Hills Church acknowledges the privilege of being trusted with personal information and values that trust to facilitate connection, relationships and care. This privacy statement sets out how Hills Church works with personal information to meet privacy act obligations and to demonstrate Hills Church’s commitment to the respect of individual privacy.

Hills Church commitments when working with personal information, including information collected through the Hills Church website:

1. To only collect or access personal information if we need it, to do authorised Churchwork
2. To focus on getting information fairly, openly and directly from the individual themselves (unless they have consented otherwise) after informing them:
   1. what we’re using their information for
   2. who gets to see it
   3. where it’s held
   4. their right to access and correct their information
3. To co-operate promptly with requests to access personal information but may refuse access to evaluative material. That is, personal information received for the purpose of making an assessment about a person’s character or suitability.
4. We keep personal information confidential, accurate, safe and secure and only for as long as we need to
5. We don’t provide personal information overseas unless the individual knowingly consents
6. We take personal responsibility to maintain high levels of trust. We proactively inform the privacy officer of any potential privacy breaches, concerns or improvement suggestions.

Consent 

Contact with Hills Church, including use of our website, is subject to this privacy statement, which may be updated at any time.

Collection & use 

Hills Church lawfully collects personal information for the purposes outlined at the time of collection. This information could include:

• Name
• Age
• Gender
• Contact information (address, telephone numbers, email, etc)
• Attendance
• Interactions with us
• Subburb you live in (specifically for Foodbank requests)
• Size of the household (specifically for Foodbank requests)

We may collect personal information about you in the following ways:

• Face to face contact
• Electronically, including through our website and online surveys
• Social media messages or conversation
• During phone calls
• Voice or image recordings
• Whilst delivering and administering services
• Forms and other correspondence (both in writing and electronically)

Supply of this information is voluntary. It is your right to interact with us anonymously, provided it is practical and lawful.

Wherever possible, we will permanently destroy personal information upon your request, or when there is no longer an operational or legal need for us to retain it.

Photographs & video

Hills Church may from time to time publish photographs or videos of our Church gatherings, events and activities. These images are used in print and digital formats (e.g., on our websites, social media, electronic and printed publications etc.).

Please let us know if you do not wish to have your image used in this way. We will never knowingly publish anything that would be objectionable, embarrassing or hurtful to anyone, and will gladly remove any photographs or videos upon request.

CCTV:

Hills Church maintains a closed-circuit television (CCTV) network across the church building from which it collects footage. It is vital to Hills Church that we ensure the safety and security of our children, volunteers, staff, and visitors.  It is also important to ensure our property, equipment, material and information are protected from damage and theft in any way.

We will use our CCTV cameras (that do not collect or record audio) to help detect or capture evidence of a security risk or breach, and to facilitate a timely response to emergency situations. We may also use recorded footage when conducting investigations relating to complaints towards leaders of ministries or when internal damage has occurred to understand the cause or person responsible. Hills Church views that a video surveillance system is an effective means to ensure the safety and security of anyone visiting our buildings with minimal imposition on them.

Inside our premises, the cameras are placed to monitor the common (publicly accessible) areas for security and safety reasons.  The systems may from time to time record footage as people pass through the areas covered by the video surveillance system.

We only share footage when it is required to achieve the purposes listed above, or as required by law, including:

• NZ Police, to assist with law enforcement
• Hills Church staff or leadership where the access is required or suggested to be appropriate.

We only keep footage for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes outlined, and in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. For CCTV within our premises, recorded footage is retained for no longer than 14 days before being permanently deleted/overwritten in a continuous cycle, subject to any access requests for particular footage. We store your information on dedicated secure servers.

Third parties

Hills Church does not sell, trade or rent your personal information to anyone. We use the following third-party providers to store and process our data:

• Planning Center in order to store and manage our church database. Hills Church’s data is stored outside of New Zealand under similar levels of data protection to New Zealand.
• Microsoft Corporation. Security of your information while using Microsoft forms is provided by Office 365 including data encryption. More information can be found at: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/security-and-privacy-in-microsoft-forms-7e57f9ba-4aeb-4b1b-9e21-b75318532cd9
• Intuit Inc., in order to process information on our Mailchimp platform, to send out communication. More information can be found at: https://mailchimp.com/help/mailchimp-intuit-privacy-faq/
• We may also share your personal information with other third-party service providers that provide similar data protection levels, or law enforcement authorities, where required.

External links

Our websites may contain external links to other (third-party) websites. Our privacy commitments do not extend to other (third party) websites and the personal information they collect. We recommend you review the privacy policy of other websites you choose to visit.  

Storage & security

We have implemented processes, technologies and procedures that are designed to safeguard access from unauthorised parties. We use an enterprise grade document management suite with appropriate security protocols.

Cookies

A ‘cookie’ is a small text file which is stored on your computer, not the website. Please see your browser’s help files for ways you can activate, manage or disable this function.

We use ‘cookies’ to identify your ip address whenever you interact with us online. Cookies are used to make your visits a smoother experience and to assess how the site is being used and could be improved.  

Contact us

Notify Hills Church of anything privacy-related using our privacy notification form.