This Notice explains how Leeds Arts University will collect and use your personal data. This policy outlines what categories of information we retain and how we use it. Leeds Arts University is committed to looking after any information that is made available to us when you provide us with personal information in accordance with Data Protection Legislation, including the UK GDPR as amended, the EU GDPR and the Data Protection Act.
Throughout this Notice, “University” "we", "our" and "us" refers to Leeds Arts University and "you" and “your” refers to those expressing an interest in becoming a student at the University (both prior to and at formal application stage), together with those who later become a registered student at the University.
Where do we get your personal data from?
We obtain your personal data from the following sources:
If you order a prospectus; book an open day; or sign up for email updates via the Leeds Arts University website
If you attend a UCAS fair or international fair, visit our exhibition stand and allow us to scan your badge in order to receive further information
When you apply for one of our courses either via UCAS or via an application form on our website
When you complete a form either on our website, or that we send you directly, for example to enable you to request student accommodation from one of our third party accommodation partners
When you enrol on your course with us
When you book course trips or purchase goods via the online shop
When you choose to disclose information to us during the course of your relationship with us, including when you access any of our services
When you engage with our Student Support teams either before or following enrolment, to discuss and/or implement any additional support needs you may have
Information provided by other parties which is necessary for you to attend a course with us e.g. Student Loans Company, Department for Education, local authority, Learning Records Service or the Education and Skills Funding Agency
If you access the Health Assured support line service. If support line service workers consider your health, wellbeing or welfare to be at imminent risk, then information will be shared with the Leeds Arts University Student Advice and Wellbeing team. Consent will be requested before this information is shared, but please note that if you are unable or unwilling to provide this consent then information may still be shared if necessary to protect the vital interests of you or another person.
What personal data do we hold?
The personal information that we collect and process about you will include data such as:
Biographical information such as your name, any preferred names, birth date, age and gender
Your contact details including your home and term time address, email address and phone number
Emergency contact information
Your application information such as qualifications being studied or gained; predicted grades; personal statement; family income (in order to assess any bursary entitlement)
Courses you are interested in, are studying, or have studied
Information relating to any disability, and/or any additional support needs you may have, or may have requested
Your accommodation request information
Where relevant, copies of your passport or other accepted identity document
Your bank account details (for receipt of travel, hardship or other bursaries)
Records of payments made to the University
Records of communications sent to you by the University or received from you
Attendance at University events including open days
Attendance at external events such as UCAS fairs or other careers fairs
Records of VISA application status
Information relating to your academic engagement and progress, including submissions and marks
Records of your engagement with our services and facilities
Records of your engagement with any of our third-party service or content providers
Eligibility assessment information for applications for bursaries and hardship funds, which can include household income records
Information relating to any University processes that you engage with, such as extenuating circumstances applications, complaints, or investigations relating to misconduct or disciplinary action
Any exclusion information
CCTV footage and student swipe card logs when you are accessing our buildings
Information about your use of our IT systems and software
Photographs used to identify you, and photographs taken at events
Anonymised and aggregated applicant data are analysed by the University, for purposes including institutional and statutory monitoring, market research, planning, and teaching and learning, in order to ensure that our processes are fair and effective and our courses best reflect the needs of applicants and students.
Special Category Personal Data
We also need to process special category personal data about you. Special category data has a very specific definition in Data Protection Legislation, and includes, but is not limited to, your:
Health data, including any disability information and/or additional support needs
Race
Ethnicity
Religious or philosophical beliefs
Sexual orientation
When we process special category personal data, we are required to apply additional protections to it. We only process it in certain situations, where the law allows us to do so. This could include your consent, where we have a legal obligation, or where the purpose satisfies another legal justification.
Will we send your data to third party organisations?
We do not sell or otherwise transfer personal data to any third parties unless you have consented to this or this is permitted or required by law.
Instances where we may share your personal data with a third party include:
The legal requirement to send student data to governmental bodies such as Jisc, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (the ESFA), the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), the Office for Students (OFS) and/or UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI). Jisc's collection notice can be viewed here. The ILR privacy notice, issued by the ESFA can be viewed here. The DfE’s Privacy information can be viewed here.
For FE qualifications which are awarded by the University of the Arts, London (UAL), we will provide them with the data about you. This may include:
Forename, Surname
Sex
Ethnicity
Date of birth
Employment status
Whether you have any declared disabilities or learning difficulties
Unique Learner Number
Unit grades and overall results
UAL may request supporting evidence and details of decisions made relating to reasonable adjustments and extenuating circumstances (special considerations), for example to inform appeal investigations or as part of their monitoring process.
Sharing with external examiners and assessors
For international students we will share your data with agents and international representatives (for contacting international students) and the Government Home Office (for attendance)
If you choose to request accommodation from one of our third-party accommodation partners, we will pass on your information so that they can reserve you a room. If you disclose special category personal data as part of your request, for example any specific requirements for your accommodation that you might have, this information will also be shared.
If you choose to undertake a study exchange, personal data will be shared with your Host Institution
On occasion, and where considered necessary, information may be shared with the police and/or other law enforcement agencies
Where considered necessary, the emergency services and/or your Emergency Contact. For our students over the age of 18 at the point of enrolment, this will only be where we consider there be a serious threat to your health or wellbeing, or if you are posing a serious threat to the health or wellbeing of others.
For our students who are under the age of 18 at the point of enrolment, we may contact your Emergency Contact in the following circumstances:
If we have a safeguarding concern that we can’t address directly with you (this decision would always be made in discussion with a Designated Safeguarding Lead)
In line with our FE Attendance Policy, we may contact your Emergency Contact in instances of non-attendance if we have been unable to speak to you directly.
We will contact your Emergency Contact if you are at risk of terminating your learning agreement with us. This could be due to withdrawal or exclusion for reasons that include, but are not limited to, academic failure, disciplinary matters or in circumstances where you wish to withdraw yourself.
On occasion, and where necessary, University auditors
Third party service providers, such as for email services, CRM services, student record services, VLE services, graduation ceremony services and/or external providers for the purposes of delivering training, health and wellbeing content
Where we consider it necessary to make a referral under the Prevent Duty
To Leeds Arts University Student Union, to facilitate your membership
To debt collectors for the recovery of student debt, once all other procedural avenues have been exhausted
When we use third party service providers, we only disclose to them any personal information that is necessary for them to provide their service.
Occasionally we may need to send your personal data outside of the UK. Where this is the case, we will ensure that adequate levels of protection are in place to ensure the security of the transfer. Adequacy regulations in the UK currently apply to countries in the EEA and countries covered by existing EU adequacy decisions. Where these regulations do not apply, additional safeguards will be put in place for any necessary restricted transfer of your personal data.
How will we communicate with you?
If you are a prospective student and request a prospectus we will post the prospectus to you and only email you further about open days and studying with us if you opt-in to receive such emails via the website request form.
If you are a prospective student and register for an open day we will email you registration details and travel instructions. We may also post the registration details and travel instructions. We will only email you with further information about studying with us if you opt-in to receive it via the open days booking form on the website.
If we meet you at a UCAS fair and you request further information from us by allowing us to scan the barcode on your badge, we will email you details of our open days and information on studying at Leeds Arts University.
At each stage of your research and application with us, there will always be the opportunity to set the preferences on emails you receive. When we send emails to you we will be able to see if you have opened the email or clicked on a link, this allows us to evaluate and monitor the success of our communications and ensure prospective students are receiving the information they require to apply for a course with us.
Once you apply to Leeds Arts University via UCAS or our online application forms, we will email you with further information about the application and interview process; guidance relating to the submission of any supporting evidence or documentation; what it is like studying with us; how to accept an offer if you receive one; how to request accommodation; and how to inform us of any disability and/or additional support needs you may have.
As part of the UCAS process, you will be given the opportunity to submit details of a Nominated Contact who is able to discuss your application with us. By submitting Nominated Contact details, you understand that we are able to discuss matters relating to your application, principally Finance and Accommodation, with your Nominated Contact until such a time that you officially enrol with us. From the point of enrolment, the Nominated Contact appointment is no longer applicable and we will not be able to discuss anything with them, or any other third party, without your explicit and specific consent. If at any time during the application process you wish to change your preferences, or for us to cease direct engagement with your Nominated Contact, then please get in touch.
If you receive an offer to study with us you will also receive an offer letter to your Applicant Portal. If you accept this offer you will also receive an enrolment letter via email prior to starting your study with us. These letters will provide useful information to you such as Terms & Conditions of studying with us; Key Information on the course you have applied for and/or are going to enrol on in order that we meet Consumer Law requirements; welcome information from the course teams; and the process of how to accept your offer and enrol when you start your course.
We share some of the information we hold about you with the Students' Union at the University. The Students’ Union use this information to administer membership of the Students' Union; to contact students prior to enrolment; to provide welcome information; and to inform students of activities and clubs, support and representation. Some student data is sent to the National Union of Students (NUS). If you do not wish to be a member of the Students’ Union, then you can easily opt out of membership by emailing student.union@leeds-art.ac.uk.
Once you are a student with us your University email, our Careers Portal, our Student Advice and Wellbeing Portal and our virtual learning tool (eStudio) will be the primary ways in which University staff will communicate with you. On occasion, University staff may use text messaging to communicate with individual students. We will only do this to send you important information about your course or studies, or in an emergency. If you do not wish to receive text messages for course related purposes, then please contact your administration team who can update your communication preferences.
We may use third party processor communication platforms to share information which could include your personal data. This will only ever to be to facilitate the University’s documented processing activities, and in instances where it is necessary for us to do so.
For information on how we will communicate with you and what data we will hold once you have finished your study with us and are a member of our alumni community click here.
Your rights as a data subject
Data Protection Legislation gives you a number of rights to protect your personal data and its use. You have the right to:
Withdraw consent where that is the legal basis of our processing
Access your personal data that we process
Rectify inaccuracies in personal data that we hold about you
Be forgotten. This means that in certain circumstances you can request that your details be removed from systems that we use to process your personal data
Restrict the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances
Obtain a copy of your data in a commonly used electronic form
Object to certain processing of your personal data by us
If you would like to discuss any of these actions, or request any of them to be done, you can contact us at dpo@leeds-art.ac.uk.
Please see ico.org.uk for further information on the above rights.
How can I complain?
You can contact the Data Protection Officer for any complaints at dpo@leeds-art.ac.uk.
You can also lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. They can be contacted via their website, or at:
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Legal basis for processing your data under Data Protection Legislation
We will only keep your information for as long as is necessary for us to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. Sometimes we may anonymise personal information so that you are no longer identifiable by the data. In these cases, we may use this information without further notice to you.
We only process your personal data where we have established a legal basis for processing. There are 6 bases for processing that are laid out in Data Protection Legislation, which we use to support our processing of your personal information:
Public Interest
This is when processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried in the public interest. Much of the processing we undertake is under this basis, within our capacity as an educational establishment.
Legal Obligation
This is when processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation. For example, we have a legal obligation to provide your personal data to various external bodies such as Jisc and UKVI.
Legitimate Interest
This is when processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interest of the University, you, or a third party. For example, the legitimate interest for us holding alumni information on who studied with us and when.
Contract
This is when processing is necessary for the performance of a contract. For example, our contractual obligations to you once you have accepted your place and enrolled with us.
Consent
This basis for processing is used if you provide us with consent to hold your data and process it for a particular reason. For example, this could be to communicate with you via a specific method, such as if you request a prospectus via our website and opt-in to receive further information about studying with us via email.
Vital Interest
This is when processing is necessary for the purpose of protecting the vital interest of yourself or someone else. Sometimes in extreme circumstances the University will have to release information to protect your interests or the interests of others, for example in a medical emergency.
Because we are also processing your special category information, we require an additional legal basis for processing of this personal data. The special category information that we collect is listed above, but includes your ethnicity, your religious beliefs, your sexual orientation and information relating to your health (for example if you have a disability or additional support needs).
We use the following legal bases to process your special category personal data:
Equal opportunity monitoring and reporting, including where this is required to external bodies (for example, Jisc);
For provision of support where you have disclosed information about your physical health, mental health and/or disability status. This includes the provision of reasonable adjustments and support through internal and external services;
Where you have consented for us to do so.
Changes to this Information
We may update this information and we will notify you when we do this where necessary. This document was last updated on 4 July 2024.
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