University counselling service privacy notice

University Counselling Service

1. Identity and contact details of the Data Controller

The University of Gloucestershire is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a Data Controller and is committed to protecting the rights of individuals in line with Data Protection legislation.

A copy of this registration can be found here.

2. Contact details of the Data Protection Officer

The Data Protection Officer is responsible for advising the University on compliance with Data Protection legislation and monitoring its performance against it. If you have any concerns regarding the way in
which the University is processing your personal data, please contact the Data Protection Officer at:

Data Protection Officer
University of Gloucestershire
Registrar’s Directorate
Fullwood House
The Park
Cheltenham, GL50 2RH
Email: dpo@glos.ac.uk

3. What information do we collect about you?

The University Counselling Service holds data provided by you at registration with the service, at the initial assessment appointment and at subsequent appointments. Our records include;

• Personal identifiers and biographical information (e.g., your student number and your date of birth)
• Contact details (e.g., your address, email and telephone numbers)
• Sensitive personal data (e.g., why you are seeking support, details of a disability, details of
• support you have had in the past and notes written by counsellors following sessions or after other contacts with us)
• Information about your personal circumstances as covered by the initial assessment appointment
• Study related information (e.g., course, level of study, campus)
• Your GP details and details of others with whom you have given us consent to liaise.

4. How will your information be used?

The Counselling Service primarily uses your data to offer appropriate support to you, including

• Establishing appointment times suitable to your requirements
• Recording the work as an aide memoire for counsellors, recording progress and outcomes of the
• counselling process, preparing for supervision of work and professional accountability.
• Ensuring we are meeting our safeguarding requirements
• Monitoring of anonymised data to identify trends and allocate resources appropriately.

5. What is our lawful basis for processing your personal data?

We will only collect and process your personal information where:

• We consider that processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests of the University in delivering appropriate support;
• Processing may also be necessary to protect your or another person’s vital interests;
• Each counselling client will be asked to give specific or, where necessary explicit consent for their personal information to be processed.

6. Who your personal information is shared with?

For the purposes set out in the Privacy Notice we may share some of your personal data with certain third parties once we have gained your explicit consent through our Consent to Liaise Form;

• GP and other relevant medical professionals
• Others identified on the Consent to Liaise Form

7. Transfers to third countries and safeguards in place

Your personal data will not be transferred outside of the European Economic Area.

8. How long will your information be held?

The University Counselling Service will retain your personal data for a period of 7 years after your last year of contact with the Service.

9, What are your Rights?

Under Data Protection Legislation you have the following rights:

• to request access to, and copies of, the personal data that we hold about you;
• to request that we cease processing your personal data;
• to request that we do not send you any marketing communications;
• to request us to correct the personal data we hold about you if it is incorrect;
• to request that we erase your personal data;
• to request that we restrict our data processing activities (and, where our processing is based on
your consent, you may withdraw that consent, without affecting the lawfulness of our processing
based on consent before its withdrawal);
• to receive from us the personal data you have provided to us, in a reasonable format specified by
you, to another data controller;
• to object, on grounds relating to your particular situation, to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on your rights and freedoms.

Please note that the above rights are not absolute, and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.

Any requests or objections should be made in writing to the University’s Data Protection Officer, contact details are in Section 2 of this Privacy Notice.

10. How to make a complaint

If you are unhappy with the way in which your personal data has been processed you may in the first instance contact the University’s Data Protection Officer using the contact details in Section 2 of this Privacy Notice.

If you still remain dissatisfied, then you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for a decision. The ICO can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk