Privacy Policy

Stour Choral Society – Privacy notice

What is this guide for?

Whenever we need to collect any of your data, we will let you at that point why we need to do so and what it will be used for, but this guide provides a useful overview of all of those situations and provides more detail on how we keep your data secure and up to date, how long we might hold it for, and what your rights are in relation to it.

Stour Choral Society is committed to protecting your personal data and will use any personal or sensitive data we collect from you in line with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). 

Who’s responsible for data the group collects?

Stour Choral Society is a Data Controller under the GDPR. Stour Choral Society’s Data Protection Officer is the Secretary who can be contacted at .

What data do we collect and what do we use it for?

Stour Choral Society collects data from individuals to help us plan, organise and run the day-to-day operations of the group (e.g. co-ordinating rehearsals or collecting subscription payments) and to promote and market the group’s activities (e.g. marketing mailing lists and photography/video capture).

Members: for administering membership

When you join Stour Choral Society as a member, or during your membership with us, we may need to collect some of the following information on you:

  • Name
  • Email address
  • Phone number
  • Address
  • Gift Aid Declarations
  • Subscription Payments
  • Photos/video footage

This data will be used by committee members to manage your membership with Stour Choral Society and to organise and run our activities.

If you give us your consent to do so, we may also use your contact details to send you marketing/promotional communications from the group.

In compliance with the requirements of our registration with the Charity Commission we must make names and addresses of members available to other members of the Stour Choral Society.  However you do have the right to refuse consent to this.

If you give us your consent, Stour Choral Society will add your email to our separate mailing list for communications about musical opportunities related to choral singing.  Any marketing/promotional communication we send you will include a clear option to withdraw your consent (e.g. to ‘opt out’ of future emails) and you can also withdraw consent at any point by contacting the Data Protection Officer – the Secretary.

We check what data we have on members every two years and remove it if we no longer need it. If you leave the group, we’ll make sure we stop using and/or delete any data we don’t need to keep.

PHOTOS/VIDEOS

From time to time SCS may use photos or videos of rehearsals or performances for publicity purposes.  These images will never include the names of individual choir members.  They will be stored anonymously and will be included in the two-yearly review of data.  We will always let members know when photos are being taken so that you can decide whether to opt out.

Event attendees: for processing and managing tickets for events

Where reservations are made on tickets, we may need to collect data on the person making the reservation (e.g. name and email) in order to allow you access to the event and to send you a confirmation of your reservation. This data will only be used for administering your access to the event/s for which you have booked and will not be used to send you marketing/promotional messages from the group unless you have also provided your consent to receive these (see below).

Soloists, instrumentalists and contractors: for administration and legal/regulatory purposes

We may need (for administration or for legal/regulatory reasons) to collect personal or sensitive data on soloists, instrumentalists or contractors providing services to the group. Where this is the case, we will explain what this is for at the point of collection.

Mailing list subscribers: for marketing and promotion

We offer everybody the opportunity to sign up (consent) to receive marketing and promotional information on the group’s activities (e.g. emails about forthcoming events).

When you sign-up to our marketing mailing list we will ask for your email, and will use this data to send you information about our events and activities (e.g. forthcoming performances, social events and fundraising events). 

We will only send you information that is related to the group (e.g. we will not use your data to send you marketing messages from 3rd parties).

Anything we send you will include a clear option to withdraw your consent (e.g. to ‘opt out’ of future emails) and you can also do so at any time by contacting the Data Protection Officer – the Secretary.

Website visitors: for running and improving our website

We use cookie technology when a person visits our website to collect and analyse anonymised data on how many people have visited, what pages they have looked at and other statistical information. We also use cookies to allow members to log in and out in order to view our members-only section.

We use a pop-up banner to let users know about this on their first visit, and they can at any time disable cookies in their browser if they do not wish their (anonymised) data to be tracked.

You can find out more about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org/. 

Do we share your data with anyone else?

We will never pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes.

We sometimes use third party services to process your data (e.g. Google Drive). We will always make sure any third parties we use are reputable, secure, and process your data in accordance with your rights under GDPR.

Are there special measures for children’s data?

We do not knowingly collect or store any personal data about children under the age of 13.

How can you update your data?

You can contact us at any time at to update or correct the data we hold on you.

How long we will hold your data?

The Stour Choral Society data retention policy is to review all data held on individuals at least every two years and remove data where we no longer have a legitimate reason to keep it.

Where you have withdrawn your consent for us to use your data for a particular purpose (e.g. unsubscribed from a mailing list) we may retain some of your data for up to two years in order to preserve a record of your consent having been withdrawn.

What rights do you have?

Under the GDPR, you have the following rights over your data and its use:

  • The right to be informed about what data we are collecting on you and how we will use it
  • The right of access – you can ask to see the data we hold on you
  • The right to rectification – you can ask that we update or correct your data
  • The right to object – you can ask that we stop using your data for a particular purpose
  • The right to erasure – you can ask us to delete the data we hold on you
  • The right to restrict processing – you can ask that we temporarily stop using your data while the reason for its use or its accuracy are investigated
  • Though unlikely to apply to the data we hold and process on you, you also have rights related to portability and automated decision making (including profiling)

All requests related to your rights should be made to the Data Protection Officer at . We will respond within one month.

You can find out more about your rights on the Information Commission’s Office website

What will we do if anything changes?

If we make changes to our privacy statements or processes we will post the changes here. Where the changes are significant, we may also choose to email individuals affected with the new details. Where required by law, will we ask for your consent to continue processing your data after these changes are made. 

Use of Cookies

What are ‘cookies’?

‘Cookies’ are small text files that are stored by the browser (for example, Internet Explorer) on your computer or electronic device. They allow websites to ‘remember’ you for a period of time so that they can store things like user preferences and make the website quicker and easier for you to use.

Without cookies, some things on websites would not be able to work: for example, without cookies it might not be possible to know whether or not you are logged in on a website, which would prevent you from being able to see content restricted to logged-in users.

How does the Stour Choral Society website use cookies?

A visit to a page on the Stour Choral Society website may create the following types of cookie:

  • Anonymous analytics cookies
Anonymous analytics cookies

Every time someone visits our website, software provided by other organisations (Google Analytics, WordPress, AWStats) generates an ‘anonymous analytics cookie’.

These cookies can tell us whether or not you have visited the site before and what pages you visit. Your browser will tell us if you have these cookies and, if you don’t, we generate new ones. This allows us to track how many individual users we have, and how often they visit the site. We use them to gather statistics, for example, the number of visits to a page, to help us identify if visitors would benefit from more information on a particular area.

How do I turn cookies off?

It is usually possible to stop your browser accepting cookies, or to stop it accepting cookies from a particular website.

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. You can usually find these settings in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your browser. To understand these settings, the following links may be helpful, or you can use the ‘Help’ option in your browser for more details.

Please note: switching off cookies may prevent some aspects of our website from working fully (e.g. you may not be able to access our members-only).

Useful links

You can find out more about cookies and their use on the internet from www.allaboutcookies.org

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

If you require more information please speak to the Secretary.

Share this: