AUA Privacy statement

Who we are

When we say ‘we’ or ‘the AUA’ we mean the Association of University Administrators and AUA Enterprises, Sackville Street Building, The University of Manchester, Sackville Street, Manchester, M60 1QD. The AUA is a registered charity in England and Wales 1030024 and in Scotland SC037890 and AUA Enterprises is a limited company registered in England and Wales Company Number: 07814323. 

If you have any questions about this Privacy Statement, please contact the Director of Operations who is the Data Protection (Compliance) Officer at the AUA, dpo@aua.ac.uk.

How we collect your personal information

There are several ways we may collect information about you.  These include:

You may give us your information in order to sign up for membership, book on to one of our events, opt in to receive information, when you contact us to ask about our activities, join one of professional communities, order products or services from us, enrol as a student on our PgCert Programme, work for us, volunteer for us or otherwise give us personal information in the normal course of our activities.

What information we collect

This can include information such as your name, date of birth, email address, postal address, telephone number(s), fax number and credit/debit card details, as well as information relating to your health or personal circumstances. Data protection law recognises that certain categories of personal information are more sensitive. This is called sensitive personal information and covers health information, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature, political opinion and trade union membership.

We will make it clear to you what information we are collecting and the purposes for collecting such. We will only collect personal information where there is a clear need to do so.

How we use your information

How we use your personal information will largely depend on why you are providing it. We may use your information in the ways set out below. How we use your personal information will largely depend on why you are providing it. We may use your information in the ways set out below.

• To verify your identity when participating in AUA activities including events and conferences, our PgCert Programme, and all other opportunities in which you have a right as a member to participate in.
• To give you the information, support, services, opportunities or products you ask for.
• We use your personal information to look into, and respond to complaints or other issues.
• We use personal information to carry out statistical analysis and research in order to help us to understand how we are performing and how we can improve our services and meet the needs of people that require our help.
• We use your information to keep a record of your relationship with us and for internal administrative purposes (such as our accounting and records), and to let you know about changes to our services or policies. This includes details of AUA volunteers. We may also use your personal information for other purposes, which we will specifically notify you about and, where required, obtain your consent.

Communicating with you

With your consent, we may use your information to send you communications, by email about our work and how you can help us to help you, for example, information about our membership opportunities, volunteering and how you can get involved with the AUA.

With your consent, we may use your information to send you communications, by email from AUA partner organisations who offer services, benefits or discounts to AUA members.

All our marketing emails will have clear information about how you can opt out of receiving communications by email. You can let us know if you would prefer not to receive these marketing communications at any time by unsubscribing from the email. If you have any queries about this you can email us at aua@aua.ac.uk.

We will also contact you with routine organisational information about opportunities or activities if for example you have joined one of our professional communities, taken up a voluntary role, or you have booked to attend an event.

We may use profiling techniques to ensure communications are relevant and timely, and to provide you with an improved experience. This sort of profiling can include us using information such as your age, where you live, where you work and any previous interaction you may have had with us.

Who we share your information with

We will never sell your personal information to any third parties, but sometimes we share your personal information with service providers who are contracted or authorised to act on our behalf to fulfil a contract or a legal requirement.

We may also share your information with AUA volunteers to enable them to undertake their role. This can include personal information of service users, other volunteers, staff and trustees

We may also share information with our financial and legal advisers for the purposes of obtaining advice and protecting our legal rights.

We may also share your information with the emergency services or statutory authorities if we think there is a risk of serious harm or abuse to you or someone else.

The law imposes restrictions on the transfer of personal data outside the European Union and the AUA confirms that your data will never be transferred out of the European Union without your explicit consent.

When we collect your personal information, we use strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access. However, no data transmission over the Internet is 100% secure. As a result, while we try to protect your personal information, the AUA cannot absolutely guarantee the security of any information you transmit to us and you do so at your own risk.

Privacy and our websites

Links: The AUA website may include links to other sites, not owned or managed by us. We cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by websites not managed by us.

AUA Forums: AUA forums – an online discussion and consultation facility – are moderated, is not anonymous and your name can be seen by other AUA members. When contributing to a discussion we strongly recommend you avoid sharing any personal information that can be used to identify you (such as your age, and address or email address). We are not responsible for the privacy of any identifiable information that you post in the AUA forum.

Accessing and updating your information

You can request access to the information we hold about you. The law calls this a ‘data subject access request’. An individual is entitled only to their own personal data, and not to information relating to other people. We will provide the information free of charge within 30 days but if there are repeated requests or when the request is excessive or repetitive we reserve the right to make a charge of £100.

You can make a data subject access request by contacting dpo@aua.ac.uk.

Individuals have the right to have personal data rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete. If you believe any information we hold about you is inaccurate for any reason please let us know. Equally you can keep us up to date about changes to your personal information by contacting us or where you have activated your account on our website you can log-in to your account and update your information or preferences.

You can also let us know if you would no longer like to receive marketing communications from us by unsubscribing at any time.

You have the right to withdraw consent to processing at any time and you can do this by contacting aua@aua.ac.uk.

How long we retain your information

We will ensure that we do not retain your personal information any longer than is legally required or can be reasonable justified by the legitimate interest of the AUA or a member. We will ensure that we do not retain your personal information any longer than is legally required or can be reasonable justified by the legitimate interest of the AUA or a member. Specifically:

• All data we hold about your membership with the AUA will normally be securely disposed of six years following the end of your last membership unless we have obtained your consent.
• If you are a student on the AUA PgCert programme we will retain a permanent electronic record of your student data, in line with the data retention policy of our collaborative partner Nottingham Trent University.  The individual student files we hold about you as a student of the AUA PgCert Programme will be securely disposed of six years after you have graduated or ceased your registration on in the programme.   For students who undertook the programme prior to September 2014 when the programme was validated by Open University, data will be retained for forty years in line with the OU policy.
• All financial data we hold about you in relation to entering into a contract or memo of understanding, booking and/or attending a professional development event or activity with us will normally be securely disposed of six years after your last transaction unless we have obtained your consent.
• Data in addition to your name relating to Staff, Directors of and Trustees of the AUA and AUA Enterprises Ltd, will normally be retained for six years prior to safe disposal.
• All data we hold about you as a contact that we have obtained from an open source in relation to your professional role will be securely disposed of two years after your last interaction with us.
• All data we hold about you as a contact will be securely disposed of two years after your last interaction with us. We may also retain your personal information for the purposes of protecting our legal rights or in the legitimate interest of employees, trustees and members.
• You have the ‘right to be forgotten’, to have all personal data erased and you can do this by contacting dpo@aua.ac.uk.

Your right to complain

If you have a concern about the way, the AUA is handling your personal information or if you have, any questions about how we handle information you should contact the Data Protection Compliance Officer at the AUA. You can make a complaint by contacting dpo@aua.ac.uk.

If you are unhappy about how we have handled your data or if you have concerns perhaps that we hold information about you that is incorrect, have held it for too long, or are not keeping it secure you can contact the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) helpline on 0303 123 1113. They may be able to help you do something about it. You can also raise your concerns at www.ico.org.uk/concerns/.

We welcome all feedback as we use this to help us continually improve the service we provide you. We want to hear from you when we have done something well and more importantly when we have missed the mark or caused any inconvenience. If you have a complaint or commendation to share with us please contact us.

Changes to the policy

We may change our privacy policy from time to time so please check back periodically.

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 1 May 2018.