Confidentiality
The University of Westminster takes its data protection obligations very seriously. Access to any personal information you give us when participating in the course representative survey is subject to a staff confidentiality agreement.
Access to your personal information is limited by permissions to only those staff in the Student Survey team who need access to create and disseminate aggregate reports based on your survey feedback. No individuals will be recognisable in any aggregate data that is shared more widely with University and Student Union colleagues without your consent.
You have the option to provide an open-ended written response at the end of the survey. You will also be asked if you would you be happy for the survey team to share your response to the open-ended question more widely. You can choose to keep responses anonymous, for a non-anonymised response to be shared with your College and School, or to keep your response for the survey team only.
Your personal data
The course representative survey will gather your responses to survey questions against your Student ID. No ‘special category’ sensitive personal data will be gathered from you as part of the course representative survey.
Use of personal data and legal basis of processing
The information you give the University as a participant in this survey will help us to find out how things are and quickly take steps to make changes where needed, so we have created a short regular survey for you to tell us how things are going.
We will create aggregated and anonymous reports for sharing with the Student Union and University colleagues potentially down to course leaders only for these purposes, where no individual will be recognisable, to help us monitor and improve what you are experiencing and what we can do better to help.
However, there are certain circumstances where responses may require immediate action. For example, if you choose to disclose that you or someone else is at risk of harm, or there is a breach or potential breach of the law. In such a case, other relevant parties beyond the survey analysis team, such as the course leader, the university complaints team or the SU advice team may be given access to non-anonymous reports in order to take appropriate action.
The legal basis for the University to process your personal data in this way is your consent to participate in the survey.
Data retention
Your personal data given in your responses to the course representative survey will only be retained for the duration of your studies and then securely deleted from all systems and storage. We do not expect this retention period to be more than five years in most cases.
Aggregate anonymous reports, where no individual is recognisable, are likely to be retained for a longer period for business and comparison purposes.
Data transfers and sharing
The University student survey team will not share your personal information with anyone else and as mentioned, will only share aggregate anonymous reports, where no individual can be recognised, with university colleagues and the Student Union. Exceptions of safeguarding issues (as mentioned in the section titled: ‘Use of personal data and legal basis of processing’) where individuals may need to be identified and/or contacted would be shared only with appropriate parties within the university and the UWSU to ensure action is taken.
Your rights
If you have any questions relating to the use of your personal information in the course representative survey, please contact the student survey team at [email protected] or the Students’ Union at [email protected].
If you have any questions or concerns about your personal information and your information rights, please see the University’s data protection web pages or contact the Information Compliance Team at [email protected].
You can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office with any concerns or complaints you may have with the processing of your personal data.
This statement was last reviewed and updated in November 2022.