Privacy Notice
WHO WE ARE
Mercy UK is a Christian mental health charity that exists to see every Christian able to navigate their lives from a place of freedom, wholeness and understanding. We do this by raising awareness of the interconnectedness of faith and mental health, offering support to Christians facing mental, emotional or spiritual distress, delivering training and resources to church leaders and people-helpers and providing a Christ-centric curriculum for those needing structured support. This privacy notice explains how we use any personal information we collect about you.
At Mercy UK, we value the personal information you share with us and take seriously our legal responsibility to protect your information and provide you with information about the rights you have. As we control how the information we collect will be used, the law refers to us as a “data controller”. Our registered address is Cragg Royd, Lowertown, Oxenhope, West Yorkshire, BD22 9JE.
COLLECTION AND USE OF PERSONAL DATA
We collect information about you when you enquire about using any of our services, as part of us providing you with our service(s), or when you register an interest in supporting us. We will also collect information about you if you contact us to apply for a role working for Mercy UK. We may also receive information about you from another person. Website usage information is collected using cookies. We also use cookies from third-party partners such as Google, and social media platforms such as Facebook, for marketing purposes.
We mainly use your personal information to provide our services to you, to meet our legal obligations, and to help improve our interests.
We only want to hold as much personal information as we need to do the above.
We want our personal information relationship to be reciprocal where we both benefit, not an exploitative one.
Where we share your data, we only do so with organisations who have a right to see it and who will use it fairly.
We take security seriously.
You can contact us at any time about anything relating to this notice or the information we hold about you.
Why do we ask for your personal information?
Where we have your consent
We rely on your consent to send you updates about our work, and to thank you for your support. We may also use your information to invite you to events.
If you have called our pastoral support service, we may use your information to remain in contact with you for support and to record your ongoing progress.
If you attend one of our events, we may take a photo or video of you.
If you ask us to pray for you, we may ask if we can share this information with our team. If you share your testimony with us, we may ask if we can share this information with our team or use it in our marketing activities.
You can choose to withdraw your consent at any time and when this happens we will respect your choice.
Where we need your information to do what we’ve promised
For example, if you are applying to, or are a participant in the Freedom Course curriculum, we need a lot of information to help us understand your needs to ensure we have the appropriate support in place for the duration of your time with us.
To protect your vital interests
If we believe that your life is at risk, we may attempt to contact you or share your personal information with your next of kin, a health professional or emergency services.
Where we need your information to help us get better at everything we do
These are the things we consider to be our legitimate interests:
Developing an understanding of the needs of our service users. For example, we’ll track activity on our website using cookies to understand the pages people visit so we can offer the best layout of our site. Sometimes we’ll contact you to seek feedback on a product or service you’ve requested.
Information that can help us improve the services we offer. For example, it’s really useful for us to look at large sets of data to understand how effective our training events are.
If you are one of our ‘Treasure Builders’ (regular donors), we may send you updates about our work so that you can be confident we’re doing a good job of stewarding the money you donate to us. We may also ask you if you would be able to increase your support.
To give you a better and more personalised experience (this is sometimes referred to as ‘profiling’). For example, when we're running a training event, you might receive an invitation if you live in the same area of the country. Sometimes, we’ll probably make some wrong assumptions about you and we’re really sorry about that. For example, we may think you’re interested in a job vacancy we are advertising because you recently applied for another role with us, but perhaps you’ve already found another job.
Communicating with you about the products and services we’re providing to you. We may use your personal details to send you things we think you need to know about and things we are obliged to send you legally.
Promoting, marketing and advertising our products and services. For example, we might look at a combination of your personal information to try and determine what kind of information our supporters are most interested in - although we’d never send you marketing emails unless you’d asked us to.
Preventing and detecting crime. For example, if you tell us something that we think may mean the safety or well-being of another person is at risk, we may ask you for more information to help us work out whether the law requires us to pass the information on to a safeguarding authority.
Contacting you in relation to a recent job application.
Dealing with any legal claims.
If we’re using your personal information in the above ways, we really understand that your data has a value and therefore we try to use it for everyone’s benefit. We also try really hard to ensure there will be little or no negative impact on you. This is part of our commitment to ensure that we consider all privacy concerns at the earliest possible opportunity.
The types of information we hold about you
Almost all of the information we have is information that you’ve given to us directly. That might be when you ask us to provide a service or stay in touch with you about our work via our website, emails, phone conversations, written and verbal communication, or in person at an event.
The types of information will vary depending on the service you’ve requested but could typically include:
Name and contact details
Age and date of birth
Information about your beliefs
Details of your interactions with us
Information about your gender
Information about your physical or mental health
Financial information including payment details
Details of products you have bought or services you have accessed
Visual images, personal appearance and behaviour, usually obtained at events or whilst you are accessing our services
Sometimes we process other types of information that could be considered even more private. For example, if you are applying for a job with us or a place in one of our support courses, we might need to ask about any criminal offences or for information about your physical and mental health, any treatment received or medications you have been prescribed. These are “special categories” and we're obliged to handle this information even more thoughtfully.
See a full list of special category information on the ICO’s website.
From time to time we may supplement the information you give us with information from other organisations, such as external partners.
For example, if you attend one of our training events and book through a church, the church may share your name with us.
WHO DO WE SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH?
Where we need to share your personal data, we only do so in accordance with our legal, data protection and privacy obligations.
Your information may be disclosed to the following:
Data processors. We use a number of other organisations who may process data on our behalf to help us provide effective services. We ensure that these organisations understand their responsibility to keep your information private and secure and that they will only use your information for the specific reasons we ask them to.
Church partners. When we run training events, we may need to share your name with the host church to ensure that the event is delivered safely and effectively.
Health professionals. For example, if you apply for a place in one of our support courses such as the Freedom Course, we may need information about any health conditions you might have and any medication you might be taking to ensure that you continue receiving the appropriate support if your application is successful.
Our professional advisors. For example, we may need to share information with our lawyers, auditors or safeguarding advisors when they need it to give us their professional advice.
Government bodies. For example, we might need to let HMRC know that you have asked us to claim Gift Aid on your donation.
Other organisations. Only if we have a compelling reason, and it's lawful to do so. For example, if you have previously worked for us and another organisation asks us for a reference.
HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We only keep your information for as long as it's needed for each of the activities we’ve identified.
The length of time we keep information may vary and can be adjusted by mutual consent. Below are the retention periods depending on the type of information we may hold:
If you have accessed one of our support services:
Retention Period: Service user information shall be retained for a minimum period of 12 months from the date of the last contact we had with you.
Record Disposal: At the end of each calendar year, records that are over 12 months old from the last date of contact will be securely disposed of to maintain data security and minimise unnecessary data storage.
Exceptions: In individual cases where extended retention is deemed necessary for any lawful reason, the retention period will be agreed upon through mutual consent.
If you have given financially to us:
Retention Period: Financial records shall be retained for a period of 7 years in alignment with recommendations from HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs).
If you have been employed with us, or applied for a job:
Retention Period: All records related to Human Resources (HR) shall be securely retained for a duration of 7 years. This retention timeframe is established to encompass the potential period during which civil legal actions could arise.
Health & Safety records for example, if you visit our site or stay in the home:
Retention Period: All records related to Health & Safety shall be securely retained for a duration of 7 years. This retention timeframe is established to encompass the potential period during which civil legal actions could arise.
TRANSFERRING YOUR INFORMATION OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AREA (EEA)
We may need to transfer your personal information outside of the EEA in order to provide you with the services and products you require. This will most likely occur when our third-party providers are based outside the EEA.
Some of these countries may not have laws that protect privacy rights as extensively as in the European Union.
If we do transfer your personal information to other territories, we will take proper steps to ensure that your information is as equally protected as in the UK.
Usually, this would involve using “standard data protection clauses”, which have been approved by the European Commission for such transfers.
YOUR RIGHTS ABOUT HOW YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IS HANDLED
You can request a copy of the information we hold about you via email, social media or verbally by providing the details of your request, your name and your date of birth. All requests received will be directed to our data protection inbox dp@mercyuk.org and will be received by the Director of People & Support, who will facilitate your request.
The information we hold about you will depend on how you access our services and interact with us, so the more information you can give about what it is you might want you see, the quicker and more specific our response can be.
While every reasonable effort will be made to accommodate information requests, certain exemptions apply. These exemptions pertain to information containing references to third parties, matters of taxation, criminal activities, or cases where requests are deemed to be clearly baseless or excessively burdensome.
You also have the right to request we correct any inaccurate information we hold, as well as the right to object to profiling and the right to ask us to delete your information.
If you have any questions, concerns or objections about how we use your personal information please contact us using the details above.
You also have the right to complain to the ICO although we’d really like the chance to try and help with any issues first. Find the ICO’s contact details.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE
We’ll update this page if we decide to change our privacy policy so that you are always aware of the information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we disclose it.
If we make significant changes to the notice we’ll contact you directly to let you know.
We encourage you to check back regularly.
Last Updated: 04/09/2023