Privacy Notice

Introduction

UK College of Business and Computing Ltd is an international educational organisation offering Higher Education qualifications in the UK and UAE.  UKCBC was established in 2001 and continues to develop as an organisation that encourages learners to achieve their very best in education and life.

More details of how we use, collect, process and store your personal data as well as your rights in respect of your data are in our Privacy Policy which you can obtain by visiting http://www.ukcbc.ac.uk/ this document provides a summary of this information.

UKCBC is committed to protecting your privacy through-out the time when you are engaging with us as a possible, actual or past student.  This policy outlines the type of information we collect, how we use that data and how we protect your information.

All data is held in accordance with the guidelines set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy of Electronic Communication Regulations in the UK and any similar legislation in the UAE.

UKCBC promises to respect any personal data you share with us, or that is received from other organisations on your behalf, such as confirmation of awards and marks, and keep it safe.  We aim to make it clear to you when we are collecting your data and not do anything you wouldn’t reasonably expect from us.

It applies to information we collect:

• When you enquire about our courses
• When you apply to study with us
• When you are studying with us, on a break of study or deferring
• When you have studied with us and completed (or not) your course

This includes information which we are required to collect on behalf of the other organisations who are involved in awarding the qualifications we teach or administer, and information which we are required to collect by law.

What data do we collect and how do we collect it?

We collect information in the following ways:

1. When you complete an online form or speak with our marketing team, making an enquiry about the courses we offer, whether this is from social media or from our own web-site
2. When you start and save, or complete our online application form or have this done by an agency or other third party on your behalf
3. When you go through our application process
4. When you are enrolled and then study with us, via online forms in which you may supply data or via the collection of data and documents when we register or discuss your registration with you
5. Via the process of you submitting assignments, marking and assessing these and the general academic processes of UKCBC
6. For those of you enrolled on our APP, via the information and messages you create within it, and for all students and applicants as we also do for emails you send to us and emails you create when using your UKCBC email account

In general data is collected either via your own direct interaction with our systems in secure web forms or via data entry by staff directly into secure software.   These systems include those supporting your learning (the VLE), that which manages your progress through the lifecycle (Student Management System), the Library and the Finance System.

This data comprises:

• Names and Contact Details, address, phone and email as well as items such as date of birth we use to ensure we can correctly identify you
• The course(s) you wish to receive information on, apply for or are studying including the relevant detail depending on your level of engagement with us
• Biographical information such as Ethnicity, Nationality, Gender Identity, Religious Belief and other information that we have to supply to the HE agencies of the UK government.  This may include information on any disability or other issue that you may have.  Information of this nature is only collected as provided by yourself and only if you reach the point in the life-cycle where collecting it is required.
• References, copies of documents needed to prove your eligibility to study and information regarding any processes you engage in as part of your study.  These may include changes to your status if you wish to defer as well as complaints and appeals
• Detailed information for students on your study with us including attendance information, follow ups on attendance as well as any other learning issues.  This also includes all assessment information

Messages, notifications and profile that you have created on the APP and email messages as well as any written correspondence to do with your study with us.

Data Sharing

When you apply to us for a degree-level qualification awarded by either the University of West London (UWL) or Plymouth Marjon University (PMU), you consent to us sharing the information we collect with them. This information is used by UWL and PMU to confirm your student progress and award. Additionally, UWL and PMU will provide information to the UK Government Higher Education Statistics Agency, and we will supply them with the necessary information for this purpose. Please note that on occasion, UWL and PMU may require you to directly provide them with additional information, which is subject to their Privacy Statement.

If you are studying a vocational qualification (BTEC, HND) with us then we share your basic biographical record and assessment information and on occasion examples of your assessments themselves with Pearson who need this to confirm your award.

For AAT, ACCA students we share a similar amount of data as for the HND students above, with the Association of Accounting Technicians or ACCA.

We may need to disclose your details if required to the police, regulatory bodies such as the Office for Students or Student Finance England or legal advisors.  We will only do so if this is within the relevant law and necessary for them to do the work they are required to do.

Where you have requested to make payments to use or receive refunds or support funds, we may have collected your bank details, these are recorded securely only on our finance system.  We do not record your payment card details these are only held through our online payment provider.

Other than these academic and statutory partners – we do not sell or share your personal information for other organisations to use.

Data Retention

We only keep identifiable data for as long as we have a need to in order to fulfil the service you have requested of us, this may include an additional period when we believe that follow up may be useful to you or where you have consented to continue to receive information.

We do retain data longer than this but when we do so it is anonymised and any link to you as an individual or record of you that could form an identity is removed.

The length your data is retained varies dependent on different administrative requirements or legal duties and on whether you have opted in to receive information about us.  In general, we retain information for:

• 1 year for information provided in order to enquire for one of our courses
• Up to 18 months for information provided during the admissions process if unsuccessful
• Up to 6 years for information held in relation to your time as a student if no award was made
• Some information about your time as a student is retained permanently when you received an award
• Up to a year after your interaction with us as an external examiner, agent or other third party involved in the student journey

All data held in whatever form is updated and deleted in line with this policy.   Paper records are archived and destroyed via an approved contractor provided by UKCBC.

How do we use your data?

Where we process your data, we will only do so where there is a legal basis. This includes the following:

• Where there is a contract. Where you have asked us to provide a service and we need to process your data to fulfil our obligations
• Where you give us consent – like where you have told us you’d like us to send you information about opportunities on offer
• Where law requires it – we are obliged by various laws including the Education Act, Contracts Act and employment law to process certain data
• Legitimate Interest – We carefully balance your rights when we think there is a legitimate interest in us processing data to support you, for example using a third party processor (such as google analytics) to improve your experience using our website.

For everyday use

UKCBC needs to gather and use information about individuals in order to be able to operate effectively and to offer you the admissions and student experience you need. We’ll only collect the data that we need to do this. We use information to:

• Support you in your studies with us
• Properly resolve any issues you have
• Administer your records and your enquiry, application or study with us
• Provide statutory information on accounts and financial records
• Understand how we can improve our services, products or information

• For business intelligence purposes data is only ever analysed or profiled through anonymised records once retention periods are passed

Marketing and Communications

We may also use your Personal Information to send you information that you requested, or to confirm registrations for events or to respond to your feedback. We might use cookies to do this, and we use Google Analytics to process this data. This is detailed in our cookies policy. (Read here )

You may opt-out from receiving promotional or marketing emails by notifying us at the address specified at the bottom of any email or through accessing this option on your online record.  We never give your contact details to third parties.

We use some data analysis techniques to ensure that we are offering good support to our learners, for example we may look at attendance and assessment information alongside other information in order to identify candidates for additional help for our staff to act on.

We do not use profiling or automatic offer making based on profiles in our admissions process or in our teaching and assessment processes.

How do we keep your data safe and who has access?

Personal data collected and processed by us is only shared with staff who have a need to have access to such data to undertake their roles.  Data is secured with regard to the records a person has access to and the data items on the records and also with regard to the actions on data a person can take. All your Personal Data will be kept on servers located within the UK and with the exception of the UConnect APP and information on financial transactions (which are stored securely within the cloud) owned and controlled by UKCBC.

Everyone who accesses data has to comply with UK law and has to undertake training as part of their induction to the organisation.

On the UConnect APP the very limited information on your profile is available to other students within your class and to the lecturer and module leaders.  You have control over whether other persons have access to you for messaging.  There is an administrative team who oversee UConnect and who have access to all content which they only use in order to respond to a complaint or notification of an issue.

Your Rights over your Data

You have a set of rights under the Data Protection legislation in the country you are studying and UKCBC will uphold all these in the most appropriate way for you.  You can lodge a request to enact any of these rights with any of the staff at UKCBC, or directly with our data protection office by emailing dpo@ukcbc.ac.uk

You have a right to see or ask for a copy of the information we hold about you.  You can see much of the information we hold by logging into your account on the Student360 and some of this data is able to be updated by yourself.   We will also make your biographical record available to you as a csv file if you request it to support the UK right to data portability.

You can also ask us to correct any mistakes in your information, the best starting point for this is to speak with admissions or if a student, your campus staff.  UKCBC will carry out any corrections you show to us.

You have a right to restrict or object to the processing of your data. In relation to direct marketing, you have access to removing consent as a student on your 360.  Other types of processing can be restricted, and you should contact us with your request or objection which will be sensitively handled.

In relation to automated decision making or profiling, UKCBC does not use such techniques in its selection processes.  We do use automated routines based on performance and other information to alert staff that you may need additional support to help you be successful, but this always involves human intervention.  Any changes to this will mean an update to this document.

If you have any concerns or complaints about how we are handling your data, please do not hesitate to get in touch by emailing us at dpo@ukcbc.ac.uk. You can also contact the Information Commissioners Office.

Changes to this statement

We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time.  If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on our website or by contacting you directly.

 Our contact details are: