Dumfries & Galloway College (the College) is providing you with this information to comply with data protection law to ensure that you are fully informed and that we are transparent in how we collect and use your personal data.
Your privacy and trust are very important to us and this Privacy Notice provides essential information about how the College handles your personal data and the rights you have in relation to how we use your data. The College is committed to complying with all applicable Data Protection legislation.
This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, store and share any personal data that you provide to us, or that we collect from you or any third parties for marketing communication purposes.
Who are we?
Dumfries & Galloway College is the ‘Controller’ and is responsible for looking after the personal data that you provide.
Registered office:
Dumfries & Galloway College
Bankend Road
Dumfries
DG1 4FD
For any queries or concerns about how your personal data is being processed, you can contact the Data Protection Officer (DPO) at DPO@dumgal.ac.uk.
Purpose for processing – why do we collect information about you?
We use your personal data to provide you with relevant marketing communications and tailored offers. This may be by post, email, SMS, telephone, advertising on third party sites and platforms and may include sending you information about:
- The services you’ve applied for or booked with us
- The college and its strategic partners
- Training opportunities or other business services we offer
- Government funding schemes for training
- Onward study options with other educational institutions
- Events we think you might be interested in, such as Open Days, Applicant Days, exhibitions or other engagement events.
- Surveys and research we’d like to invite you to take part in
- Customer reviews, specifically asking for your opinion and permission to publish your feedback
- Our Alumni program
- Work projects and work experience opportunities
We will only send you marketing emails or contact you via preference selections you’ve expressly agreed to for personal marketing purposes. We may personalise content based upon information you’ve provided. Should you change your mind after having opted in for marketing activity, you can update your preferences or unsubscribe in any direct marketing email.
For business-to-business communication we will only send you marketing materials where this has been subject to a legitimate interests assessment and you will have the option to opt out or unsubscribe to any direct marketing email.
We will also use your information in an anonymous aggregated format to identify trends on our website and trends in our customer database. We may share this information with third parties.
Interactions with our social media and digital advertising presence will be used by social media and digital advertising providers to match demographic data derived from personal information with other members of the public with similar characteristics.
Our lawful bases (reason) for processing your information is/are:
- You have given consent for the use. Where you have given permission for us to contact you about further events or services.
- Use is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps, at your request, before entering into such a contract. Where you have submitted an enquiry or registered for a Student Recruitment Event. It is our responsibility to provide you with the information requested or administer your attendance at an event you have registered for.
- Use is necessary for the purposes of legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party. Where we have gathered your data from a third party and where it is necessary to pursue our legitimate interests and such interests are not overridden by the rights and freedoms of data subjects.
The legitimate interest(s) of the controller or third party is/are:
The processing is undertaken under the legitimate interest of Dumfries and Galloway College for the purposes of marketing communication activities to businesses, however; you may opt-out (unsubscribe) or amend your contact preferences with us using the opt-out links within our communications.
Our legitimate interest for processing the data includes the purchase of business-to-business contact details from third party processers and onward processing in terms of storing on our CRM system and utilising for marketing communications and/or telesales purposes.
What information do we collect about you?
The College collects your information as outlined below:
Personal data for marketing or resolving a query
This includes visitors to the website that complete a webform, contact us with an enquiry or interact with us at an event. We typically collect:
- Name
- Job Title
- Department
- Postal address
- Email address
- Telephone number
- Where they are from (Scotland; England, Wales or Northern Ireland, EU; International)
- Which of our training opportunities or business services they may be interested in
- The year they intend to commence training or another service with the college.
Information from social media channels
We collect your social media username, if you interact with us through those channels, to help us respond to your questions or comments.
Personal information from school and college professionals
Through the course of their job, College outreach staff may collect personal data from teachers and those in a career guidance role, such as title, name, work email address, together with subjects and year stage of pupils taught and the name and contact details of the institution.
Personal information from third party data processors
We may from time to time purchase personal data from third party data processors. This data would typically include:
- Name
- Job Title
- Department
- Postal address (business)
- Email address (business)
- Telephone number (business)
- Where the business is based or has premises (Scotland; England, Wales or Northern Ireland, EU; International)
Data for the analysis and tracking of our website
- Our server automatically logs the activity of visitors. It provides usage information that shows us how they interact with the site such as web pages viewed, time spent on the site, videos or links clicked on, navigation path and use of the search box.
- We collect data including the visitor’s IP address, browser type, operating system versions, device type (mobile, tablet, PC), referring page (which site the visitor came from to ours).
We use the data provided by cookies where you consent to these to:
Analyse and track website performance: Cookies such as Google Analytics help us to monitor and produce measurable statistics on the performance of the website. Knowing among other things which website pages are most and least popular, which devices visitors are using to view content and page download speeds, allows us to continuously improve the site.
To make our digital advertising more relevant: We use tracking cookies for social media platforms on our website such as for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These allow us to provide more tailored and relevant digital advertising, and remarketing campaigns to previous visitors to our site as they browse the internet. This is based on their marketing consent, or acceptance of cookies on our website.
To measure the effectiveness of marketing communication and digital advertising campaigns: We use cookies and page tags about usage and user statistics on our website so we can attribute website visits to specific email communications or digital advertising campaigns. We use them to determine the success of campaigns through measuring open rates, links clicked on and the number of website visits generated. This helps us identify content that is the most useful and highlights that which is less popular so it can be improved.
How do we collect it?
We collect your information when you interact with Dumfries and Galloway College, this includes but is not limited to:
- Visiting our website(s)
- Speaking to our staff
- Participating in telephone calls
- Registering for/attending our events
- Applying for/booking our training services
- Submitting enquiries about our services
- Clicking on our adverts on third party platforms
- Clicking on elements within our marketing emails
- Engaging with our social media accounts
We also collect your information from third party vendors:
- Working on our behalf to carry out activities under our instruction. If so, they may process your personal information on our behalf under strict contractual confidentiality obligations.
- Whom we buy data from to help us tailor our marketing communications to make our offers appealing to a wider, appropriate audience.
Our website use cookies which are very small text files that are stored on your computer. They’re used by most websites to tailor information and marketing messages. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify its setting to decline them if you prefer.
For detailed information on cookies, and how to manage them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.
Who do we share your information with?
Externally
- Suppliers including mail fulfilment and marketing agencies who carry out or fulfil marketing communications for us. Any personal data we share with them is sent securely using data encryption tool(s) and securely deleted immediately after use. We provide only the information they need to perform their fulfilment or marketing service and they may use it only for this exact purpose.
- Suppliers who provide our customer database software. Any personal data we share with them is stored via their encrypted software platforms and reviewed in line with the timescales set out in this policy.
- The College will not sell, share or transfer your personal data to other third parties for their own purpose. We will only share personal data to comply with a legal obligation.
Internally
- We may share personal data to colleagues in the College where an enquiry has been forwarded for a response, such as a specific question about a degree programme that’s best answered by an academic.
- Our Admissions service share data of applicants to ensure our marketing communications go only to those who have confirmed or are yet to decide on accepting our offer.
Details of data transfers to any third countries or international organisations
The College uses Google Analytics, based on cookie consent. Data is transferred to the US as part of this processing based on Standard Contractual Clauses.
Your data may be transferred to Microsoft, Mailjet (our email marketing platform) and our Goldvision customer database platform (Esteiro Business Solutions Limited). This data is processed in the UK or the EEA.
How do we look after your information and how long do we keep it for?
We will take all reasonable steps to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of information you give us. Your personal information will be stored securely and will only be accessed by authorised staff, agents, contractors and other organisations 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 and must comply with data protection law.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
The length of time your information will be kept will depend on various factors, such as if you are currently using our services or receiving training from us, or have recently interacted with the College’s offers.
We will hold collected personal data within a secure database and aim to review and update the information every three years.
If you withdraw your consent to receive marketing communications or opt-out, we will continue to store your data but will not use it for marketing communications purposes, unless you ask us to delete your personal data. In such case, we will promptly and securely erase your personal data unless there is a lawful reason preventing us from doing so.
Automated decision making processes, including profiling
We do not use any automated decision making about you.
We work with digital search engines and social media providers who target advertisements based on your preferences. If you would like to update your preferences to limit the advertisements you receive, you can adjust your preferences with these providers.
Your rights
Under Data Protection laws you have certain rights in relation to how the College manages and uses your personal information:
- The right to be informed (this is the Privacy Notice)
- The right to access your personal data
- The right to rectification if the personal data we hold about you is incorrect
- The right to restrict processing of your personal data
In addition the following rights apply only in certain circumstances:
- The right to withdraw consent at any time (if consent is our lawful basis for processing your data)
- The right to object to our processing of your personal data
- The right to request erasure (deletion) of your personal data
- The right to data portability
- The right not to be subject to automated decision making including profiling.
For more information about your rights please see www.ico.org.uk.
Contact us
If you have any issues about this notice or the way the College has handled your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer in the first instance:
email DPO@Dumgal.ac.uk
Telephone: 01387 734000 or write to:
Data Protection Officer
Dumfries & Galloway College
Bankend Road
Dumfries
DG1 4FD
Complaints to UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
If you are dissatisfied with the response from the College you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office about our handling of your data:
You can do this online: ICO Online
By telephone: 0303 123 1113
Or write to:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF