Access privacy notice
Why are we collecting your data?
Keele University offers a range of free activities to learners, schools and colleges across the UK to support progression and widen access to higher education. Many of these activities are listed in our Access and Participation Plan, submitted to and overseen by the Office for Students.
In safely collecting and storing data on participants in the University’s activities, we are seeking to continually learn from and improve our activity to support learners’ journeys to higher education.
What information do we ask you for?
The amount of data that we collect from you will vary depending on the individual nature of the activity.
Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
Special category data is more sensitive personal data, which requires a higher level of protection.
We may collect, store, process and share the following categories of personal information about you:
- Full name
- Postal address
- Name of school or college you attend
- Date of Birth
- Gender
- Next of kin and emergency contact details
- Email address
- Quotes; which may be taken by hand or with use of an audio recordings; but only where prior consent has been given by you (or your parent/carer)
- Your current or past eligibility for Free School Meals
We may also collect, store and process the following ‘special categories’ of more sensitive personal information:
- Your ethnicity
- Details of disability or relevant medical condition
- Care status
- Young carer status
- Your residential status
What is the legal basis for collecting this data?
The legal basis through which data will be processed is for the performance of a task in the public interest which is set out in the UK GDPR Article 6.1(e) and s8(c) of the Data Protection Act 2018.
The legal basis through which special category data will be processed is substantial public interest which is set out in the UK GDPR Article 9.2(e) and Schedule 1, Part 2, para 8 of the Data Protection Act 2018. where the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing for one or more specific purposes.
How will we use your data
Your data will be used to continually evaluate, reflect on and improve our outreach offering, with the aim of reducing risk to equality of opportunity for learners taking part in our activities. Learnings from your data will be used to inform the design of future outreach activity which will then be offered to schools, colleges and learners.
Who will the data be shared with?
As part of our evaluation, your data may be shared with a number of partners, including:
- The Office for Students, and Department for Education;
- The Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT);
- The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA);
- Our partner universities and colleges;
- The schools and colleges that the learners we work with attend;
- The Local Authorities of the schools and colleges that the learners we work with attend;
- Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS);
- Selected third party activity and service providers working in association us, such as the Medical Schools Council;
- CFE Research, and Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO);
HESA, HEAT and the Medical Schools Council may share your data as detailed in their own privacy notices, which are accessible at the links provided:
Privacy notice for Medical Schools Council
Keele will not use its records in any way which will affect any learner individually.
We will only share information with any third party when we have a legal basis to do so. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
How long will we hold your information?
Keele University is committed to protecting the privacy and security that data we collect.
In order to conduct long-term evaluation, tracking and research about access to Higher Education, and in relation to certain events/initiatives your attend requiring a HEAT application, we will retain your personal information as follows:
- until the end of the academic year in which you reach the age of 30 (or, if you are a mature student, for 10 years from the point you provide your information);
- If you enter Higher Education within this time, until 15 years after you graduate.
After these periods, any personal information will be removed from our records, but we may continue to retain and process your information in an anonymised form.
Your Rights
You have a number of rights with regards to how we process your information including access, correction, erasure and restriction.
Full details of these rights and how to exercise them can be found here.
Data Protection Officer (DPO)
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.
DPO contact details: dpo@keele.ac.uk
ICO contact details: www.ico.org.uk
Changes to this privacy notice
We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
Notice last reviewed: July 2025
EMWPREP Closure Statement
We need to tell you about some important changes to the EMWPREP project you have taken part in.
EMWPREP is a collaborative research project, which several universities and Uni Connect partnerships have used to track participation in their outreach activities over time and measure the impact of those activities. If you have taken part in outreach activities delivered by these organisations, you, your parents, or your school have likely given us permission to use your data for this research. Unfortunately, the current EMWPREP project is coming to an end. As universities and Uni Connect partnerships still have a duty to continue this research, the data held as part of the EMWPREP project will be transferred back to the University of Keele.
What does this mean for you?
In accordance with your data protection rights, we want to assure you that your personal data will be handled with the utmost care and security. Your data collected as part of the EMWPREP project will be securely stored by The University of Keele as we review our wider research into higher education progression. Where it will continue to be used solely for the purpose of conducting educational research to check if research activities are reaching the right people and creating a positive impact.
- Data Protection: Your personal data will continue to be protected under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, and we will ensure that all data handling practices comply with the law.
- Right to Object: You have the right to object to processing of your personal data. If you or your parents don’t want your data to be part of the new project, please contact us at outreach@keele.ac.uk.
If you have any questions or would like more information about this change, please do get in touch at outreach@keele.ac.uk.
