Privacy notice – parents and guardians

1. Identity and contact details of the Data Controller

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 on the ICO website.

2. Contact details of the Data Protection Officer

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]

3. Where does the university obtain your personal data from?

We collect personal data about you from a range of sources, depending on your interactions with the university and the services you use, such as registering your details for open day events, or our website and social media group for parents / guardians. Some of the main sources of information include:
• information provided by you whilst registering to receive communications from the university
• information provided by you on our social media channels
• information provided by you whilst contacting one of our university teams e.g. enquiries, admissions, accommodation etc.
• information provided by you as part of any surveys and feedback requests we issue

4. What personal data do we collect about you?

The university may collect the following information types of personal data about you:
• your name
• your address
• your email address
• your telephone and/or mobile phone number
• your marketing communication preferences
• the academic year of entry you are interested in receiving information about
• any photographs which may be captured during our events e.g. open days, applicant days, campus visits etc.
• if present on campus, the capture of images by use of CCTV.
• any other personal data submitted in your feedback to us about the running of an event or activity.

5. Personal data related to a person for which you are the parent / guardian

While the University of Gloucestershire may hold personal data about you, due to Data Protection legislation, our staff are unable to share information with you about any other person registering interest with us, placing an application with us or being enrolled on a course with us, without their consent. This includes progress of an individual’s application, academic progress or attendance at the university.

Applicants: the university cannot discuss information about an individual’s progress during the application process with you, without the individual’s consent. If the individual wishes for the university to discuss their application with you, the applicant must contact the relevant department to provide their consent for this to happen.

Enrolled students: unless we have a student’s consent, the university cannot discuss or share any information about that student with you, including whether or not they actually attend the university. If you have any serious concerns about your child whilst they are studying at the University of Gloucestershire, you should contact a member of staff who will be able to advise you on how your concerns will be handled.

In an emergency: the university will contact the next of kin / emergency contact that a student has provided at enrolment, only in circumstances when it is in the student’s vital interests to do so.

6. The purposes for which we will process your data

When you register your details as part of the Open days booking page, or on our parents webpage or social media group for parents / guardians, we need to process your personal data in order to manage your event bookings, to provide you with general information about applying to university, and information about the University of Gloucestershire, our events and key UCAS deadlines. We also need to process your data to support statistical analysis and service improvements, and will use the information you provide to evaluate the effectiveness of our activity as part of the government policy to widen participation in higher education and to develop future policy.

7. What is our lawful basis for processing your personal data?

We may process your personal data as is necessary for the university’s legitimate interest for the purposes of event bookings, to keep you informed about applying to university, key university of Gloucestershire activities and dates, UCAS deadlines, and webpage / social media registration.

We may also process your data where it is necessary to protect your or another person’s vital interests, or where we have your specific, or where necessary, explicit consent to do so.

8. Who your personal information is shared with?

Your information will be processed by the university and organisations working on our behalf who are compliant with current data protection legislation in order to send you relevant communications, for example:

• providers who send communications on behalf of the university, e.g. letters, emails, SMS or other communications
• providers who will use your profile information to identify others who may be interested in the university.

No information will be passed to third party organisations for them to contact you directly themselves.

Anonymised data may also be shared with government bodies or educational organisations for research and analysis purposes.

Information about you may be disclosed to other organisations outside of the university where it is in our legitimate interests and/or as required by law, including but not limited to:

• Government bodies and agencies where the university is legally obliged to do so such as the Office for Students, the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the Higher Education Statistics Agency, UCAS, the Department for Education, and the Higher Education Access Tracker and its subscribers

9. Transfers to third countries and safeguards in place

Data collected may be transferred outside the EU, for example some data processed by the university’s contracted software supplier is stored on servers located in Canada. Canada has “adequacy” status from the European Commission. Whenever data is transferred from one location to another it will always be in a secure, encrypted or password protected format.

We ensure that any data processor complies with confidentiality, current data protection legislation, data sharing protocols and safeguards, governing law, intellectual property, liability and pursuant to its commitment to compliant practice.

10. How long will your information be held?

The university will hold your personal data for as long as it is necessary to communicate with you for the purposes for which your information has been collected.

After the conclusion of that purpose, the university may hold some anonymised data to support statistical analysis and service improvements.

When we captured your data along with your child/ward intended year of entry (when they plan to start studying at university), the general information you provide to us will be held for one year after this date. If no ‘year of entry’ was known, we keep your information for a maximum of 3 years from the time it was collected.

11. What are your Rights?

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, contact details are in Section 2 of this Privacy Notice.

12. How to raise a concern, query or complaint

If you have queries, concerns or wish to raise a complaint regarding the way in which your personal data has been processed you should contact the Data Protection Officer in the first instance, using the contact details under 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