Durham University Students’ Union collects data about its student members, job applicants, employees and visitors to our website. We are committed to protecting your privacy and the secure handling of your personal data. Your personal data is defined as any information that can directly or indirectly identify you. For the purposes of this notice, the Union is the data controller. To ensure the processing of personal data is lawful, we will process your personal data in accordance with UK Data Protection Law which includes but may not be limited to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation (PECR) and The Data Protection Act 2018.
We've been really open and transparent on these pages to help you be fully informed and understand your rights. Below you can see: how and why we process your data; our legal basis for processing your data; where we might share your data or who else may process it; how we keep your data safe; your rights and how to exercise them.
If you have any questions regarding our Privacy Notices and our use of your personal data, or would like to exercise any of your rights, please get in touch via the following information: Durham SU has an external data protection officer, Angjela Molla from Hope and May Data Protection, who you can contact with data protection questions or concerns at su.dataprotection@durham.ac.uk.
If you’re a member of a student group, you’ll find your data protection guidance and resources within this article.
The Students' Union carefully curate marketing and communications that might be relevant to you. Sometimes we need to send essential information where we believe there is a legitimate interest in you receiving this.
We also occasionally communicate with you through Durham University's platforms and media. The primary way we do this is through newsletters we send several times a term, sent on our behalf to a Durham University student mailing list, so that we can keep you informed of the member benefits you are entitled to, and of what the Officers you’ve elected do in representing you. You can find out more about University mailing lists here.
Our privacy statements detail more information about how we use your data to communicate with you or where you have given consent to send you marketing. You can edit your own marketing preferences at any time by logging in to your account on the website.
We use cookies to provide a tracking service of your usage with our website and recommend that you take the time to read our guidance on Cookies.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives individuals the right to know about the activities of public bodies and to request the disclosure of specific information about these activities. Durham Students’ Union is not a public body as defined in by the Act so does not have a legal responsibility to service Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. This means that when you engage with us (particularly relevant for employees or volunteers) your communications and information about your activity cannot be requested by FoI (this includes things like minutes of a student group meeting, group membership, group numbers).
Durham University is a public body and subject to Freedom of Information requests, so sometimes this can cause confusion for those who may not have realised Durham SU is a legally separate organisation. For the avoidance of doubt: the ICO is clear that while Durham University provides IT infrastructure for Durham SU, including @durham.ac.uk email addresses, this does not bring information held on behalf of Durham SU into the scope of FoI requests made to the University.
Durham SU wants to be open about our activities with students and the community, so even though we’re not subject to FOI requests we encourage people to ask when they have questions and our governance team can be reached on dsu.governance@durham.ac.uk. We recognize it will never be possible (or useful!) to publish everything about our activities on our website, so if you have a particular question about how we work or what we do then please contact us and ask. If it’s a complex or large request we may want to meet with you or chat to understand what information you’re looking for, or we may have to ask you to wait for us to have time to respond in depth. We might also, on occasion, have to explain why we can’t provide the information you’ve asked for. If we’re asked about activity of a student group or student initiative we will always seek to speak to the student organisers to make them aware before we share information, and will never include personal data in what we share.
If you become aware of or think a data protection breach may have occurred with data the students' union (including any of our student groups) process, please email su.dataprotection@durham.ac.uk to report the incident.