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How we process data

We understand that you may be reluctant to tell us about a disability or other sensitive personal information. This statement explains how we respect the confidentiality of any information that you share with us, and how we manage it.

The University of London welcomes applications from those with access requirements - for example if you have a disability or another reason why you may require learning materials in a particular format or access arrangements to help you attend an examination.

We understand that some people may be reluctant to tell us about a disability or other requirements that they have, because this is sensitive personal information.

The purpose of this statement is to reassure you that we will respect the confidentiality of any such information that you share with us, and will manage it appropriately. At the end of this document, we also tell you how to contact us if you have any further questions regarding these issues.

What information do we need?

If you think you have a disability or other requirements that may mean that we need to make access arrangements for you, please tell us about those requirements. You also generally need to provide us with evidence. For example, if you have a disability, we need medical evidence regarding your condition.

If you are unsure what information you need to provide, please contact our Inclusive Practice Manager - see the contact details at the end of this page.

Why do we need this information?

We need this information so that we can establish what arrangements we may be able to offer to you in order to best meet your requirements, and so that we can implement any arrangements that we agree with you.

How do we protect the confidentiality of the information that you provide?

Information about a disability is ‘sensitive personal data’ under the General Data Protection Regulations. We will process the information in accordance with that Regulations.

This means that we are particularly careful to respect the confidentiality of the information. We obtain explicit consent from you to allow us to process the information. Any information disclosed as part of the request for access arrangements, along with supporting evidence, will be retained by our Inclusive Practice Office and the University of London database and records system. This is in accordance with the University of London’s Data Protection Policy.

Access to the information is carefully controlled. Only a small number of suitably trained staff has access to details of your requirements within our database, and we will only share this information beyond that group with people who need to know about it.

Who might we share this information with?

We may need to share information about you with third parties in order to establish what arrangements we may be able to offer you.

For example, we may need to seek independent medical advice, or advice from an Examination Centre or from the Board of Examiners for your programme of study about the support that they may be able to provide. Where your doctor has supplied medical evidence about you, we may need to contact them to ask for further information. However, before we contact your doctor or any other medical professional, we will ask for your consent.

If we agree to make arrangements for you, we may then need to share details of those arrangements with third parties. For example, we will need to share details of examination arrangements with your Examination Centre and with the relevant Board of Examiners.

We are careful to keep information-sharing to the minimum that is necessary in order to support you in your studies and to implement agreed arrangements. This means that, wherever possible, we will share details of arrangements that have been agreed with you without revealing information about the disability or other reason why those arrangements have been made.

We may share information about your disability or other requirements where we think that it is in your best interests to do so. However, will ask your consent to share the nature of your disability.

In very exceptional circumstances we reserve the right to share this information. These are where:

  • there is a serious and imminent risk to your own or to others’ safety.
  • there is a legal requirement to disclose the information (e.g. for the prevention or detection of crime).

Information we receive from third parties

If a third party contacts us with information about you – for example, if your doctor sends us a medical report about you – then we will check that information with you.

How long do we keep information about your requirements?

We retain this information for as long as it may be relevant. This will generally be for the length of your programme registration plus a further period of time.

Once this maximum retention period has expired, we will either delete the information from our system or anonymise it. 'Anonymising' information means that we keep a record in our system, but remove any information that could identify the individual to whom it relates.

We retain some anonymised records because they help us to generate statistical reports about our services for monitoring and improvement.

Further information

If you require more information about our services for students with access requirements, please contact our Inclusive Practice Manager:

Diana Maniati
Inclusive Practice Manager
University of London
Ground Floor, Stewart House
32 Russell Square
London WC1B 5DN
UK