West London College and the other partners in West Retail Skills Hub are committed to complying with the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018. Looking after the personal information you share with us is very important, and we want you to be confident that your personal data is kept safely and securely and to understand how we use it to offer you a better and more personalised experience.
We have published this notice to help you understand
If we make changes to this notice we will notify you by updating it on our website. West London College will be what is known as the ‘Data Controller’ of the personal data you provide to the West London Retail Skills Hub, and we will sometimes refer to ourselves in this notice as “we” or “us”. By Data Controller, this means West London College determines the purposes and way in which any personal data are, or will be, processed.
If you have any questions about this notice please contact the Data Protection Officer on dataprotection@wlc.ac.uk
Personal information is information that identifies you as an individual and relates to you.
This includes your contact details, next of kin and financial information. We may also hold information such as your religion or ethnic group. CCTV, photos and video recordings of you are also personal information.
Under the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), young people aged 16 and over can decide for themselves and give consent for the processing of their personal information. Parental consent is not required. There may be exceptions in regard to students with severe learning difficulties, and those who are otherwise unable to decide for themselves.
The college has found that it is very beneficial to the young person’s progress as a student if the college is able to engage with parents and carers, therefore we ask for these details to be recorded on our systems.
When a student is in Further Education, parents and carers (or any other third party) are not automatically entitled to the student’s information. We can only release information about our students if we have their consent for this recorded on the college system. Students are asked for their consent for sharing information with parents/others on the enrolment form or when enrolling face-to-face. Students can also inform the college later on of who we may discuss their college matters. Students may withdraw their consent the same way they gave it.
In general, we can only share information if we have the person’s consent, or if there is a particular piece of legislation or agreement allowing us to share it without consent.
We set out below examples of the different ways in which we use personal information and where this personal information comes from. The college’s primary reason for using your personal information is to provide educational services to you.
Financial information
Sharing personal information with third parties
As part of the West London Retail Skills Hub, we may share your information with the other venture partners. The venture partners and supporting companies to whom we may transfer your personal data for this processing is:
Our legal grounds for using your information
This section contains information about the legal basis that we are relying on when handling your information.
Data Protection says that we are allowed to use and share your personal data only where we have a proper reason to do so. The law says we must have one or more of these reasons and these are:
Legitimate interests
This means that the processing is necessary for legitimate interests except where the processing is unfair to you. West London College relies on legitimate interests for most of the ways in which it uses your information.
Specifically, the college has a legitimate interest in:
If you object to us using your information where we are relying on our legitimate interests as explained above please speak to our Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@wlc.ac.uk
Necessary for a contract
We will need to use your information in order to perform our obligations under our contract with you. For example, we need your name and contact details so that we can update your progress and we can contact you (and/or your parents/carers if appropriate) if there is a concern.
Legal obligation
There may be cases where the college needs to use your information in order to comply with a legal obligation; for example, to report a concern to children’s services. We may also have to disclose your information to third parties, such as the courts, the local authority, or the police where legally obliged to do so.
Vital interests
For example, to prevent someone from being seriously harmed or killed.
Public interest
The college considers that it is acting in the public interest when providing education.
The college must also comply with an additional condition where it processes special categories of personal information. These special categories are as follows: personal information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic information, biometric information, health information, and information about sex life or sexual orientation.
Substantial public interest
The processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.
Vital interests
To protect the vital interests of any person where that person cannot give consent, for example, if they are seriously hurt and are unconscious.
Legal claims
The processing is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims. This allows us to share information with our legal advisors and insurers.
Medical purposes
This includes medical treatment and the management of healthcare services.
We may ask for your consent to use your information in certain ways. If we ask for your consent to use your personal information you can take back this consent at any time. Any use of your information before you withdraw your consent remains valid. Please speak to our Data Protection Officer on dataprotection@wlc.ac.uk if you would like to withdraw any consent given.
Sending information to other countries
We may send your information to other countries where:
The European Commission has produced a list of countries that have adequate data protection rules. The list can be found here.
If the country that we are sending your information to is not on the list or, is not a country within the EEA (which means the European Union, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Iceland) then it might not have the same level of protection for personal information as there is the UK.
There is no automated decision-making involved in data processing by the college.
We keep your information for as long as we need to in order to educate and look after you. We will keep some information after you have left the college, for example, so that we can find out what happened if you make a complaint.
In exceptional circumstances, we may keep your information for a longer time than usual but we would only do so if we had a good reason and only if we are allowed to do so under data protection law.
We can keep information about you for a very long time or even indefinitely if we need this for historical, research or statistical purposes. For example, if we consider the information might be useful if someone wanted to write a book about the college.
Data protection legislation gives you a number of rights regarding your information. Your rights are as follows:
The Data Protection Officer can give you more information about your data protection rights.
The Data Protection Officer is the person responsible at the college for managing how we look after personal information and deciding how it is shared.
Like other organisations we need to keep your information safe, up to date, only use it for what we said we would, destroy it when we no longer need it and most importantly – treat the information we get fairly.
This notice is to explain how we use your personal information. The Data Protection Officer can answer any questions you may have.
Please speak to the Data Protection Officer if:
You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection regulator in Europe. The contact details for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the data protection regulator in the UK, are available on the ICO website, however, we encourage you to contact the college before making any complaint and we will seek to resolve any issues or concerns you may have.
You can contact the Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@wlc.ac.uk
To view the privacy policies of external organisations that provide funding to the college, please click the links below: