We collect your personal data when you make an enquiry or apply as a prospective student.
From third party organisations through which you have expressed an interest in studying (for example, international representatives and agents, FindAMasters, Prospects, Hotcourses and the Student Room).
This may include when you (or someone acting on your behalf) provides payment information either on the phone or via a University-managed website such as the KU Store or web payment portal.
We may collect the following types of personal data about you:
Personal details
- your name, and contact information such as address, email and telephone number, as well as your date of birth, national insurance number (or other tax identification number)
- your passport number or national identity card details, country of domicile, your nationality and your immigration status
- information relating to your education and employment history
- records relating to assessments of your work, examination grades and other information in your student record
- information about your family or personal circumstances, and both academic and extracurricular interests (for example, when assessing your suitability to receive a bursary or in order to provide you with pastoral care)
- employer information
- bank details or credit/debit card information (in accordance with Payment card industry Data Security Standards) to facilitate payments.
Special category data
- your health and medical conditions (for example, disability and dietary needs)
- criminal convictions where required for certain programmes of study or prior to certain placements (for example, where a Disclosure and Barring Service check is required)
- unspent criminal convictions which if declared will require a risk assessment based on the seriousness and nature of the crime, this could involve consulting your probation officer or similar professional
- information about your racial or ethnic origin, religion or similar beliefs
- sexual orientation.
The information you provide to us in your application may be used to:
- manage your enquiry, application and admission to the University
- assess your eligibility for other reasons including bursaries and accommodation
- promote our services (for example, providing information about teaching and learning, research projects, summer schools, student exchanges, careers and employability programmes or other university activity both on and off campus)
- facilitate payment to the university
For a contract
We process some of your personal data because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or in order to take steps to enter into a contract. In this respect, we use your personal data for the following:
- to interact with you before you are enrolled as a student, as part of the enquiries and admissions process (for example, to send you a prospectus or answer enquiries about our courses)
To comply with legal obligations
We also process your personal data for our compliance with our legal obligations. In this respect, we may use your personal data for the following:
- to comply with immigration laws (UKVI)
Consent
We may also process your personal data where we have your specific, or where necessary, explicit consent to do so. In this respect, we may use your personal data for the following:
- when you respond to online marketing.
Third parties that help us store and process enquiries and help to compile applications from prospective students (for example, conversion services and/or our international recruiting representatives working on our behalf).
Third parties that provide platforms to help us deliver online surveys or third parties conducting surveys on our behalf. For example, we may pass student contact details to survey contractors to carry out surveys of enquirers and applicants' views. These organisations and their contractors will use the details of enquirers and applicants only for this purpose and will then delete them.
The police and other law enforcement agencies, for the prevention and detection of crime.
Payment service providers for the processing of payments.
Where necessary, information may be shared with debt collection agencies, solicitors and tracing agents to assist with the recovery of debt.
If you do not become a student at Kingston University we will retain your information for the period set out in our retention schedule available on the policies and regulations page on our website after which the data will be deleted or anonymised so that we can use it for statistical purposes.
Note, in some cases, we may keep hold of personal data for use in future contacts (for example, data obtained during the enquiry process may be linked with data subsequently collected if you enrol as a student).
Under the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have certain rights:
- to access the personal data we hold about you
- to require us to correct the personal data we hold about you
- to require us to erase your personal data
- to require us to 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 your personal data, which you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and the right to transmit that data to another controller
- to object to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on your rights
- to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which has a legal effect on you.
Please note that the above rights are not absolute and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.
When considering your personal data, enquirers and applicants should ensure the information provided to the University remains accurate and up to date.
You should inform the University as soon as possible if details, such as your address, change.
Please contact dataprotection@kingston.ac.uk if you have any queries about this privacy notice or how we process your personal data.
If you then wish to exercise your rights as a data subject, please use the Data Subject Request form on our website under policies and regulations.
If you are not satisfied, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner. You can find out more about your rights under data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner's Office website.
