Chapter House Choir Privacy Policy
The Chapter House Choir is a secular choir, based in York, and is registered with the Charity Commission (registration number 511629). The Chapter House Choir also runs a Youth Choir for young people aged 14-19 years old. Both choirs give performances and run workshops, some of which are advertised to the public.
Both choirs promote their concerts and workshops, and the adult choir holds a mailing list of people who wish to hear about concerts and other events, one for Patrons of the choir, and a mailing list of members. However these lists are visible only to data administrators of the site, who are members of the Committee or are Choir Librarians.
For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Chapter House Choir is the data controller and is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office which oversees and monitors the implementation of the GDPR. The Choir’s Data Protection Officer is Sarah Hewlett. Choir Trustees and those authorised by them may process and store data on the Choir’s behalf.
This policy was last updated on 16th December 2025, and approved by the Chapter House Choir Committee.
What data does the Chapter House Choir collect and what is it used for?
Chapter House Choir collects data from individuals to help plan, organise and run the day-to-day operations of the group and to promote and market the group’s activities (e.g. marketing mailing lists and photography/video capture). It also ensures that we comply with current legal/financial responsibilities including accounting requirements of the Charity Commission
1. Adult Members: for administering membership and communication within the choir
When you join Chapter House Choir as a member (singer), or during your membership with us, we may need to collect some of the following information on you:
- Name
- Email address
- Phone number
- Address
- Emergency contact details
- Photos/video footage
- Car registration details
Only your name, email address and phone number are stored on our website. They will not be visible to the public or other members, only to data administrators on the site who are members of the committee, or librarians.
Access to the members’ area on the website is by login and password. Members’ car registrations are stored on the membership manager’s computer (password protected) and used to inform York Minster of which cars need access to parking.
Your name and address is also stored by the Treasurer in order to claim Gift Aid.
Current choir members will be able to send emails to the whole choir but this should only be used for choir activities. There is a choir WhatsApp group that can also be used for choir, committee or individual communication.
When you join the choir, you will be asked if you consent to this policy. You will be kept informed of any changes to the policy, and you can withdraw your consent at any time.
Past members will be kept informed about reunion concerts and events but will no longer be able to message within the website.
2. Parents or Guardians of Members of the Youth Choir: For administering membership
When your child joins the Chapter House Youth Choir as a member, we will need to collect some of the following information:
- Member’s name
- Contact email address
- Phone number
- School attended
- Doctor details
- Contact details (name, address, Email, phone number) of the person responsible (parent/guardian)
This is done to ensure we comply with our Safeguarding responsibilities in relation to the Youth Choir. These details are not stored on the Chapter House Choir Website, but in password protected files held digitally by the Youth Choir Music Director.
The name and address of those paying subscriptions is also stored by the Treasurer in order to claim Gift Aid.
3. Patrons
Supporters of the choir can sign up as a Patron. This involves a monthly or one-off payment. Details of patrons (email) will be stored on our website, in an area accessibly only to specific committee members responsible for looking after this group of people. Names, email and any relationship to choir members will be stored by a committee member in a password protected digital file. In addition the Treasurer will keep a record of your name and address for the purposes of administering gift aid.
We use this information to send you advance details of upcoming concerts, and events open only to Patrons, such as pre-concert talks, or post-concert receptions. We will only send you information that is related to Chapter House Choir, and we will not pass or sell your details on to any third parties or send you marketing messages from them.
4. Mailing list subscribers: for marketing and promotion
We offer everybody the opportunity to receive marketing and promotional information on the group’s activities (e.g. emails about forthcoming events).
When you sign-up to our supporters mailing list we will ask for your email address and will use this data to send you information about our events and activities (e.g. upcoming events, latest news, etc). We will only send you information that is related to Chapter House Choir. We will not use your data to send you marketing messages from 3rd parties or give your information to them.
Anything we send you will include a clear option to unsubscribe and you can also do so at any time by replying to the email.
When you purchase an event ticket or merchandise, or donate
If you purchase an event ticket on our website, or Chapter House Choir merchandise, or make a donation, we need to collect data on the person making the purchase. This data will be used for administering your booking/purchase/donation, and will not be used to send you marketing/promotional messages from the group unless you ask to be sent this information. Please note that if you purchase a ticket for a concert of ours through another site, such as York Minster, or Eventbrite/Tickettailor, their own privacy policies will apply.
Website visitors: for running and improving our website
When a person visits our website, we 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 of our members-only section. See the section below on cookies.
Do you share my data with anyone else?
We will never pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes.
Our software provider, HarmonySite also has access to the data stored on our server, that is within the UK. HarmonySite has their own Data Protection Policy.
How I can I get you to update my data?
You can contact us at any time to update or correct the data we hold on you.
How long will you hold my data?
The Chapter House Choir 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 I have?
Under the European 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)
You can find out more about your rights on the Information Commission’s Office website
What will you 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.
What are 'cookies'?
'Cookies' are small text files that are stored by the browser (for example, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc) 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 members.
How does the Chapter House Choir website use cookies?
The Chapter House Choir website uses cookies to track whether you are signed in or not, and whether you wish to remain logged in when you return to this website in your next browser session.
Anonymous analytics cookies
Further, every time someone visits our website, software provided by Google Analytics 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.
- Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
- Cookie settings in Firefox
- Cookie settings in Chrome
- Cookie settings in Safari
