Privacy Policy (Privacy Notice)

Last updated: 18.10.2026. Version: 1.1.

1. Who we are

Pastors Network is run by Concentric IT Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales.

Company number: 05012213
Registered office: 179 Walmersley Road, Bury, Lancs, BL9 5DF
Registered with the Information Commission (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, as a data controller: ZC106843

Our Data Protection Lead is Gordon Hall. He is your contact for anything in this policy. Email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk or write to the address above.

In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Concentric IT Ltd.

2. Who this policy is for

This policy is for:

people with an account: pastors, elders, church administrators, deacons, lay preachers and guest speakers;
people a church has invited to join, including guest speakers a church has added to its list;
wedding and funeral contacts who receive emails about arrangements a church is making;
anyone who visits the website.

If your church keeps your details on Pastors Network (for example in its members list, its pastoral visits or its compliance records), your church is responsible for that information. We store it for the church and act only on its instructions. Your church should give you its own privacy notice. Section 7 explains this.

3. What we hold about you

If you have an account:

your name, email address and phone number;
your title (if you give one) and your role at your church;
your church, its address, postcode and the networks it belongs to;
your profile photo, a sample sermon and a short biography, if you add them;
for preachers: your postcode, how far you will travel, your preaching experience and the churches you preach for;
your notification choices and the “hide me” setting;
when you agreed to this policy and the Terms of Use, and which version you agreed to;
the things you do on the platform: pulpit dates you post or accept, swaps, events, Ask for Help requests and offers, books you lend or borrow, BookBuy lists you join, notes you write, and anything else you add;
for guest speakers: the churches whose lists you are on, and what churches have written when recommending you;
sign-in records: when you signed in, and the internet address and browser used. These are kept in our activity log for security (section 9);
reports you send us with “Report a fault or suggestion” or “Report a concern”: what you wrote, its subject and category, and your name and email. A report may name someone else, for example if it is about a person (section 9).

If a church has invited you but you have not joined: your name, email address, phone number (if the church gave it), the church that invited you, and the message the inviter wrote.

If you are a wedding or funeral contact: your name and email address, and any other details the church gave us for the arrangements.

If you visit the website: see the Cookie Policy. We do not use analytics or advertising tools.

Some of this is special category information under data protection law. The fact that you are a pastor, elder or preacher says something about your religious beliefs. We treat it with extra care (section 4).

4. Why we use it, and our lawful basis

The law says we must have a reason, called a lawful basis, for each use. Here they are.

What we do	Our lawful basis
Run your account and give you the tools you signed up for	It is needed for our agreement with you (the Terms of Use). UK GDPR Article 6(1)(b).
Hold the fact that you are a church leader or preacher	Your explicit consent, given at sign-up by ticking a separate box: “I agree that Pastors Network records that I am a church leader or preacher, which shows my religious belief. I can withdraw this by deleting my account.” UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a). You can withdraw it by deleting your account.
List you in the Directory	Your consent, given by the statement at sign-up. You can withdraw it at any time with the “hide me” switch (section 5). UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a).
Send you emails and notices about your account and the things you take part in (a pulpit date, a swap, an offer of help, the weekly update)	Our legitimate interests in running a useful service (see our legitimate interests assessment, updated October 2026), and our agreement with you. Article 6(1)(f) and 6(1)(b). You can turn most of these off in My Profile, Notification Preferences.
Keep the platform secure: the activity log, sign-in checks, lockouts after failed sign-ins	Our legitimate interests in keeping your data and the platform safe (see our legitimate interests assessment, updated October 2026). Article 6(1)(f).
Keep a record of how the platform is used, by person, for 180 days, and show it to the platform administrator	Our legitimate interests in seeing which parts are used, spotting problems and helping people who are stuck (see our legitimate interests assessment, updated October 2026). Article 6(1)(f). See section 6.
Answer your requests and complaints, and keep the records the law asks for	A legal obligation. Article 6(1)(c).
Send Gordon’s invitation to a pastor, and the short getting-started notes after the church joins	Your agreement, given when we spoke. Article 6(1)(a). Reply “stop” to any of them and they stop.
Send a first email to someone a church has invited to join its team, or as a guest speaker	The church’s request, and our legitimate interests in helping churches bring in their own people (see our legitimate interests assessment, updated October 2026). Article 6(1)(f). Every such email says who we are, links to this policy and tells you how to ask us not to email you again. During pre-launch, churches cannot invite other churches through the platform.
Email wedding and funeral contacts about arrangements	The church decides. We act for the church (section 7). Every such email says who we are and how to object.

Our legitimate interests assessment (updated October 2026) covers every use that relies on legitimate interests. You can ask for a copy at dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk.

We do not make decisions about you by computer alone. Pulpit Cover suggests preachers by distance and other details, but people make every choice.

We do not sell your data. We do not use it for advertising.

5. Who can see your details

The Directory. When you join, you agree to be listed. Who sees you depends on your role:

Pastors, elders, administrators and deacons are seen by their own church, by churches connected to it, and by people connected to them.
Lay preachers are seen by every signed-in user, so churches can find preachers. Your phone and email are shown only to your own church, churches connected to it, people you are connected to, and churches that have booked you to preach or list you as a guest speaker.
Guest speakers are not listed. Only churches you are connected to see you.

“Hide me”. Everyone except guest speakers has a “hide me” switch, called “Show me in the Directory”, in My Profile, My details. Guest speakers do not need one: only churches they are connected to ever see them. When you hide yourself:

your own church still sees you exactly as before;
nobody outside your church sees you in the Directory, its search or another church’s view of your church’s leadership team. This includes people and churches you are already connected to;
you drop out of other churches’ favourites, so their preaching dates no longer reach you first;
if you take part in something at another church, such as accepting a preaching date there, your name still shows to that church, because they need to know who is coming;
a church’s lead stays named on the church’s entry, even when hidden, because other churches need to know who leads a church they connect with.

The platform administrator can see every account, hidden ones included. This is so we can approve accounts, keep the platform safe and help people who ask.

Public church pages. A church can choose to switch on a public page. If it does, anyone on the internet can see the name of the person who leads that church. Their photo shows only to people signed in to Pastors Network who can see their profile. Nobody else’s details appear on it.

Things you share on purpose. Some features exist to share with other churches. When you post a pulpit date, ask for help, offer a book to lend, join a BookBuy list or share an event, the churches you are connected to see it. When you accept a preaching date, the church that posted it sees your name, email and phone so it can make arrangements. When a church recommends a guest speaker, the receiving church sees the speaker’s name, what they are, the first half of their postcode and the recommending church’s words. It sees their phone and email only after the speaker accepts a connection.

Our service providers (section 8).

The police or a regulator, but only where the law requires it.

6. The usage record and the administrator’s dashboard

When you use a part of the platform, we note which part, and when, against your account. The platform administrator’s dashboard shows this, including which people use the platform most. We use it to see what is useful, spot problems and offer help. We delete each entry after 180 days. If you delete your account, your entries go straight away. The administrator’s own use is not recorded.

7. Information your church keeps about other people

Pastors Network holds information that churches keep about their own people. This includes members lists, pastoral visits, prayer points, compliance and DBS records, processes such as weddings and funerals, and serving rotas.

For this information:

the church is the controller. It decides what to keep and why. It must have its own lawful basis and give its people a privacy notice. We give churches a template.
we are the processor. We store and handle it only on the church’s instructions, under our Data Processing Agreement (pastorsnetwork.co.uk/dpa/). We do not use it for our own purposes.
other churches cannot see it. Connections between churches share only what a church posts on purpose (section 5).
nobody in our office looks at it unless the church asks us in writing. Each look is logged. Only someone who has signed a confidentiality commitment may do it.

If you think a church holds your details and you want to see, correct or remove them, ask the church first. If you cannot reach it, email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk and we will pass your request to the right church and help it reply.

Guest speakers without an account. If a church has added you to its guest speaker list, or recommended you to another church, and you have no account, you cannot use “Download a copy of my data”. Ask the church that added you, or email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk with your name and the email address the church used. We will pass your request to each church that holds your details and help it reply within one month. If you want to come off the guest speaker lists altogether, email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk from the address the churches used: we remove it from every church’s list and tell you when it is done.

Wedding and funeral contacts. If a church is arranging a wedding or funeral that involves you, it may give us your name and email so we can send you messages about the arrangements. Every one of those emails says who we are and how to object. We use your details for nothing else, and never for marketing.

8. Our service providers

We use a small number of companies to run the platform. Each one may use your information only to provide its service to us.

Provider	What it does	Where
20i	Hosts the website, the database and the nightly copies	United Kingdom
Postmark (AC PM LLC, part of ActiveCampaign)	Sends the platform’s emails. It sees the email address, the subject and the message. It keeps a copy of each email for 45 days, then deletes it.	United States. Covered by the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
Your browser’s push service (Apple, Google, Mozilla or Microsoft, depending on your device)	Delivers push notices if you switch them on. The message is locked so the push service cannot read it.	Depends on the provider
postcodes.io	Turns a church’s or preacher’s postcode into a map position, so we can work out distances. Only the postcode is sent, with nothing else.	Not published. Only the postcode is sent, from our server.

If Postmark cannot send a message, it may go through our host’s own mail system instead. We never do this for an address Postmark has blocked.

When your browser fetches things from elsewhere. Some pages load videos from Vimeo, or book covers from Open Library. When that happens, your browser tells that company your internet address. We do not send them anything else.

We do not move your information outside the UK except as shown above.

9. How long we keep it

The full detail is in our Data Retention Policy. In short:

Your account stays until you delete it.
If you have not signed in for 11 months, we email you. If you still have not signed in by the 12-month mark (at least 30 days after the email), we remove your personal details from the account. Lay preachers are not affected. If you are the only active pastor, elder or administrator of an approved church, we review your account by hand instead.
If your church’s pastor leaves and no other pastor or elder with an account is left, we pause the church instead of closing it. Its records are kept and still copied each night, it does not appear anywhere, its public page is switched off, and its open requests are withdrawn. When a new pastor is approved, the church carries on. If none is approved within six months, we decide whether to delete the church and its records.
Most things you delete go to a trash for 30 days, so you can change your mind. Then they are deleted for good.
Your activity log entries are kept for 12 months.
Reports and concerns you send us go by email to our support inbox, where they are kept for 12 months. The activity log keeps the report’s subject, its category and your name and email for 12 months. If the email cannot be sent, the whole report is kept in the activity log instead, for the same 12 months.
Your usage record is kept for 180 days.
Notices in the bell are deleted after 90 days.
Nightly copies: each church’s records are copied every night, so a church can be put back after an accident. Copies are locked (encrypted), kept for 30 days, then deleted.

10. Your rights

You have the right to:

see the information we hold about you. You can download your own account data yourself: My Profile, Privacy, “Download a copy of my data”. The link lasts 24 hours, and the file is deleted as soon as you have downloaded it. For records your church keeps about you, ask your church (section 7).
correct it. You can change most of it yourself in My Profile.
delete it. You can do this yourself: My Profile, Privacy, “Delete my account”. Nothing happens for 7 days, so you can change your mind. After that, your details, login, notes, “Just me” prayers and personal library are removed. Records that belong to your church stay with your church. Where a record involves other people, such as a joint pastoral visit, it stays with your name replaced by “Former member”. If you are your church’s lead pastor and others are still on your team, hand the church over to one of them first, or email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk and we will close your account within a month.
object to anything we do on the basis of our legitimate interests.
stop marketing emails at any time. Reply “stop”, or email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk, and we will send you no more.
withdraw consent. Use the “hide me” switch to come out of the Directory, or delete your account.
restrict how we use your information in some situations.
take your information elsewhere (data portability). The download is in a standard format.

To use any of these, email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk. We will reply within one month. If your request is complex, or you send several, we may take up to two more months. We will tell you within the first month if so. If we need proof of who you are, or need you to explain what you are asking for, the month starts again once we have it. We will make a reasonable and proportionate search.

Putting back a note, private prayer or book of your own. If you delete one of your own notes, a prayer you kept for “Just me”, or a book in your Library, it stays in your trash for 30 days and you can put it back yourself. If you cannot, you can ask us to, within those 30 days: email dp@pastorsnetwork.co.uk from the email address on your account. We do this only when you ask, never on anyone else’s request, your church’s included. To find it we see only its date and its first few words (for a book, its title). We log what we did and tell you when it is done.

When you delete your account, and the nightly copies. We remove your details from Pastors Network straight away. A copy may stay in our locked nightly copies for up to 30 days and is then deleted. We only use those copies to put a church’s records back after an accident. If we ever do, we erase your details again at once.

Our host’s backups. Our host, 20i, also takes a daily backup of the whole site. These can be restored for 30 days. 20i deletes older ones when it needs the space, so some may be kept for longer. They are used only to restore the site after a failure. If one is ever used, anyone erased since is erased again at once.

11. Keeping your information safe

We protect your information with:

encrypted connections (HTTPS) for everything sent to and from the site;
passwords stored in scrambled form, never as plain text;
optional passkeys (a fingerprint, face or device PIN) as a safer way to sign in;
automatic sign-out after 30 minutes without use;
a short lockout after repeated failed sign-ins;
permissions, so each person at a church sees only the parts their church leader has given them;
private files (such as compliance certificates and church documents) kept outside the public part of the site and served only to people allowed to see them;
nightly copies that are locked (encrypted). The key to open them is kept offline, not on our server;
an activity log of sensitive actions, such as downloads of certificates, documents and data exports.

On your own device. If you use Pastors Network on a phone or computer, it keeps copies of some pages you have opened (including Members and Pastoral Visits) so they still open when you lose signal. They are cleared whenever you are signed out, and when a different person signs in on the same device. Use a device only you use, and lock it.

No system is completely secure. If something goes wrong with your information, we will tell the ICO within 72 hours where the law requires it, and tell you without undue delay if there is a high risk to you.

12. Children

Accounts are for adults only. You must confirm you are 18 or over when you sign up. If we learn that someone under 18 has an account, we will close it.

Churches may keep records about children in their members lists. The church is responsible for those records (section 7).

13. Cookies

See our Cookie Policy (pastorsnetwork.co.uk/cookies/). We use only the cookies the site needs to work.

14. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first. Email complaints@pastorsnetwork.co.uk, or write to us at the address in section 1. We will acknowledge your complaint straight away, look into it, and reply within 10 working days.

You also have the right to complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commission (ICO), at ico.org.uk.

15. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date and version at the top. If a change matters to you, we email registered users before it takes effect. We record which version each person agreed to when they signed up. Earlier versions are available on request.