The collection, retention and processing of your personal data is necessary for the University to perform its public task, and allows the University to exercise its responsibilities, and to fulfil its education and support obligations to you.
This Privacy Statement outlines what this means in practice and explains how the University collects, stores, manages, and protects your personal data.
How do we obtain your data?
The University will collect data about you during its recruitment, admission and registration processes. These data will either be provided directly by you or, where your data is passed to us via a third party (e.g. UCAS or the SLC), the data we hold will reflect what you have provided to the third party and agreed to share with us as part of your agreement with that third party.
The University will continue to collect data from you throughout your time at the University using its established systems and in accordance with its legitimate interests. The University will also generate information about you which will become your personal data (e.g. your assessment marks).
What do we do with your data?
The University will always store your data safely and will never disclose it to any other person unlawfully. To do this the University complies with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The University will never sell, licence or trade your personal data to any third party.
The University will collect your information and use it fairly and in accordance with its legitimate interests throughout your period of registration. These may include, yet not be exclusive to:
- Your personal contact and demographic data which the University may use to contact you with important information about your studies, or use in anonymised, statistical form to help improve the services it can provide to you;
- The administration of your programme of study; including module registrations, teaching and research activities, attendance, library and IT services use, supervision, skills development, co- and extra-curricular activities, assessments and examinations (including extenuating circumstances claims and supporting documentation where appropriate), progression, classification, award, and graduation;
- Your financial information; including your payment of University fees, the assessment and payment of scholarships and bursaries, and information used to calculate your eligibility for hardship funding;
- Information collected as part of your interactions with our welfare, advice and guidance services, including the University’s counselling and mental health advisory services;
- Information presented by you and/or collected by the University which it uses to investigate matters related to conduct and discipline, complaints, appeals, your fitness to study and/or your fitness to practise;
- The collection and/or retention of information which the University may use for other advisory, pastoral, health and safety, management, research, surveying, analysis, statistical and/or archival purposes.
The University may also process your personal data as part of its research and teaching activities in accordance with the lawful basis of ‘public task’, and in accordance with the University’s purpose of advancing education, learning and research for the public benefit. Your information will only be used by University of Liverpool staff for the purpose of research where the data has been anonymised, where ethical approval has been obtained from the appropriate University research ethics committee, and where you have been given the opportunity to opt out of your information being used this way.
The University is committed to the principles of equality of opportunity for all, of fairness and of inclusion, and works to meet its statutory obligations with specific reference to the Equality Act 2010.
To ensure that the University is able to meet this commitment it will from time to time collect and/or update your personal equality characteristics.
The University will use these data for a number of reasons which may include anonymised statutory reporting (e.g. Freedom of Information requests), to monitor the effectiveness of its policies and procedures, to provide individual support adjustments, and/or to contact target groups about equality characteristic-specific consultations, services and positive action initiatives that may affect them.
Upon your graduation, the University will continue to store your contact details securely (including your telephone number, email and postal address data) so that it can keep you informed of University publications and the promotion of benefits, services, events and reunions. The University would also like to keep you informed of its fundraising programmes which may involve telephone fundraising.
You can opt out of all or specific communication types at any point. A full Privacy Statement in relation to the work of our Development and Alumni Relations Team is available at www.liverpool.ac.uk/giving/contact/privacy/.
With whom might we share your data within the University?
The University shares and processes your data in accordance with its legitimate interests. All members of the University who process or use your personal information follow the University’s Data Protection Policy, and regular information security training is provided by the University to all those with access to your personal data. Further information and a copy of the Policy can be found at www.liverpool.ac.uk/legal/data_protection/policy/.
Some areas of the University, such as its welfare, advice and guidance services, will only share your data in relation to these services with your express written consent, which you must have provided freely and unambiguously. Where the relevant service has serious concerns about your safety or the safety of others - which may include safeguarding issues - exceptions may occur, which could involve the sharing of your information with other people from the University or third parties.
More information can be found at www.liverpool.ac.uk/studentsupport/advice/.
When might we share your data with those outside the University?
You automatically become a member of the Liverpool Guild of Students (the Students’ Union) when you register at the University. The University shares your data with the Guild to enable them to communicate with you and provide services to you as a member. More information on your data rights and how the Guild uses your data can be found at www.liverpoolguild.org/privacy.
If you do not wish to be a member of the Guild then you will need to notify the Director of Student Administration and Support in writing (saspa@liverpool.ac.uk).
Some information the University holds about you may be provided to external agencies such as HESA, HEFCE, the NHS (for NHS funded programmes), the SLC (for student finance purposes), UKVI and the Police (for those residing in the UK on a Tier 4 visa), or local authorities (for Council Tax exemption purposes). Where your data is passed to the central government departments and agencies and devolved administrations which require it, it will be in order to enable them to carry out their statutory functions under the Education Act or other Acts of Parliament.
Where you are funded by a third party sponsor, and where as part of your funding agreement you have provided the appropriate consent, the University will share your personal data with that third party sponsor, which may include information relating to your academic standing or matters relating to conduct and discipline, your fitness to study and/or your fitness to practise.
Where your studies at the University fall under a formal partnership agreement (e.g. where teaching and/or assessment is delivered wholly or in part by a partner institution) the University will receive and/or share your data – which will include your academic standing - in accordance with the schedules contained within the relevant partnership agreement.
The University will also share your personal data with agencies who can successfully demonstrate that they require the information for certain legal and/or statutory purposes. This may be (but is not exclusively) for the purposes of:
a) The detection and/or prevention of a crime;
b) The apprehension and/or prosecution of an offender;
c) The assessment and/or collection of any tax or duty, or any imposition of a similar nature;
d) Establishing whether you are fit to practise, or fit to undertake a work placement that may involve working with children or vulnerable adults;
e) Compliance with a court subpoena for the disclosure of documents.
If you are required, by virtue of your registration on your academic programme, to apply for a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check (a criminal records check), and you wish for the University to undertake this check via the DBS Update Service, you will be required to provide authorised University staff with your DBS Certificate number. By so doing, you understand that you will be providing informed consent for such authorised staff to receive information in relation to any criminal records you may hold.
Your information may also be used in anonymised form for statistical analysis by HESA, or by associated government agencies, resulting in publication and release of data to other approved nonstatutory users, which may include academic researchers and commercial bodies. Your contact details will not be made available to HESA, your names will not be used or included in its statistical analysis, precautions will be taken to minimise the risk that you will be able to be identified from the data, and neither statutory nor non-statutory users of HESA data will be able to use the data to contact you.
How long do we keep your data for?
The University has a Records Management Policy and maintains a prescriptive Records Retention Schedule. More information and copies of the Policy and Schedule can be found at www.liverpool.ac.uk/csd/records-management/.
The University will keep your core student record data indefinitely for its statutory reporting and archival purposes and for the purposes of providing you with qualification verification, credit transfer and official documentation services. For a full list of what constitutes your core student record you should consult the University’s Records Retention Schedule.
Your personal data rights
You have a right to access any personal data that the University holds about you. This may be in online systems or in paper form, where available. You can exercise this right by submitting a Subject Access Request in writing to the University’s Data Protection Officer. More information can be found at www.liverpool.ac.uk/legal/data_protection/policy/.
You have the right to ask the University to correct any data it holds about which you consider to be inaccurate. Your Liverpool Life student portal provides the means to update certain elements of your personal data. For other corrections you should contact students@liverpool.ac.uk.
You have the right to object to the way the University processes your data, to ask the University to restrict the ways it processes your data, and to ask the University to erase all or part of the data it holds about you. You should send such objections or requests to the University’s Data Protection Officer. More information can be found at www.liverpool.ac.uk/legal/data_protection/policy/.
You have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way the University processes your personal data. Further information is available at www.ico.org.uk/concerns/handling/.
Changes to the Privacy Statement
In the interests of transparency the University may amend this Privacy Statement from time to time. Any significant changes to the Statement or to the way we treat your data will be communicated to you in writing.
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