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Source: www.glos.ac.uk. All Rights Reserved. 2025 University of Gloucestershire
Last updated: 16 February 2023
The University of Gloucestershire is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller and is committed to protecting the rights of individuals in line with Data Protection legislation. A copy of this registration can be found here.
The Data Protection Officer is responsible for advising the University on compliance with Data Protection legislation and monitoring its performance against it. If you have any concerns regarding the way in which the University is processing your personal data, please contact the Data Protection Officer at:
Data Protection Officer
University of Gloucestershire
Registrar’s Directorate
Fullwood House
The Park
Cheltenham, GL50 2RH
Email: [email protected]
The Disability, Dyslexia and Learning Support Service (DDLSS), which includes the Mental Health and Wellbeing Service, may hold data relating to you from a number of sources. The majority of data we hold on students is provided by you, either before you commence your studies or during your time as a student. This may include any forms you complete for us, medical evidence/diagnosis of a disability, study needs assessment reports, appointment details, calls and emails, and information about any other service engagements. From time to time, we can also be sent medical records from GPs, Mental Health practitioners and other healthcare professionals.
Our records include:
• Personal identifiers and biographical information – for example, your student ID number and your date of birth;
• Contact details – for example, your address, email address and telephone number;
• Sensitive personal data – for example, details of why you would like to seek support from the DDLSS details of a disability, mental health difficulty or specific learning difficulty, details of support you may have had in the past and notes written by practitioners following sessions or after other contacts with us;
• Dates of meetings held with you;
• Family Details – for example, details of other family members with whom you have given us consent to liaise.
The DDLSS primarily uses your data to set up relevant and timely support, enabling you to focus on your academic studies and make the most of your time at university. Examples include:
• Offering you an appointment that is suitable to your needs and requirements;
• Sending you information on how to set up support both within the Service and externally if appropriate;
• Setting up reasonable adjustments such as extensions, alternative exam arrangements and access to Specialist Study Skills Tutors and Mentors.
These activities are essential to our service offering and all communications are intended to be respectful and sensitive to students seeking support from the DDLSS, or who may have been referred to our service by University Staff or a health care professional. Communications may be sent to you by telephone, text, email, post or other electronic means (for example through Microsoft Teams).
The DDLSS may also collect routine statistical information about each contact made which is later anonymised and analysed for audit and evaluation purposes. This information may subsequently be summarised and interpreted in an Annual Report. The utmost care is taken to ensure no individually identifiable information is disclosed.
Lastly, limited personal data may be sent to the Higher Education Statistics Agency for Statistical Analysis (HESA), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and the Office for Students (OfS). For more information on this, please refer to the Student Privacy Notice.
We will only collect and use your personal information when we have at least one legal basis to do so, as defined by GDPR. Generally we collect and use personal information only where:
• You, or your legal representative, have given consent;
• You have entered into a contract with us;
• It is necessary to perform our statutory duties;
• It is necessary to protect someone in an emergency;
• It is required by law.
If consent is the only legal basis we have to use your personal information, you have the right to withdraw consent at any time and we will delete or anonymise your personal information.
Personal information conveyed to us will not be disclosed to other University staff or external organisations without your explicit and informed written consent (other than in exceptional circumstances as outlined below). You will be asked to sign a registration form, where you can confirm whom we may or may not contact. In other instances, you may be asked to email in the name of the person with whom you wish us to liaise e. g. parental consent.
In order to help you in your studies, the DDLSS work closely with academic and support staff across the University. There may be instances where we may ask you if we can invite academic or support staff to your one-to-one meetings. We may liaise with a range of external professionals (for example a psychologist or other health practitioner) so that we can provide integrated and effective support for students. You may withhold your permission for us to share information but this may affect the level of support the University is able to offer you.
The University is also legally required to complete statistical returns to HESA (Higher Education Statistical Agency) on the numbers of students with disabilities and those in receipt of Disabled Students’ Allowance. Anonymised reports are routinely produced, based on the number of disabled students at the University. No individual is identifiable from these reports.
None of your data will be transferred outside of the European Economic Area (EEA).
In most instances, we will keep your data on our database for 7 years, following our last year of contact with you. This is to ensure that we can support you throughout your studies and afterwards should you continue on to post-graduate study. If you send us any information as a prospective student but do not commence your studies at the University, your information will be stored on our database for a maximum of 18 months.
The DDLSS may contact you prior to commencing your studies if you have declared a disability. This will initially be via your personal email address given to the University when applying via UCAS, or from your direct application to the University. Once you have completed online registration and become a registered student at the University, communication will transfer to your University of Gloucestershire email address.
All communications from then on will be via telephone, text, email, post or other electronic means (for example through Microsoft Teams).
Under Data Protection Legislation you have the following rights:
• to request access to, and copies of, the personal data that we hold about you;
• to request that we cease processing your personal data;
• to request that we do not send you any marketing communications;
• to request us to correct the personal data we hold about you if it is incorrect;
• to request that we erase your personal data;
• to request that we restrict our data processing activities (and, where our processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent, without affecting the lawfulness of our processing based on consent before its withdrawal);
• to receive from us the personal data you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by you, to another data controller;
• to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on your rights and freedoms.
Please note that the above rights are not absolute, and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.
Any requests or objections should be made in writing to the University’s Data Protection Officer, using the contact details in Section 2 of this Privacy Notice.
If you are unhappy with the way in which your personal data has been processed you may in the first instance contact the University’s Data Protection Officer using the contact details in Section 2 above.
If you still remain dissatisfied, then you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for a decision. The ICO can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk
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