Supporting school leaders

Personal data is any information about an individual that allows them to be identified, for example a name, photographs, videos, email address, or address. Identification can be by directly using the data itself or by combining it with other information which helps to identify an individual. The processing of personal data is governed by legislation relating to personal data that applies in the United Kingdom. This includes the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) and other legislation relating to personal data and rights such as the Human Rights Act.

This Privacy Policy applies to DPO Services Limited. The Directors of DPO Services Limited are the data controllers for your data. We do not work with any other data controllers. We do work in consultation with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) if there are issues needing to be reported. 

DPO Services Limited will process some or all of the following personal data where necessary to perform its tasks:

• Names and titles
• Contact details such as telephone numbers, addresses and email addresses
• School information provided by the school’s SLT
• Information about children and families if required to undertake investigations when data breaches are reported or a subject access or freedom of information requests made.   

We may process sensitive personal data in order to comply with legal requirements and obligations to third parties. These types of data are described in the GDPR as ‘Special categories of data’ and require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal data.

We may process special categories of personal data in the following circumstances:

• In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent
• Where we need to carry out our legal obligations
• Where it is needed in the public interest
• Less commonly, we may process this type of personal data where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

In limited circumstances, we may approach you for your written consent to allow us to process certain sensitive personal data. If we do so, we will provide you with full details of the personal data that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent.

DPO Services Limited will comply with data protection law. This says the personal data we hold about you must be:

• Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way
• Collected only for valid purposes we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way incompatible with those purposes
• Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes
• Accurate and kept up to date
• Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about
• Kept and destroyed securely including ensuring appropriate technical and security measures are in place to protect your personal data to protect personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure.

We use your personal data to:

• Contact you by post, email or telephone
• Enable us to meet all legal and statutory obligations and powers including any delegated functions. 
• Carry out safeguarding procedures if required 
• Promote the interests of the school or trust
• Maintain our own accounts and records
• Seek your views, opinions or comments
• Notify you of changes to our services or role holders
• Send you communications you have requested or may be of interest to you
• Process relevant financial transactions including payments for goods and services
• Allow the statistical analysis of data so we can plan the provision of services.

If DPO Services Limited shares your personal data with third parties, these third parties have an obligation to put in place appropriate security measures and will be responsible to you directly for the manner in which they process and protect your personal data. 

DPO Services Limited will keep some records permanently if we are legally required to do so. We may keep some other records for an extended period of time. For example, it is currently best practice to keep financial records for a minimum period of 8 years to support HMRC audits or provide tax information. We may have legal obligations to retain some data in connection with our statutory obligations. In general, we will endeavour to keep data only for as long as we need it. This means we will delete it when it is no longer needed.

You have rights with respect to your personal data. These are:

• The right to access personal data we hold on you. At any point you can contact us to request the personal data we hold on you as well as why we have that personal data, who has access to the personal data and where we obtained the personal data from. Once we have received your request we will respond within one month.
• The right to correct and update the personal data we hold on you. If the data we hold on you is out of date, incomplete or incorrect, you can inform us and your data will be updated.
• The right to have your personal data erased if you feel we should no longer be using your personal data or we are unlawfully using your personal data. You can request we erase the personal data we hold. When we receive your request we will confirm whether the personal data has been deleted or the reason why it cannot be deleted. 
• The right to object to processing of your personal data or to restrict it to certain purposes only. You have the right to request that we stop processing your personal data or ask us to restrict processing. Upon receiving the request we will contact you and let you know if we are able to comply or if we have a legal obligation to continue to process your data.
• The right to data portability. You have the right to request we transfer some of your data to another controller. We will comply with your request, where it is feasible to do so, within one month of receiving your request.
• The right to withdraw your consent to the processing at any time for any processing of data to which consent was obtained. You can withdraw your consent easily by telephone or email.
• The right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact the Information Commissioners Office on 0303 123 1113 or via email https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/email/ or at the Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Any personal data transferred to countries or territories outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”) will only be placed on systems complying with measures giving equivalent protection of personal rights either through international agreements or contracts approved by the European Union. While DPO Services Limited will not transfer personal data abroad, our website is accessible from overseas so on occasion some personal data (for example in a newsletter) may be accessed from overseas.

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this new use prior to commencing the processing and setting out the relevant purposes and processing conditions. Where and whenever necessary, we will seek your prior consent to the new processing.

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This Notice was last updated in June 2024.

Please contact us if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the personal data we hold about you or to exercise all relevant rights, queries or complaints at:

The Data Controller

DPO Services Limited

07778 663904 or 07717 794199

dposervicesltd@outlook.com