Privacy policy

What is this Privacy Policy about?

This website is owned by the Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of St Peter Westminster. 

For the purposes of this policy Westminster Abbey includes:

  1. The Dean and Chapter of the Collegiate Church of St Peter Westminster;
  2. Westminster Abbey Enterprises Limited;
  3. The Westminster Abbey Trust (Westminster Abbey Foundation); and
  4. The Garfield Weston Trust for Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of information you provide to us as well as the overall integrity of the Internet. This Policy describes our overall current policies and practices with regard to personal data and sensitive personal data collected by us from you directly and/or through the website: categories of personally identifiable information about you as currently defined by Data Protection legislation and or regulation (currently The Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulations (EU) 2016/679). For the purposes of this Privacy Policy references to ‘personal data’ include ‘sensitive personal data’ as appropriate.

What information could we hold about you?

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.

We may collect, store, and use some or all of the following categories of personal data about you:

  • Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and business contact information.
  • Date of birth.
  • Marital status and dependants.
  • Bank account details.
  • Any other personal information required by us to verify your identity and anti-money laundering checks including identification documentation such as your passport or driving licence and utility bills.
  • Information included on invoices provided by contractors and suppliers.
  • Information about your use of our information and communications systems including, for the avoidance of doubt, any personal use by you of such systems, such as information about your personal devices through your use of our wifi, our website or portals.
  • Photographs if you attend any of our events.

Any other information provided by you, or any third party, to us, in connection with your dealing with us.

How is this information collected?

We collect personal data about you through:

  1. Information which you provide directly to us including when you sign up for Updates, Newsletters or additional information or services from us. When you contact us, we may request personal data about you such as your name, postal address, email address and telephone number. The information you provide is either manually or electronically stored.
  2. Information collected automatically through our website;
  3. Information about you provided to us by third parties including sponsors of events (religious services or commercial events), other people with whom we are communicating, and other third parties.

Use of personal data

We will use the categories of personal information (as set out above) to perform our agreement with you, comply with legal obligations, fulfil your instructions and requirements and pursue our legitimate interests. We will ask only for data that is adequate, relevant and not excessive for those purposes. Where we send you information for any purpose, it will usually be sent by e-mail or occasionally may be sent by post or email unless we are otherwise advised. When we ask you for personal data it may be used for any of the following purposes:

  • To provide services and other information to you
  • To contact you to inform you of our services and events
  • To send you regular updates on issues you have indicated will be of interest to you
  • To send you requested information and details of events
  • To use your personal data for marketing purposes and market research
  • To administer the website and help us improve our services
  • To issue invoices, manage accounts and records, and collection of payments and debts
  • To use your personal data to comply with any legal and regulatory obligation we may have from time to time

Unsubscribe

We hope you will be pleased with our information and services. However, if you do not wish to receive emails from us and want to be removed from our electronic mailing list, please either click on the 'unsubscribe' link at the foot of any e-mail communication from us or email us at the address given below with 'email unsubscribe' in the subject heading.

If you also wish to be removed from any other database we hold or be unsubscribed from email communication, please let us know by emailing us at dataprotectionteam@westminster-abbey.org with 'e-mail' and or 'mail unsubscribe' in the subject heading or writing to us at Room 50, The Chapter Office, 20 Dean's Yard, London SW1P 3PA.

Anonymous data collected through this website

As stated above we automatically collect anonymous information about the use of our website. For example, our web server automatically logs which pages of our website our visitors view, their IP addresses and which web browsers they use. This technology enables us to compile statistics about our visitors and their use of our website.

Our website contains hyperlinks to other pages on our website. We may use technology to track how often these links are used and which pages on our website our visitors choose to view. Again, this technology does not identify you personally – it simply enables us to compile statistics about the use of these hyperlinks.

Cookies

A cookie is a small file created by a website and then stored on your computer. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can control if and when you allow cookies to be stored on your machine and can view or delete any cookies stored.

We may, subject to your preferences, use four types of cookies on our website:

1. Strictly necessary cookies

These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the website and use its features.  Without these cookies, you would not be able to navigate the website and use its functionality.

2. Performance and statistical cookies

These cookies collect information in an anonymous form about how visitors use our website.

They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around the site when they are using it.

We may also use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, to administer our website and to improve the service we offer to you.  An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your computer on a network, or in this case, the internet.  Your IP address might also be used to gather broad demographic information.

We may perform IP lookups to determine which domain you are coming from (ie aol.com, yourcompany.com) to more accurately gauge our users' demographics.

Information from these types of cookies and technologies or about website usage is not combined with information about you from any other source.

None of the cookies or technologies that we use will personally identify you.

3. Marketing cookies

These cookies if selected will be used to target and improve our advertising to you. We use cookies to - for example, improve reporting on advertising campaign performance, to avoid showing ads the user has already seen, or to enable us to display advertising that is more relevant to users. These cookies contain no personally identifiable information. If you have chosen not to accept these cookies no advertising will be delivered to you.

4. Preference cookies

These cookies are used to recognise you and remember your preferences or settings when you return to our site, so that we can provide you with a more personalised experience - for example, if you have chosen a language for the site other than English, we will remember this and ensure that you receive that language when you visit our site again.

A full list of cookies that Westminster Abbey uses can be found on our Cookies webpage.

Consent

To comply with current legislation, we need to ask for your consent to set the performance cookies described above.  When you arrive on our website a pop-up message will appear asking for your consent to place performance and statistical cookies on your device.  In order to provide your consent, please click 'continue' or 'accept'. Once your consent has been provided, this message will not appear again when you revisit. It may appear again when you visit areas of the Website which are the responsibility of our associated Choir School and Westminster Abbey Trust (Westminster Foundation) If you, or another user of your computer, wish to withdraw your consent at any time, you can do so by altering your browser settings.

If you would like to know more about cookies, or would like to disable cookies in your browser settings (i.e. refuse cookies) please visit the About Cookies website.

Disclosure and transfer of your personal data

We do not share, sell, distribute or transfer your personal data with or to third parties, except as otherwise provided for in this privacy policy and under these limited circumstances:

  • In order to provide you with the information or services which you have requested, personal data may occasionally be transferred or shared with our associated trading arm Westminster Abbey Enterprises Limited or Trusts including The Westminster Abbey Trust (Westminster Abbey Foundation), and other professionals or third parties who act for or with us, for further processing in accordance with the purposes for which the data was originally collected or for purposes to which you have consented. For example, sometimes a third party may have access to your personal data in order to support our information technology or to handle document production, communications or events on our behalf.
  • Where you have consented, we may also disclose your personal data to other businesses who may contact you about their services that may interest you.
  • We may share, transfer or disclose the information in our databases and server logs to comply with a legal requirement, for the administration of justice, interacting with anti-fraud databases, to protect your vital interests, to protect the security or integrity of our databases or this website, to take precautions against legal liability, or in the event of a joint venture, collaboration, financing, sale, merger, reorganisation, change of legal form, dissolution or similar event.
  • We may share, transfer or disclose your personal data to a potential or actual successor to us.  
  • Where appropriate, before disclosing personal data to a third party, we contractually require the third party to take adequate precautions to protect that personal data and to comply with applicable law.
  • We may disclose or transfer your personal data to a third party in countries outside the European Economic Area for further processing in accordance with the purposes for which your personal data were originally collected or for purposes to which you have consented. In these circumstances we will ensure that your rights are adequately protected by technical and contractual means. 

Data access and corrections

Upon receipt of your written request and enough information to permit us to identify your personal data, we will disclose to you the personal data we hold about you. We will also correct, amend or delete any personal data that is inaccurate and notify any third party recipients of the necessary changes. You may update any information you have given to us by contacting us at the addresses given at the end of this policy.

Requests to delete personal data are subject to any applicable legal and ethical reporting or document retention obligations imposed on us.

You may make requests by emailing dataprotectionteam@westminster-abbey.org or in writing to

Room 50
The Chapter Office
20 Dean's Yard
London SW1P 3PA

  1. Object to processing where we rely on our legitimate interests and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground;
  2. Request that we suspend processing (permanently or temporarily) or to ask for information held about you, or to update or correct that information;
  3. Request the transfer of personal data to another party; and
  4. Withdraw your consent in limited circumstances where we require it.

You will not usually have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

Links to other websites

This website may contain hyperlinks to websites that are not operated by us. These hyperlinks are provided for your reference and convenience only and do not imply any endorsement of the activities of such third-party websites or any association with their operators. We do not control these websites and are not responsible for their personal data practices. We urge you to review any privacy policy posted on any site you visit before using the site or providing any personal data about yourself.

Notification of changes to privacy policy

We are continually improving our methods of communication and adding new functionality and features to this website and to our existing services. Because of these ongoing changes, changes in the law and the changing nature of technology, our data protection practices will change from time to time. If and when our data practices change, we will notify you. We encourage you to check this page frequently.

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