The North Kent College Data Privacy Notice
In compliance with UK and European data protection legislation, this privacy notice explains what personal information we collect from you when you visit our website, when you apply to, or join us as a student or are a recipient of our services.
North Kent College (NKC) is a college for higher and further education, and we are committed to processing all personal information about our students, staff or visitors in ways that comply with the College’s legal and regulatory obligations, and to being clear about what it does with personal information.
Data collection
The data we collect to provide our services, we take as a data controller. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
We may collect personal information when:
- you use our website
- you apply to or enrol with the college as a student
- you use our services as a Nursery provider
- you are a recipient of other training or events we provide.
- you use our commercial services such as room hire, spa and salons, theatre
We may collect the following types of information:
- Name, Address, Email, Phone/mobile, DOB
- Previous school, Course fees
- Parent name / email, Emergency contact (name/relationship/email/mobile/landlines)
- Car registration
- Nationality
- Qualifications
- Referee details (name/address/phone/email)
- Employment status / details
- CCTV footage
- Information obtained through electronic means such as swipe card records.
- Information about your use of our information and communications systems
- Photographs
Special Categories of data
We also collect special category data, necessary for legal requirements and reporting but also to help us provide you with the most effective education and to keep you safe whilst in the College.
Special categories of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information and we do this with either your consent or as permitted by UK and EU data protection legislation
The special category information we collect includes:
- Learning difficulty/disabilities
- Ethnicity
- Religion
- Sexual Orientation
- Disability & learning support, e.g. Education Healthcare Plan (EHCP)
- Health and medical information
- Household status
- Details of any Criminal convictions
Why do we collect this information?
The personal data collected is needed in order to
- provide you with higher and further education;
- to give our staff information necessary to facilitate your learning;
- for necessary funding and administrative purposes;
- to meet our legal and regulatory obligations as a college;
- promote the college to prospective students or clients
Information we may collect through our website is needed
- to help identify your computer;
- analyse data about web page traffic and to help us tailor our website for your needs;
- to allow students, staff and guests to access information they may require.
We also collect personal contacts from our Business and Corporate clients for our legitimate interests. These contacts are corporate or business individuals and while this is still categorised under UK and EU legislation as personal data, we are aware that it can be used for business-to-business purposes, as stipulated by the Privacy of Electronic Communications Regulation (PECR) with which we also comply.
How do we collect this information?
We collect personal information:
- directly from students: e.g. when a student applies to join us, attends a promotional pre-enrolment event or at enrolment;
- KCC, local authorities, DfE or other Government bodies;
- from publicly available sources: e.g. networking, social media, internet services, exhibitions, direct referrals, other corporate bodies;
- from guests or visitors
We are committed to keeping your information up to date as far as is reasonably possible. However, if you believe that we have made an error, then please contact us as we have outlined below, and we will use reasonable endeavours to correct your record.
Website cookies
We also capture data using Cookies. Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to collect and store information about how you use our website and services, such as the pages you visit.
More specific detail about the types of cookies we use please refer to our Cookies Policy
How do we use the data we collect?
The majority of our data is held within our student database, accessible only to those staff who need access.
Any processing activities we undertake are fully compliant with UK and European data protection legislation and PECR where needed for the marketing approaches, we undertake.
Information collected may be used for the following:
1. On internal displays (including digital display) – to inform students of college related activities and news;
2. disciplinary/grievance procedures;
3. attendance monitoring;
4. correspondence to students relating programme of study;
5. distribution of examination/registration documents;
6. storage and usage of student image to create ID Cards and for identification purposes;
7. contact to students via SMS, messaging platforms, , e-mail or post using information collected on the enrolment/learning agreement;
8. the provision of advice and support to learners via, amongst others, Student services/ careers.
9. registration with awarding bodies;
10. we make use CCTV cameras throughout the College for security, crime prevention and safeguarding purposes, both for the public and vital interests of our visitors, staff and students, CCTV policy can be found here
11. Safeguarding;
12. disclosing information where necessary, either with your consent or as required by law to:
- Local Authority;
- Sponsors/employers (where stated on the Learning Agreement)
- External work-based training providers;
- Professional and statutory bodies;
- Funding Agencies;
- Government agencies including the Police, if deemed necessary and within the confines of legislation. In particular in relation to safeguarding of young people and vulnerable adults and others and in line with the Children’s Act and FE Act.
13.
Disclosing information regarding your application progress and/ or on your learning including – attendance, awarding body entry and exam attendance, if you are a 16–18-year-old student (at the start of your learning programme).
This may also include medical information when it affects your studies.
Information might be also shared in relation to complaints that are raised on behalf of student by their designated parent/guardian and/ or emergency contact.
This data will only be disclosed to a designated parent/guardian and/ or emergency contact details you provided at enrolment.
If your / parent/ guardian details change during your time at the College, please contact. your tutor to have your record updated.
14.
Marketing purposes, such as to keep you informed of college activities and services which may interest you, with your consent.
Keeping your information safe and secure.
NKC is committed to keeping your personal information secure to protect it from being inappropriately or accidentally accessed, used, shared, or destroyed, or lost.
In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality
In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.
Should we need to transfer personal information to third parties located outside the UK, we will ensure that information is protected to a level which meets the requirements of UK and European data protection regulations.
If we provide you with a login and password in order to access any of our systems, you are responsible for keeping your password and user details confidential and safe. We will never ask you for your password, never disclose it to anyone.
Third party access
Access to your personal information is only allowed when required by law or is required in order to fulfil our service obligations. We do not, and will never, sell or share your personal information with other third parties, without your prior consent.
All our third-party service providers and other entities in the College are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
We use third party providers to:
- to fulfil our role as a course provider to you
- ensure our IT and security measures are sufficiently robust to protect your data
- to help us manage and host events
- allow us to receive funding
- to help us promote the college or advertise forthcoming events
Links to other websites:
Our website and email newsletters and bulletins may contain links to other websites of interest.
However, you should note that we do not have any control over these other websites. Once you have used any of these links to leave our site, therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting these sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement.
How long do we keep personal information?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
- For our students we are required by law to retain all the personal details we collect for as long as they remain a student and only certain personal details in line with Funding Agency requirements after they leave us
- For anyone who enquires about joining the college but does not register we will hold these personal details for a maximum of four years.
Details of retention periods for other aspects of your personal information are available in our retention guide. The College Data Protection Officer (see contact details below) can provide specific data retention information upon request.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you. Once you are no longer a student, worker, or contractor of the College we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy or applicable laws and regulations.
Marketing
NKC limits personal data processing for marketing activity to only that is necessary to promote the College to prospective students or sponsors. This is completed for our legitimate interests and will include:
- E-Communications and SMS Marketing Communications such as keep warm from application to enrolment, emails to event data where you have opted in;
- Social Platform activity, sharing information with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter , TikTok, LinkedIn, , and Google, where you have opted in;
- Events to promote the College to new entrants or prospective new markets.
Any marketing we undertake is made in a fully complaint manner as governed by UK and European data protection regulations and PECR, with the contacts being given the option to opt out from such contact.
Controlling your personal information
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.
If you want to review, verify, correct or question anything detailed in this policy or anything about your personal information, please contact the College Data Protection Officer in writing.
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances to the extent permitted by law
Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:
- request details of personal information which we hold about you
- restrict the collection or use of your personal data
- to withdraw any permission, you have given us to use your data
- or even to delete any records that we may hold;
Data Protection Officer
We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this
Privacy Notice. If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice or how we handle
your personal information, please contact the DPO via the contact details below.
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.
Changes to our Privacy Policy:
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.
This privacy policy was last updated in July 2024.
Contact Details
North Kent College Data Protection Officer:
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North Kent College
Dartford Campus
Oakfield Lane
Dartford
Kent
DA1 2JT