Privacy Statement

Warwick Students’ Union Privacy Statement

How We Use Your Information

This Privacy Statement tells you what to expect when Warwick SU collects personal information. It applies to information we collect about:

• Our members, officers and volunteers
• Users of our websites
• People who use our services
• People who give us feedback, make suggestions, complete questionnaires, polls or make complaints
• Suppliers and agents
• Donors and supporters
• Job applicants and our current and former employees

Warwick SU processes personal data for the following reasons:

• Administration of Membership Records (including processing for not-for-profit organisations)
• Fundraising
• Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations
• Accounts and records
• Consultancy and Advisory Services
• Employment Administration
• Crime Prevention and Prosecution of Offenders
• Research

Use of data is compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR) and specifically with the 8 data principles that are set out within it:

1. Personal data shall be processed fairly and lawfully.
2. Personal data shall be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes (as above), and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes.
3. Personal data shall be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which they are processed.
4. Personal data shall be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date.
5. Personal data processed for any purpose or purposes shall not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes.
6. Personal data shall be processed in accordance with the rights of data subjects.
7. Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.
8. Personal data shall not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data.

Website Privacy Statement

The website Privacy Statement discloses the information practices for the Warwick SU website, including the type of information gathered, how the information is used, and our policy regarding sharing information with others organisations such as the University of Warwick.

This Privacy Statement will be published wherever personal information is collected on the site.

By using the Site, you agree to the terms of this Privacy Statement.

Types of Information We Collect

Personal Information Provided by You

If you are a student at the University of Warwick your details will be automatically held by the Students’ Union in its membership database, unless you have opted out of Union membership.

The details held are the details you gave The University of Warwick on registration. If you wish to alter your registration details you can do so through the web application My.Warwick or by contacting the Student Records Team at studentrecords@warwick.ac.uk or by calling 024 7657 4333.

Warwick SU cannot be held responsible for any inaccurate personal details.

We gather both Personal Information and Anonymous Information from you when you visit the Site.

"Personal Information" means any information that may be used to identify an individual, including, but not limited to: a first and last name; e-mail address; a home, postal or other physical address (when using services designed to deliver or send items to you) or other contact information necessary to provide a service that you requested.

"Anonymous Information" means information that is not associated with or linked to your Personal Information; Anonymous Information does not permit the identification of individual persons. We collect Personal Information and Anonymous Information, as described below.

We Collect Personal Information from you at the following points:

• If you are a non student and register to the site for purchases of tickets, we will record your contact information, username and password. We can collect additional information submitted through registration or via updating your information.
• If you are a student, you will use your University log in and thus your password is not stored on our website or by Warwick SU in any form.
• If you make any purchases through the site, we will record your billing address, however we do not record your payment card details. This information is collected through Sage Pay, our online payment provider. No card payment details are stored through the site.
• Warwick SU will only send you information that is deemed relevant to your membership at Warwick SU. Once you have updated your preferences, you have thereby given your consent to be contacted with relevant promotions, offers or information that you have expressed an interest in. If you do not wish to receive further updates and wish to opt out go to warwicksu.com/profile/ or if you are logged in, go to the Profile icon at the top right hand side of the webpage and modify your preferences or contact details. We will always respect your privacy and any personal communication between you and ourselves.
• If you email us directly via an email hyperlink or contact form to provide us with feedback or to ask us a question regarding the site, we will record any information contained in such email for a period of up to one year to analyse trends and ensure improvements to the site.

Personal Information Collected Automatically

As you navigate the site, certain information will be collected automatically. This data helps us to improve the content of the site and to customise the content or layout of the site for you.

A cookie is an element of data that a website sends to your computer's hard drive while you are viewing a website. Warwick SU uses session cookies (which expire once you close your web browser). You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie, giving you the chance to decide whether to accept it. You can also set your browser to turn off cookies. If you do so, however, some areas of the site may not function properly.

We are reviewing our use of cookies and will modify this agreement as any changes are made.

More Detail on How We Use Personal Information

We collect Personal Information from you in order to fulfil your requests. For example, we may use your Personal Information to process an online purchase or interact with a service or feature to the site. We may also use your Personal Information to send you information that you requested, or to confirm registrations, purchases, or to respond to your feedback.

We may use your email address to notify you of products or services that may interest you, such as events or discussions, in addition we may notify you of recent updates to our site, or to provide you with latest news on Warwick SU.

You may opt-out from receiving promotional or marketing emails by notifying us at the address specified at the bottom of any unwanted email. Emails may be sent to you from Warwick SU or from its societies, clubs or other student groups affiliated to Warwick SU. If you unsubscribe from a Warwick SU email, you may still receive emails from these affiliated groups and vice versa.

In some cases the opt-out facility is not available unless you have opted out of SU membership completely – to do so you need to write to the Registrar of the University of Warwick. These instances include transactional or relationship messages, such as emails that are necessary to provide you with confirmation of a completed transaction (such as a purchase, request, or change in your user profile), emails providing notification of changes of terms of service, emails containing important information about the use of the site.

Following the findings of the ‘Being LGBTUA+ at Warwick’ research conducted by the SU in 2018, the SU lobbied for the university to begin to collect sexual orientation and trans identity data. The Students' Union will use this data to identify areas of Union activity in which LGBTUA+ students are underrepresented or experience barriers to engaging with, and to develop targeted interventions to address barriers through a LGBTUA+ action plan. This data is kept and used in line with other sensitive data the SU holds, including disability status and gender identity.

We may create Anonymous Information records from Personal Information by excluding information (such as your name) that makes the information personally identifiable to you. We use this Anonymous Information to perform statistical analyses of users' aggregate behaviour so that we may enhance the content of our services and improve site navigation.

We may email you for research purposes relating to your membership of the Students’ Union based on anonymous information you have already provided through completion of questionnaires or polls. This information is only gathered for reasons associated with improving our services to members and the anonymous information is only accessed by employees of the SU including full time student officers.

When someone visits warwicksu.com, we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. We collect this information in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Your Personal Information will not be sold, traded, or rented to individuals or other entities. However, we may need to share your Personal Information with third parties to charge your credit card or deliver specific services to you such as support services. These third parties are required not to use your Personal Information other than to provide the services requested by Warwick SU.

We may disclose your Personal Information if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to:

1. comply with any relevant legal obligations or
2. protect and defend the rights or property of Warwick SU or users of the site.

How You can Edit Your Personal Profile

We realise that your Personal Information, including your name, address and email address, is subject to change. To the extent that you do provide us with Personal Information, we wish to maintain its accuracy.

In some cases, we provide a means to create an account or a profile of information. For example, to change your Personal Information, log in as usual and select the profile icon at the top right hand side of each page.

Data Sharing Agreement with University of Warwick

We have a data sharing agreement with the University of Warwick.

This agreement permits the transfer of all or part of your personal information from the University to the Students’ Union for the purposes of allowing the SU to provide you with support services, participate in democratic processes, join societies, buy entertainments tickets and communicate with you about Annual Reports and Accounts as well as SU activities and campaigns, elicit your feedback and respond to feedback.

The personal information that the University transfers to the Students' Union is:

• Age range
• Course code
• Course name
• Data source
• Department
• Disability status
• Ethnicity
• Expected course end date
• Expected start date
• Faculty
• Fees status
• Gender identity
• Mature student?
• Mode of study (full-time, part-time, etc.)
• Nationality
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Student status (current, withdrawn, etc.)
• Student level
• Student type (undergraduate, postgraduate, etc.)
• Study site/location
• Termtime locality
• Year of study

You can tell the University that you do not wish the Students’ Union to have this data by opting out at enrolment or by withdrawing your permission by logging on to my.warwick. You can find the details of how to change your permissions in this way at warwicksu.com/account/dataprotection/.

Higher Education Achievement Report

The agreement also allows the Students’ Union to disclose information relating to extra-curricular activity to the University of Warwick in order to generate your Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR).

You will be asked to give us specific consent to give this information to the University. If you do not consent – this information will not be included on your HEAR.

You will also have the opportunity of telling the University that information they hold on your extra curricular activity should not be included on your HEAR. This will happen prior to the point of issue of the HEAR. If you do not consent – this information will not be included on your HEAR.

Security of Your Personal Information

We safeguard the Personal Information you send to us with certain physical, electronic, and managerial procedures.

We also store your Personal Information behind our firewall and utilise appropriate security measures in our physical facilities to prevent loss or unauthorised use of sensitive information. Except as provided elsewhere in this Privacy Statement, we limit access to Personal Information in electronic databases to those persons, including Warwick SU employees and full time student officers, in our organisation that have a need for such access.

While we strive to protect your Personal Information, we cannot ensure the security of the information you send to us, and so we urge you to take every precaution to protect your Personal Information when you are on the internet.

We suggest that you change your passwords often, use passwords that include a combination of letters and numbers, and use a secure browser. Products and services are available which can help give you privacy protection while navigating the internet. 

Other Websites

The Web site contains links to other web sites. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy or opinions express in such web sites, and such web sites are not investigated, monitored or checked for accuracy or completeness by us.

Inclusion of any linked web site on or through the Web site or the Service does not imply approval or endorsement of the linked web site by us. If you decide to leave the Web site and access these third-party sites, you do so at your own risk.

Job applicants, current and former Warwick SU (and subsidiary company) employees

When individuals apply to work at Warwick SU (or subsidiary companies), we will only use the information they supply to us to process their application and to monitor recruitment statistics. One exception to this is when current students are recruited as casual staff or trustees; we add this information to their existing student record to help us monitor engagement with the Students’ Union.

Where we want to disclose information to a third party, for example where we want to take up a reference or obtain a ‘disclosure’ from the Criminal Records Bureau we will not do so without informing them beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law.

Personal information about unsuccessful candidates will be held for 12 months after the recruitment exercise has been completed, it will then be destroyed or deleted. We retain de-personalised statistical information about applicants to help inform our recruitment activities, but no individuals are identifiable from that data.

Once a person has taken up employment with Warwick SU, we will compile a file relating to their employment. The information contained in this will be kept secure and will only be used for purposes directly relevant to that person’s employment. Once their employment with Warwick SU has ended, we will retain the file for 5 years and then destroy it.

Access to personal information

Warwick SU tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a ‘subject access request’ under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR). If we do hold information about you we will:

• give you a description of it;
• tell you why we are holding it;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request to Warwick SU for any personal information we may hold you need to put the request in writing addressing it to the address provided below.

If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone, subject to verification of identity.

About this Statement

This Privacy Statement was drafted with clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of Warwick SU’s collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to the address below

Chief Executive’s Office
Warwick Students’ Union
Gibbet Hill Road
Coventry
CV4 7AL

Email: dataprotection@warwicksu.com

Call: 02476 572777

Further Information

You can view Warwick SU's entry on the Data Protection Register on the Information Commissioner's Office website.

For further guidance on matters relating to Data Protection and Privacy, please refer to Information Commissioner’s Office: www.ico.org.uk.