Privacy Notice

As a FE College our main lawful basis for processing your personal data are as follows:

Article 6.1 (a) - the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes e.g. consent to contact next of kin, direct marketing, opting into a scheme.

Article 6.1(b) - processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract; e.g. staff employment contracts, contracts for a service by a third party, student relationship with the College.

Article 6.1(c) - processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject; e.g. The Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups (Northern Ireland) Order 2007, Disability Discrimination Act 1995, SENDO, Employment law.

Article 6.1 (d) - processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person e.g. we may need to disclose information to medical provider.

Article 6.1(e) - processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller. On behalf of the Department for the Economy (DfE), our role is provide you with quality education. e.g. The Further Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.

Article 6.1 (f) - processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child e.g. Nursery provider, sponsors to the program, photographs.

On occasions we may be required to process your personal data for other reasons however we will only do so where a Lawful Basis applies.

We are also required to collect, process and maintain special category data such as racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation. Our lawful basis for processing this information is mainly:

Where the College is required to process Special Category data, we will only do so where a lawful basis exists in Article 9 of GDPR or where appropriate, Schedule 1 and 2 of the Data Protection Act (2018). Further information is available in the College Appropriate Policy Document.

Where appropriate, the College is required collect information about criminal convictions as part of student admission and staff recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. As per the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups (NI) Order 2007, Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, Protection of Freedom Act 2012, there is a legitimacy in our field of work to ask for this. We will use the information to make decisions about your engagement or continued employment/ enrolment in line with our procedures.

The College lawful basis for processing this information is Schedule 1(18) of the Data Protection Act (2018) ‘Safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk’.

Further information is available in the College Appropriate Policy Document

The College holds the personal data and special category data of its students and staff in order to implement and manage all services and processes relating to students, including; student recruitment, admission, registration, teaching and learning (including attendance, progress and achievement), examination, graduation, collection and payment of monies and other services such as student support and careers; and for staff, including; recruitment, staff development, payroll, contractual requirements, quality and improvement and staff related policies.

We collect personal information about students and employees through the initial application/enrolment stages from you, internal departmental processes, manual forms, telephone calls and on-line systems, third parties e.g. School Links.

We will share personal information with third parties where required to do so by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where there is a third party legitimate interest in doing so.

Information may be passed between various sections of the College for operational reasons and may also be disclosed to external agencies to which we have obligations, for example Government Agencies and associated Statutory Bodies (e.g. Department for the Economy, HMRC), FE Shared Services – Data Collection, Higher Education Statistics Agency, Funding Bodies, Government Survey & Research Organisations, UCAS, Student Loans Company, Education Authority, Learner Records Service, Crime Prevention Agencies, Employers who pay fees and/or allow you time off work to attend your course, Placement Providers, Examination Awarding Bodies, Social Welfare Organisations, Trade Unions, Careers Service, UKBA, Debt Recovery Agencies and potentially other such organisations for defined purposes.  We may also disclose information to examining bodies, legal representatives.

We require third party service providers to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

Transfer of personal data outside the European Union, to third countries or international organisations is restricted under GDPR regulations. Overseas sharing will be processed in accordance with Chapter V of GDPR - https://gdpr-info.eu/chapter-5/

We will only retain personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purpose we collected it for, for the purpose of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. The College will retain records in line with the FE Sector Retention and Disposal Schedule

You have the right to:

• To be informed about what we do with your information at point of data collection
• Access your personal data that we process;
• To rectify inaccuracies in personal data that we hold about you;
• To be forgotten, that is your details to be removed from systems that we use to process your personal data
• To restrict the processing of your personal data
• To obtain a copy of your personal data in a commonly used electronic form
• To object to certain processing of your personal data by us
• To request that we stop sending you direct marketing communications
• To withdaw consent – only where processing is based on consent

For additional information on exercising your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer (details below) or see our Data Protection Policy.