to-day administration, communication, team coordination, and operational management of our church community hub.

  • Contract, Legitimate Interests and Legal Obligation (room and hall hire): When you book a room or hall, we process your booking details to agree and run the hire, and to meet our insurance, health and safety, and safeguarding responsibilities (see section 3.D).

  • Special Category Data (Religious Beliefs): Because our organisation is a church, processing your account data inherently implies a religious affiliation. We process this under Article 9(2)(d) of the UK GDPR (processing carried out in the course of legitimate activities by a non-profit body with a religious aim) and ensure this information never leaves our secure system without your explicit consent.

3. Information We Collect

We collect different types of data depending on which application or service you use and your role within the community.

A. Public Church Mobile Application (Congregants & Newcomers)

  • Identity Data: First name, last name, date of birth.

  • Contact Data: Email address, mobile phone number, physical address block.

  • Profile Images & Media Uploads: User-submitted profile photographs, uploaded to sync your profile picture across our public and internal operations apps.

  • Device Identifiers & Push Tokens: Unique device ID tokens processed specifically to route operational church updates, rota alerts, and critical community notifications via native push messaging.

  • Ministry & Serving Data: Teams you choose to join (e.g., Welcome, Cafe, Worship), availability records, and calendar shift confirmations, including your consent to serve on a rota.

  • Preferences & Media Data: Interactions with our publicly curated Sunday service materials, liturgy setlists, and public Spotify media player widgets.

B. Internal Operations Application (Staff, Leadership & Volunteers)

  • Employment & Capacity Data: Contracted work hours tracking, timesheet entry logs, task completion metrics, and department workload accountability assignments.

  • Financial Data: Uploaded expenditure receipt photos, expense claims tracking parameters, and mileage logs for reimbursement.

  • Systems Metadata: Authentication logs, permission tags, and device identifier codes passed through secure Google or password-based authentication protocols.

  • Photos and Files: In some chats, users can upload photos and files. These are used only in staff and pastoral functions.

C. Children’s and Minors’ Data (Under 18s & Under 13s)

We take the safety of children seriously under the ICO’s Age Appropriate Design Code and global child protection frameworks. We do not allow minors to register unverified accounts. We collect dates of birth to automatically detect minors. Any data concerning a minor (such as kids’ church attendance or youth serving teams) strictly requires:

  • A digital link to a verified parent or legal guardian’s Contact record.

  • Explicit, logged parental consent before any data processing or rota scheduling occurs.

Under-13 Verifiable Framework: We do not knowingly collect or process data from children under the age of 13 without verifiable parental or legal guardian consent.

Parental Rights & Management: Parents or legal guardians retain the absolute right to review, manage, modify, or request the immediate deletion of their child’s personal data at any time by contacting our data team at info@darlington.church.

D. Room and Hall Hire

When you book a room, hall or other space at Darlington Vineyard Church, we collect:

  • your name, organisation or group, email address and phone number;

  • your booking details: rooms, dates, times, the activity, expected numbers, any equipment, layout or parking needs, and details of any electrical equipment you bring;

  • safety and safeguarding information you give us: your risk assessment, the name of your first aider or appointed person and any qualification they hold, an emergency contact for the day and, if children or vulnerable adults will attend, the name of your supervisor and safeguarding lead and your confirmation that DBS checks are in place. We do not ask for DBS certificate numbers;

  • your insurance details (insurer and policy expiry date) and, if food is prepared or served, your food hygiene certificate details. Copies of certificates are sent to us by email;

  • your agreement to our hire terms, with your signature name and date.

Why we use it. We use this information to handle your booking and agree the hire with you (contract, UK GDPR Article 6(1)(b)), and to run lettings safely and meet our insurance, health and safety and safeguarding responsibilities (legitimate interests, Article 6(1)(f), and legal obligation, Article 6(1)(c), where the law requires it). We also use your contact details to get in touch about your booking.

Other people’s details. If you give us the name of another person, such as your first aider, supervisor or emergency contact, please make sure they know. Please don’t give us health or other sensitive information about yourself or anyone else.

Who sees it. Our Operations Coordinator and any staff or trustees who need it to manage bookings, safety and safeguarding. We may share relevant details with our insurer if there is a claim or incident, or with the authorities where the law requires. We do not sell or rent your data or use it for marketing.

Where it is held. Booking forms are held on a secure online platform provided by Anthropic (Claude) and can be seen only by authorised staff. Emails and certificates are held in our email and document systems.

How long we keep it. We keep booking records for 6 years after the booking ends, in case of a claim or dispute, and then delete or anonymise them.

Your rights. Your rights are set out in section 8. To use them, contact us using the details in section 1.

4. How We Use Your Personal Data

We use your data across both platforms and our booking form exclusively to run our church operations and community hub safely:

  • Account Provisioning: Moving new registrations securely through our automated staging "Airlock" queue until approved by an administrator, to prevent directory duplicates.

  • Rota Planning & Logistics: Matching scheduled volunteers to stage plots, sound desks, hospitality lanes, and group rotas.

  • Worship Syncing: Compiling public Spotify tracking strings entered by worship pastors internally to update the public congregant media components automatically.

  • Financial Accountability: Auditing receipt uploads and timesheet records for regulatory and accounting compliance.

  • Room and Hall Hire: Processing bookings, and checking insurance, health and safety, and safeguarding information, so that hires run safely and meet our insurance and legal responsibilities.

5. Data Security & Isolation

Both applications use an advanced security architecture to ensure your data is shielded from unauthorised internal and external eyes.

  • Row-Level Security (RLS): Our backend database enforces strict row-by-row isolation. General system users and volunteers can only query data relevant to their explicitly checked department assignments (e.g., a Cafe volunteer cannot view Safeguarding or Maintenance data rows).

  • The Confidential Pastoral Care Vault: To protect your ultimate privacy, tickets containing sensitive pastoral care updates are completely decoupled from global system dashboards, search features, and Kanban workload boards.

  • The Pastoral Lockdown Rule: Even full System Administrators and Trustees are strictly barred from viewing or reading pastoral support tickets or counselling logs. Access is cryptographically limited exclusively to the specific assignees, the creator, or individuals carrying the explicit Senior Pastor clearance badge.

  • Room and Hall Hire Records: Booking forms can be viewed only by authorised staff with access to the booking form.

6. Third-Party Data Sharing & Integrations

We do not sell or rent your personal data to third parties. Your data passes only through secure, approved technical pipelines necessary to operate the apps and the room and hall hire booking form:

  • Base44 Platform Infrastructure: Our secure database hosting provider, bound by rigorous data processing agreements.

  • Stripe, Inc.: Our secure third-party payment gateway used to process ticket sales and registrations for paid church events. Credit card details are captured directly by Stripe using encrypted frames and are never transmitted to or stored on our Base44 servers.

  • Resend.com: Our transactional email delivery utility used to securely dispatch automated booking confirmations, event joining instructions, and account validation codes.

  • Google Play Services & Firebase: Infrastructure tools used for routing background push notifications, processing application crash diagnostics, and maintaining application stability.

  • ChurchSuite Embedded Forms: Where public "Stay in Touch" elements are loaded via secure embeds, data inputs flow directly into your secure master profile managed under our core privacy guidelines.

  • Spotify Web API: Publicly shared track links are synchronised into playlist strings across devices without transmitting any personal profile indicators.

  • Xero: We use Xero’s cloud accounting platform to process and reconcile financial expenditures. Receipts and expense claims processed within our Operations Application are transmitted to Xero via secure API to ensure accurate bookkeeping and audit-readiness. No personal identity data beyond that required for accounting compliance (e.g., vendor names and expense amounts) is transmitted.

  • Anthropic (Claude): Hosts our online room and hall hire booking form, where booking details are stored for authorised staff to review.

Sharing with Church Leaders

For events hosted at Darlington Vineyard, where we have your explicit consent, your name may be shared with your church leader to confirm which congregants are attending. No other details will be shared.

7. Data Retention & Account Deletion (App Store Mandate)

We retain your personal information only as long as you are an active part of our community, or as required for historical compliance (e.g., financial expense records).

Room hire records are kept as set out in section 3.D.

The Right to Be Forgotten / Account Deletion

In accordance with both Apple and Google developer policies and the UK GDPR, you have the right to delete your account at any time.

How to Request Deletion: You can start account deletion directly within the Profile Settings page of the mobile app, or by emailing our data team at info@darlington.church.

Our Anonymisation Protocol

To prevent historical scheduling logs or financial statistics from breaking when an account is deleted, we use an anonymisation script instead of a destructive hard-delete. When you choose to delete your account:

  • Your first name, last name, and email address are completely overwritten with randomised anonymous strings (e.g., "Scrubbed User #541").

  • Your profile photo, phone number, address block, and exact date of birth are permanently purged from the server.

  • Your historical rota counts and ticket metrics are preserved for church capacity analysis, but they are no longer linked to you.

8. Your Legal Rights under UK GDPR

You have the right to:

  • Request access to a copy of the personal data we hold about you.

  • Request correction of incomplete or inaccurate data.

  • Request erasure or anonymisation of your personal data.

  • Object to processing or request restriction of processing.

  • Withdraw your consent at any time where we are relying on consent to process your information.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please reach out to us via our contact email listed in section 1. If you are unsatisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).