Safe surfing & policy

We want you to have an enjoyable and safe surfing experience on our web site, therefore we use the following guidance for our web site:

"Including images of children on the church web site can be motivating for the children involved and provide a good opportunity to help other children identify with the church. We also recognise the possible safety issues and have therefore carefully developed our policy from the Government advice used by Schools, we are confident our policy meets or exceeds these standards." (see http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/index.htm for more details)

Parents and children may also find the following links useful...

1. We aim to protect children from potentially harmful material.
2. We do not publish photographs that could identify children of 16 years or under without written permission of the parents or guardians. Sometimes, a child for whom we have not received an identifiable authority may appear in a group picture or the background of a photo; where this occurs, we will use masking or distortion techniques to obscure the child's face.
3. Where photographs are used with permission, we will not include the full name of the child with the photograph. With permission of the parent/guardian we will include the first name of the child only.
4. If we name (first name and surname) a child in a web page/article, we will not use a photograph of that child on that page/article.
5. We actively follow guidance from the Office of the Information Commissioner including data protection and freedom of information.
6. We monitor our site regularly to ensure content is appropriate. If users are found to be using our site to publish or transmit inappropriate material, it will be removed and further action may be taken.
7. To allow us to help deal with spam email, we will normally use a Lenham URC Church email address rather than a personal email address.
8. The information on this web site is normally obtained via the same data protection process as our printed articles. The Data Protection Act covers both printed and electronic media. There are specific instances where people may not wish their phone number to be published on the public web pages even if the number is published in other media; to cater for this, we operate an 'opt-out' for phone numbers. Please contact the web site supervisor (email supervisor@lenhamurc.org.uk). We can also restrict phone number access to the members-only pages for logged in members only if required.
9. If you have any data protection or freedom of information act issues, please contact the supervisor@lenhamurc.org.uk.
10. Due to the nature of the internet, all data is at some risk, either in transmission to or from the website, on the server hosting the website or via any electronic communication (eg: email) which could result in the data being viewed by an unauthorised source. You should thefore ensure your computer is protected by anti-virus software and care should be taken with any data you consider should not be viewed by others.

If you have any concerns regarding content on the site or are seeking further information regarding freedom of information issues, please contact the web site supervisor (supervisor@lenhamurc.org.uk).