At Gateway Freedom Church we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Policy explains when and why we collect personal information about people who visit our website, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

We may change this Policy from time to time so please check this page occasionally to ensure that you’re happy with any changes. By using our website, you’re agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any questions regarding this Policy and our privacy practices should be sent by email, by writing or by telephone to the details found on our Contact page.

Who are we?

We are a group of people who have found faith in Jesus and we are exploring what it means to follow Jesus in our everyday lives.

As a community, we are ‘evangelical’ – meaning, we believe the Bible is God’s inspired book; and we are ‘charismatic’ – meaning, we believe God’s Holy Spirit is real and we can be empowered by the Holy Spirit today.

We are friendly and informal. Whether you are just curious about Christian faith, or if you have already found faith and you are looking for a community of friends, we would love to meet you!

How do we collect information from you?

We obtain information about you when you use our website, for example, when you complete the contact form, when you make a donation or engage with other forms within our site.

What type of information is collected from you?

The personal information we collect might include your name, address, email address, IP address, and information regarding what pages are accessed and when. If you make a donation online, your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions, as explained below.

Use of ‘cookies’

Like many other websites, the Gateway Freedom Church website uses cookies. ‘Cookies’ are small pieces of information sent by an organisation to your computer and stored on your hard drive to allow that website to recognise you when you visit. They collect statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns and do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to store your country preference. This helps us to improve our website and deliver a better more personalised service.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences. For more information on how to switch off cookies on your computer, visit our full cookies policy. Turning cookies off may result in a loss of functionality when using our website.

Main Cookies used on our site

Google Analytics

These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.  For more information on Google Analytics’ privacy policy visit here – http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/privacy.html

Google Maps

These are Google Maps third party cookies, which are unique identifiers to allow traffic analysis to Google Maps.

How is your information used?

We may use your information to:

• Contact you regarding queries raised in the contact form;
• Process a donation that you have made;
• Send you communications which you have requested and that may be of interest to you.
• Process a job application.

We review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us.

Who has access to your information?

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes.

Third Party Service Providers working on our behalf: We may pass your information to our third party service providers, agents subcontractors and other associated organisations for the purposes of completing tasks and providing services to you on our behalf (for example to process donations and send you mailings).

However, when we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service and we have a contract in place that requires them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own direct marketing purposes. Please be reassured that we will not release your information to third parties beyond the company for them to use for their own direct marketing purposes, unless you have requested us to do so, or we are required to do so by law, for example, by a court order or for the purposes of prevention of fraud or other crime.

Right to erasure

If you have previously contacted us through the website and you would like all record of the contact to be erased, please use the contact email address on the website to request erasure and your personal data will be deleted.

Security precautions in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of your information

When you give us personal information, we take steps to ensure that it’s treated securely. Any sensitive information (such as credit or debit card details) is encrypted and protected with the following software 128 Bit encryption on SSL. When you are on a secure page, a lock icon will appear on the bottom of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Non-sensitive details (your email address etc.) are transmitted normally over the Internet, and this can never be guaranteed to be 100% secure. As a result, while we strive to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us, and you do so at your own risk. Once we receive your information, we make our best effort to ensure its security on our systems.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website‚ so we encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

In addition, if you linked to our website from a third party site, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third party site and recommend that you check the policy of that third party site.

16 or Under

We are concerned to protect the privacy of children aged 16 or under. If you are aged 16 or under‚ please get your parent/guardian’s permission beforehand whenever you provide us with personal information.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). By way of example, this may happen if any of our servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU. These countries may not have similar data protection laws to the UK. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing. If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we will take steps to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken with the aim of ensuring that your privacy rights continue to be protected as outlined in this Policy.

If you use our services while you are outside the EU, your information may be transferred outside the EU in order to provide you with those services.

Review of this Policy

We keep this Policy under review. This Policy was last updated in March 2020.