Down Cathedral Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 2026

The members of staff at Down Cathedral respect your right to privacy and seek at all times to comply with our obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation, 2018.

This policy explains how we deal with any personal data you may provide to us while visiting this website.

By visiting this website, you hereby accept the terms of this Privacy Policy. We may provide links to other websites but we are not responsible for the content or the privacy policies of those sites.

If you have a question about this privacy policy or about information you have provided to us, you can contact us at info@downcathedral.org.

Cookies and similar technologies

We do not use any third-party cookies.

The website may use cookies or similar technologies where they are necessary for security or for functionality requested by the visitor. In particular, Google reCAPTCHA may use cookies or similar technologies as part of protecting our forms against spam and automated abuse.

The privacy-focused website analytics tool as described below does not use cookies.

We do not currently display a general cookie-consent banner because we do not intentionally use non-essential cookies for advertising, behavioural tracking or similar purposes requiring prior consent.

We periodically review the technologies used by this website and will update our practices and this policy if this changes.

Website statistics

We use Independent Analytics to help us understand how visitors find and use the website.

Independent Analytics runs directly on our site. Analytics data is created and stored on our server and is never sent to any third-party analytics service.

Independent Analytics does not use cookies to identify visitors. To recognise repeat visits for statistical purposes, it creates a one-way identifier including the visitor’s IP address and browser, together with randomly generated data. The original IP address is not stored as the visitor identifier.

We use this information only to produce website statistics and to understand and improve the website. We do not use it for advertising or to track visitors across other websites.

Information you provide to us

If you email us directly or submit information through a form on this website, we may receive personal information such as:

name
email address
telephone number
postal address, where relevant
any other information you choose to include in your message or form submission.

When you submit a form:

the submission is sent to us by email,
a copy may also be sent to the email address you provided on the form,
a record of the submission is retained for up to one year.

We use this information for the purpose for which you provided it, such as responding to an enquiry, processing a request or administering a service you have asked us to provide.

We also retain a record of submissions for up to one year in our legitimate interests. This provides both you and us with a record of what was submitted and helps us establish the facts should there subsequently be a dispute or complaint.

We do not use information submitted through these forms for advertising or unrelated marketing unless this is specifically stated when you provide the information.

We do not sell your personal information.

Website forms and spam protection

All the forms on this website are protected using Google reCAPTCHA v3. This helps us prevent automated spam bots from abusing the forms.

We use reCAPTCHA for the sole purpose of protecting our website and forms, and not for advertising or tracking.

reCAPTCHA operates in the background and may collect technical information about your browser and interaction with the website and communicate with Google. Google may also use cookies or similar technologies as part of providing the reCAPTCHA service.

Google’s own privacy policy and terms apply to its processing of information through reCAPTCHA.

Online donations

We have partnered with Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) to allow us to accept online donations.

If you make an online donation you are wholly doing so through CAF’s website and are bound by the terms of their Privacy Notice.

The information collected during the donation process, which is accessible to Down Cathedral, includes your name, email, contact number, postal address, marketing preferences, and, in the case of recurring payments, your bank details.

Your name and address are required if you Gift Aid the donation to comply with HMRC requirements.

Information required to process your payment is not stored or accessible to Down Cathedral.

How long we keep your information

General form submissions are normally retained for up to one year after submission and are then deleted, unless there is a legitimate reason to retain a particular submission for longer, for example if an enquiry remains active or a complaint has arisen.

All Gift Aid declarations, no matter how they are submitted, are retained for 7 years to comply with HMRC requirements.

Other personal information is retained only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it was collected and for any applicable legal, financial, safeguarding or administrative requirements.

When personal information is no longer required, we delete or securely dispose of it where appropriate.

Who we share information with

We may share information with organisations that help us operate the website. This is usually in the context of them providing technical support.

We may also disclose information where required by law.

We will never sell personal information.

Security

We will keep all information we collect strictly private and secure and we will treat it with confidentiality. We’ll do everything we can to prevent unauthorised access or hacking but we can’t guarantee that it will never happen.

We can’t be held liable in the event of data loss as the result of an IT failure.

We will never provide any information we hold about you to anyone unless it’s in accordance with any laws or other binding regulations.

Your data protection rights

UK data-protection law gives you rights concerning your personal information. These may include the right to:

ask for a copy of personal information we hold about you;
ask us to correct inaccurate information;
ask us to delete information in certain circumstances;
restrict or object to certain uses of your information; and
raise a concern about how your personal information is being used.

To exercise your rights, please contact us at info@downcathedral.org with the details.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent data-protection regulator.

Disclaimer

Down Cathedral shall accept no liability for any loss, damage, claims, demands, causes of action, expenses, including without limitation to, reasonable legal fees and costs of proceedings arising out of or in connection with the use and/or dissemination of personal information relating to you in accordance with this privacy statement and your consents.

Down Cathedral shall accept no liability for statements issued pertaining to this website which clearly represent the sender’s own views and are not made on behalf of Down Cathedral.

Changes to this policy

We may update this privacy policy when our website, services or legal obligations change.

The date at the top of this page shows when the policy was last updated.