Privacy & Cookie Policy

Make Happen Privacy Notice

Updated May 2021 

Make Happen are part of the Uni Connect programme which is a partnership project funded by the Office for Students (OfS). Uni Connect – and Make Happen – focus their work on local areas where fewer young people with good GCSE results progress to Higher Education than you’d expect.

Make Happen works across Essex to provide a range of events and activities that aim to help young people, parents/carers, and teachers, understand more about the options available after school/college, so that young people can make informed decisions about their future education.

Make Happen collects information so that it can:

  • Plan and manage virtual and face-to-face activities, events programmes and competitions.
  • Monitor participation in virtual and face-to-face activities, events programmes, prize-draws and competitions.
  • Evaluate and report on the effectiveness and impact of the activities, for example, to evidence where activities have increased the number of young people going to higher education. To do this, Make Happen keep a record of events and activities that individuals attend to see which of those people progresses to further study and collect their feedback.
  • Provide the OfS with the evidence it requires to judge whether the work Make Happen does is making a difference.

We collect data about students, parents/carers and teachers who take part in our activities. For students this includes name, date of birth, postcode, school or college and email address. For parents/carers this includes name and contact details, and for teachers, we collect information about job role and contact information.

What is Make Happens lawful basis for collecting your data for its Widening Participation programme?

For planning and managing activities, monitoring participation, and evaluating and reporting on impact, Make Happen uses the legitimate interests of itself and others to process your data. For promoting events to you (marketing) we will always ask for your consent. We will also use the lawful basis of consent to collect special category data for residential activity, to collect data from you in the absence of a data sharing agreement with your school or college, or if you are registering for an event or activity as an individual, rather than as part of a school/college group.

Where data for pupils under 13 will be collected then parental consent will be required and consent will be the lawful basis relied upon until such time as the pupil reaches age 13 and their data can be processed under legitimate interest.

 

What information we collect

We may collect and process personal data about students, parents/carers and teachers who participate in one of our programmes, activities, events or webinars.

This may include personal details such as:

  • your name
  • date of birth
  • postcode
  • email address
  • school/institution or organisation
  • information relating to your past and future academic progress, educational or professional background,
  • your communication preferences
  • details of emergency contacts
  • bank details to award bursaries

For some events, programmes and activities, we may also collect special categories of data such as:

  • information about health conditions
  • ethnicity
  • disability
  • care/carer status
  • refugee status
  • gypsy/traveller status
  • service children status
  • dietary requirements

We will only collect sensitive personal information for the reasons outlined below:

  • To ensure your safety and wellbeing during events, programmes, and activities.
  • For reporting and evaluation purposes that are within the legitimate interests of Make Happen and others, based on our agenda to widen participation in Higher Education.

Information such as your name, date of birth, postcode and email address will be gathered directly from your school or college when a data sharing agreement is in place to govern this. If a data sharing agreement is not in place between Make Happen and your school or college, or if you are directly registering for an activity, you will be asked to share this data with us via online or hard copy forms.

We won’t use this information to contact you with marketing (promoting our activities) without your permission, and we never share your information with other organisations for marketing purposes.

 

How we use your information

We will only use your personal information for the purpose it was collected. Most commonly, this will include the following circumstances:

  1. When we need to perform services relating to a contract we have entered into with you, this could include:
  • For application and registration purposes prior to participating in an event, programme or activity.
  • To support, deliver and administer our prize-draws, competitions, programmes, events and activities and to update or inform you about them.
  • To ensure your safety and wellbeing during our events, programmes and activities.
  1. Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Usually this will include:
  • For internal record keeping.
  • To monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our programmes, events, and activities, through data tracking, research, statistical analysis, and surveys.
  • To contact you with updates and information about our events, programmes and activities that may be relevant to you where you have not objected to us doing so (please see below for more details).
  • To take photographs, audio and video footage at our events, programmes, and activities for use in Make Happen digital and printed materials, communications, publications, and social media sites to promote the benefits of MH.
  1. To provide you with information about Make Happen programmes, events, and activities that we think may be relevant to you. We will only send electronic marketing messages in the following circumstances:
  • When you have consented to this by completing the relevant field on our web forms, event registration forms, programme application forms and/or evaluation forms.
  • You are a teacher/advisor with whom we have an existing relationship and have not objected to us doing so.

If you do not want us to use you data in this way you do not need to provide your consent, and you can use the unsubscribe link in our email communications at any time to opt out.

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

  • Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
  • Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
  • Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

 

How we store and protect your data

The University of Essex is the lead institution for Make Happen and sets the data protection and information security policies that Make Happen uses. Further information can be found at https://www.essex.ac.uk/student/my-essex/privacy-notice-students.

Make Happen uses the national Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) database, as well as a purpose-built Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to store the information collected on the people who take part in the programme. These databases are where we store details on the programmes, events and activities you participate in as part of Make Happen. A back-up copy of this data may also be stored for a short period on secure, internal cloud storage systems.

Some personal data, such as your name, may also be stored in online platforms that are used to deliver programmes, events, and activities to you and/or to present evaluation forms to you.

Your data is stored inside the UK and EEA. If data is stored outside the UK or EEA on the CRM then we have ensured that it meets the same privacy standards that we expect.

How we share your data

We will only share your data when there is a legal basis to do so. Any data we share will only be used by the third-party organisation for the purposes of:

  • delivering virtual and face-to-face activities, events, programmes, prize-draws and competitions to you.
  • monitoring and evaluation in line with this notice.
  • helping to evaluate the effectiveness of our outreach programmes, events and activities as part of OfS policy to widen participation in Higher Education.

For example, sometimes we need to share data from HEAT with the OfS, CFE Research, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Please see the relevant privacy notices for each organisation if you would like to know more about how your data is processed by them. We also share data with the partner institutions of Make Happen (www.makehappen.org) and HEAT (https://heat.ac.uk). If relevant, we may also provide your school/college with details of which activities you have attended over the course of an academic year. In the case of administering bursaries, your details will be shared with the University of Essex finance department.

HESA and HEAT may share your data as detailed in their own privacy notices, which are accessible at the links provided:

  • Privacy notice for HEAT
  • Privacy notice for HESA

Data will only be shared using secure data transfer methods and stored by us and our partners on secure systems. We and our partners will not use your personal data in any way that would affect you individually.

Any data released into the public domain by Make Happen or third parties will only appear in aggregate form and will be fully anonymised to prevent identification at an individual level.

How long do we keep your data for?

If you are under 21 years old at the time you first engage with Make Happen:

  • Your data will be retained in HEAT and CRM for 15 years after graduation or until 30 years of age (whichever comes first).

If you are over 21 years old at the time you first engage with Make Happen:

  • Your data will be retained in HEAT and CRM for 15 years after graduation or for 10 years after your first activity with us (whichever comes first).

After this time, data will be anonymised in bulk at the beginning of the next academic year. This retention policy will be reviewed each year in line with the HEAT retention policy to ensure it remains fit for purpose and compliant with relevant legislation

This is so we can look at the long-term impact of Make Happen activities to assess whether young people who take part are any more likely to progress to Higher Education. It is also to comply with the requirements that the OfS has set out for the Uni Connect programme.

Data recorded in HEAT will be held securely for the duration of the longitudinal programme and anonymised according to anonymisation protocols as appropriate by the HEAT Service. The Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk) has approved HEAT’s retention schedule which shows how long information is kept for. You can read the data privacy information for HEAT on their website (https://heat.ac.uk).

Back-up data stored on secure, internal cloud storage systems will be held for the duration of the academic year and deleted at the end of the Summer Term ahead of the next academic year. Anonymised data used for the purpose of reporting to the OfS will be kept for the duration of the Uni Connect programme.

How to access your data

You have the right to:

  • Access and ask for a copy of any information Make Happen holds about you.
  • Withdraw consent where that is the legal basis of our processing.
  • Rectify inaccuracies in the personal data we hold about you.
  • Object to certain processing of your data.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact the Data Protection Officer at the University of Essex. 01206 872285, dpo@essex.ac.uk.

If you have any further questions about how your data is being used, or about any of your other data rights, contact the Data Protection Officer at the University of Essex, 01206 872285, dpo@essex.ac.uk.

How Cookies are used

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences such as identifying your computer’s previous visits to a website, ascertaining the most popular features of a website or enabling an organisation to present specific information to you.

We use cookies necessary for the functioning of our website such as to carry information across pages of the site or to avoid having to re-enter information. We also use them for reporting and analytic purposes such as to track how many individual unique users we have and how often they visit our website. We collect data that lists which of our pages are most frequently visited and by which types of users and from which countries.

We use third parties, including Google Analytics, to collect anonymous user information. Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. They do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

You can turn cookies off but please remember that if you do choose to disable cookies, you may find that certain sections of our website do not work properly as some cookies are essential for the website to work. You will, however, still be able to view site content.

Complaints

If you are dissatisfied with the way the University or Make Happen has processed your personal data, or if have any questions or concerns about your data please contact dpo@essex.ac.uk. If we are not able to resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). They can be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

Changes to this notice

We keep our privacy notices under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated in June 2023.