The basic guidelines of the Data Protection Act are:

1. Personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully.
2. Personal data must be obtained and used for specified and lawful purposes.
3. Personal data must be adequate, relevant and not excessive.
4. Personal data must be accurate and where necessary, kept up to date.
5. Personal data must not be kept for longer than necessary.
6. Personal data must be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects.
7. Personal data must be kept secure.
8. Personal data must be properly protected when transferred overseas

How these principles are applied to the information held by The North Bucks Branch and contained within this web site.

1 Personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully.

The Oxford Diocesan Guild and the North Bucks Branch only use personal data for the purposes listed in principle 2 below.

2 Personal data must only be obtained and used for specified and lawful purposes.

Firstly, it is required that data users tell individuals what "specified and lawful purposes" their data is to be used for.

In the case of the Oxford Diocesan Guild and the North Bucks Branch these have been identified as:

• Reporting of performances that individuals take part in. Unless such performances are publicly published they are not officially recognised.
• Checking that participants in performances are paid up members of the Guild.
• Publishing contact details of tower correspondents. This is primarily for the use of ringers in arranging visits but is also valuable in case of emergency.

3 Personal data must be adequate, relevant and not excessive.

For most ringers, the data consists of:

For tower correspondents, this consists of:

No other data is needed for the normal running of the Guild and its branches.

4 Personal data must be accurate and where necessary, kept up to date.

For tower correspondents, details are published in the Guild Annual Report. However, a rolling record is also kept by Guild officers and is available on request. Corrections can be made to this at any time at the request of correspondents.

Membership and performance information is also published in the Annual Report and performances are also published in The Ringing World. The use of database technology allows corrections to be made to historical membership and performance records. By referring to this record via this web site, ringers can easily identify errors and get changes made according to principle 6 below. This helps to establish a better quality of record than has previously been possible.

5 Personal data must not be kept for longer than necessary.

Membership records have traditionally been retained indefinitely. This is to support the Guild rule that states that a member, having completed 50 years continuous membership, is subsequently entitled to free membership.

Performance data is also traditionally maintained indefinitely to allow complete records of performances in individual towers to be used for educational purposes. Also, for technical reasons, performances occasionally have to be withdrawn. This can occur years after the event.

6 Personal data must be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects.

Data subjects have the following rights:

• Inaccurate information is to be corrected or erased
  This web site and associated database makes this possible
• A copy of their information must be provided on request
  This web site and associated database makes this possible
• Data Subjects can opt out of direct marketing
  Any information used by The Guild will not be used for such purposes
• Data Subjects are entitled to compensation for breach of the act.

7 Personal data must be kept secure.

For tower correspondents, personal address data is published in the Annual Report and is also available on request from Guild officers. In order to address principle 8, this information is not available via this web site.

All other information is already in the public domain.

8 Personal data must be properly protected when transferred overseas

For tower correspondents, address data is published in the Annual Report and is also available on request from Guild officers. This information is not available via this web site.

All other information is already in the public domain.