Privacy notices

We collect most personal information directly from you when you contact or register with the University’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Team for support or assistance including online, by phone, email, or in person.

We may also receive personal information from other services involved in your support such as the Disability Team, Academic Tutors, Accommodation Services etc. where information needs to be shared internally to assist in the provision of support for you. This may include referral to the Team in advance of support or service being provided, such as in advance of your joining the University or where a referral to our service is provided by another area of the University.

We may collect the following types of personal data about you:

• Personal details such as your name, address, date of birth, phone number, BCU student ID number
• Information about your personal circumstances and the support or assistance you have been provided
• Details of the interactions you have had with the Team and other areas of the University, where relevant

We may also process the following "special categories" or more sensitive personal data about you:

• Information about your health, including any disability and/or medical condition
• Ethnicity
• Sexual Orientation
• Gender at registration
• Criminal convictions or related allegation

We will use your personal data to administer your support, deliver services and meet statutory obligations placed upon the University.

We will not share your personal information with anyone outside of the relevant departments, services and faculties within BCU that are supporting you unless:

• We have your explicit consent
• We are required or permitted to do so by law, in which case we will only share the minimum amount necessary to complete the relevant activity

The University are required to offer a support service to meet our commitments to you as set out in the student contract and processing is necessary to meet the contractual obligation.

Maintaining records of the sessions are necessary to ensure the University is providing the appropriate support and will be subject to either a legal obligation on the University or an activity in the public interest.

In rare circumstances the University may need to release information to protect your interests or the interests of others, e.g. in a medical emergency (vital interests).

Special category data is processed due to substantial public interest in assuring equality of opportunity or treatment under the Equality Act 2010 and in support of the University’s responsibilities under the Health and Safety as Work Act 1974.

Where applicable the University may request your consent to process your data, further details will be provided directly if consent is required.

BCU is committed to safeguarding your personal data. Whenever you provide such information, we are legally obliged to use your information in line with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information, including the DPA and GDPR.

All our records these are held within a dedicated and secure database system hosted on a secure network with access limited on a need to know basis. A range of administrative, technical and physical security controls are used to ensure a robust approach to protecting data held on University IT systems, and when approved transfers between third parties are undertaken.

For more information a copy of BCU’s overarching Data Protection Policy is available on the policies page of the BCU website.

We will hold your personal information within a secure dedicated database and case record system in line with the University’s data retention schedule.

BCU wants to ensure that we keep the details we hold about you up to date and communicate with you fully in accordance with your wishes. You should also get in touch with us if any of your personal details change. You can update your details and your communication preferences during enrolment tasks, by contacting Academic Services or at any time:

By email to: informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk

By post to: Data Protection Officer
Information Management Team
Birmingham City University
3rd Floor Joseph Priestley Building
6 Cardigan Street
Birmingham
B4 7BD

Further details on your rights as a data subject can be found in the main university student privacy notice.

If you wish to exercise any of your rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the following contact details:

By email to: informationmanagement@bcu.ac.uk

By post to: Data Protection Officer
Information Management Team
Birmingham City University
3rd Floor, Joseph Priestly Building
6 Cardigan Street
Birmingham
B4 7BD

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about how we use or handle your personal data please contact the Data Protection Officer using the contact details in section 10 above.

If you are not content with the how we handle your information we would ask you to contact our Data Protection Officer to help you. However, you do also have the right to complain directly to the Information Commissioner at www.ico.org.uk/concerns or via post at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Information about the Information Commissioner is available at www.ico.org.uk.

This privacy notice may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to BCU.

The date of the most recent versions will appear on this page (see version control). We encourage you to check our privacy notice from time to time to ensure you understand how your data will be used and to see any minor updates.

If material changes are made to the privacy notice, for instance how we would like to use your personal data, we will provide a more prominent notice (including, for certain services, email notification or correspondence of privacy notice changes).

We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal data.

Version: 0.2
Reviewed: 21/09/2022