GDPR Compliance Statement

Our General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) statement says how we are compliant with GDPR rules.

Introduction

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) came into force on 25 May 2018. The new Regulation aims to standardise data protection laws and processing across the EU, giving people greater rights to access and control their personal information.

Our Commitment

Homefield College is committed to ensuring protection of all personal information that we hold and/or process, and to provide and to protect all such data. We recognise our obligations in updating and expanding this program to meet the requirements of GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Homefield College is dedicated to safeguarding the personal information under our control and to maintain a system that meets our obligations under the new regulations. Our practice is summarised below.

Compliance with GDPR preparation and development

Homefield College already has a consistent level of data protection and security across our organisation, but we have introduced new measures to ensure compliancy.

Information Audit — we are in the process of carrying out a new audit of information previously held and ensured that it is compliant with the new regulations. We are also preparing our data to be migrated to a cloud-based server, in conjunction with Phoenix Solutions, our consultancy partners, who will assist us with the security access levels and protection configuration.

Policies and Procedures — we have revised data protection policies and procedures to meet the requirements and standards of the GDPR and any relevant data protection laws, including:

Data Protection – our main policy and procedure document for data protection has been revised to meet the standards and requirements of the GDPR. Accountability and governance measures are in place to ensure that we understand and adequately disseminate and evidence our obligations and responsibilities; with a dedicated focus on privacy and the rights of individuals.

Data Retention and Erasure – we are updating our retention policy and schedule to ensure that we meet the “data minimisation” and “storage limitation” principles and that personal information is stored, archived and destroyed in accordance with our obligations. We are also reviewing the process in place to meet the “Right to Erasure” obligation.

Data Breaches – our procedures ensure that we have safeguards in place to identify, assess, investigate and report any personal data breach as early as possible. Our procedures have been explained all employees.

Subject Access Request (SAR) – we have revised our SAR procedures to accommodate the revised 30-day timeframe for providing the requested information and for making this provision free of charge.

Privacy Notice – we have revised our Privacy Notices to comply with the GDPR, ensuring that all individuals whose personal information we process have been informed of why we need it, how it is used, what their rights are, who the information is disclosed to and what safeguarding measures are in place to protect their information.

Obtaining Consent – we have revised our consent mechanisms for obtaining personal data, ensuring that individuals understand what they are providing, why and how we use it and giving clear, defined ways to consent to us processing their information, including this into our enrolment form for students and the recruitment process for staff.

Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) – where we process personal information that is considered high risk, we are developing stringent procedures for carrying out impact assessments that comply fully with the GDPR’s Article 35 requirements. We have implemented documentation processes that record each assessment, allow us to rate the risk posed by the processing activity and implement mitigating measures to reduce the risk posed to the data subject(s).

Processor Agreements – where we use any third-party to process personal information on our behalf (ie Payroll, Recruitment, Hosting, etc), we have drafted compliant Processor Agreements and due diligence procedures for ensuring that they meet and understand their/our GDPR obligations.

Data Subject Rights

We provide easy-to-access information during the induction and admission processes of an individual’s right to access any personal information that Homefield College processes about them and to request information about:

  • What personal data we hold about them

  • The purposes of the processing

  • The categories of personal data concerned

  • The recipients to whom the personal data has/will be disclosed

  • How long we intend to store your personal data for

  • If we did not collect the data directly from them, information about the source

  • The right to have incomplete or inaccurate data about them corrected or completed and the process for requesting this

  • The right to request erasure of personal data (where applicable) or to restrict processing in accordance with data protection laws, as well as to object to any direct marketing from us and to be informed about any automated decision-making that we use

  • The right to lodge a complaint or seek judicial remedy and who to contact in such instances.

Information Security and Technical and Organisational Measures

Homefield College takes the privacy and security of individuals and their personal information very seriously and take every reasonable measure to protect and secure the personal data that we process. We have robust information security policies and procedures in place to protect personal information from unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction.

GDPR Roles and Employees

Homefield College has designated Isela Bonequi as our Data Protection Officer (DPO) and has appointed a data privacy team to develop and implement our roadmap for complying with the new data protection Regulation. This team is responsible for promoting awareness of the GDPR across the organisation, assessing our GDPR compliance, identifying any gap areas and implementing the new policies, procedures and measures.

Homefield College understands that continuous employee awareness and understanding is vital to the continued compliance of the GDPR and have involved our employees in our preparation plans.

If you have any questions about our GDPR compliance policies, please contact us at gdpr@homefieldcollege.ac.uk

Last updated: Sept 2020