About our service

This privacy notice is applicable to any individuals (Alumni) who have studied at Canterbury Christ Church University.

The University collects and processes personal data relating to Alumni to manage the affiliation with the University.

Information we collect about you

The University collects and processes a range of information about you. This may include:

Your contact details (address, email and telephone where known).
Your title and full names. We also record any previous marital names and date of birth as we need these to help identify you definitively.
The qualification you obtained.

The University will also record within Salesforce any basic details about your employment history (your job titles and employers) that you give to us. This is not transferred from the University’s student record system.

We also record your mailing preferences, details of any voluntary support you have given to the University (for example helping at Open Days, providing a testimonial, or interviewing students). We track invites that we send you and your attendance at any University events.

The University will also obtain and store information about you from third party emailing systems to help us understand which communications are relevant to you. This includes tracking whether you have opened the emails we have sent to you and which links you clicked on.

From time to time, alumni may send us photographic images of group cohorts for us to use in publicity materials and/or on the web The University also captures and stores photographs of alumni at events it organises. To find out more about this, see our separate Photography and Videography Privacy Notice.

Legal basis for the processing of your data

Your data is held by the University securely and used in compliance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulations, and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

We process information about you under the following legal bases:

Legal obligation

Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)

If you are qualifying from a degree level programme, the University has a statutory obligation to retain your data for 15 months after you qualify in order to supply this information to Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).

HESA conduct a nationwide survey on behalf of Government to find out the employment destinations of all university leavers. Read about the way in which HESA processes your data in its collection notice.

It is also necessary for the University to keep your data in order to respond to requests and instructions, made by you or with your agreement, with regards to:

confirming that you studied at the University
providing you with references for work or further study
providing you with duplicate transcripts

Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR)

This is also essential for us in order to allow Gradintelligence (Digital credentials) to contact you in order to provide your Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) to you if your HEAR is being released to you close to the time or after the point at which your University Computing Account has been closed. We will only share your personal email address and phone number (for account recovery) with Gradintelligence. If you need to update your email address and/or phone number or would like to opt-out please scroll down below for more information on how to do so.

Due diligence regarding donations

We use publicly available sources to conduct due diligence on donors in line with the Our Gift Acceptance Policy, the Financial Procedure for the Acceptance of Donations including Due Diligence and Anti Money Laundering Procedure.

We do this to ensure the integrity of the donation before acceptance.

The legislation relating to processing data under this lawful basis can be found in UK GDPR, Article 6(1)(c):

(c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.”

Legitimate interest

It is in the University’s legitimate interest to maintain contact with its former students.

Your contact details may be used by Canterbury Church University for the Direct Marketing purposes. We may send you any of the following, either by post or electronic means (email, text/SMS, apps or social media messaging):

Alumni magazines/newsletters
Personalised invitations to specific events
Information about:
- University events open to the general public and alumni specific events such as reunions and alumni awards
- New courses and professional development opportunities which may be of interest to you
- Job vacancies that may be of interest to you
- Opportunities to support the University in a range of voluntary and Fundraising activities
- Discounts on postgraduate study and other services and benefits exclusively available to former students of CCCU.

If you would like to find out more about this, see our Direct Marketing Privacy Notice.

The legislation relating to processing data under this lawful basis can be found in UK GDPR, Article 6(1)(f):

(f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.”

The University may also collect information about you through nominations to the Alumni Awards. If the nominator, with your permission, shares your data with the University, the University relies on UK GDPR, Article 6 legitimate interest and Article 9(2)(e) processing relates to personal data which are manifestly made public by the data subject; for the rare instances where some special category data is disclosed.

Public task

As a fundraising organisation, we conduct internal profiling and analysis. We may engage specialist agencies such as Prospecting for Gold to gather information about you from publicly available sources, for example, Companies House, the Electoral Register, company websites, ‘rich lists’, social networks such as LinkedIn, political and property registers and news archives.

We may also conduct screening to fast-track analysis using our trusted third-party partners.

This helps us understand more about you so we can focus our conversations about fundraising and volunteering and ensure that we provide you with the most appropriate experience as a donor or potential donor.

The legislation relating to processing data under this lawful basis can be found in UK GDPR, Article 6(1)(e):

(e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.”

How will your data be shared?

Information about you may be shared with third party data processors for the purpose of sending you email or postal communications regarding alumni services and activities.

Third party processors are bound by confidentiality agreements to keep your data safe and to use it only for the purpose(s) for which it is provided by the University.

In order to process the free professional headshots on offer to graduating students at the Grad Fest celebrations 2024, please note we work with two external providers. You can read their privacy notices here: Ede’s & Ravenscroft, who work with Fotogoto and Jack Peilow Photography. Please note this is an optional service.

How does the University protect your data?

The University takes the security of your data seriously. The University has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by its employees in the performance of their duties.

Where the University engages third parties to process personal data on its behalf, they do so on the basis of written instructions, are under a duty of confidentiality and are obliged to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the security of data.

Keeping your details up to date and opting out

If you would like to advise us of a change to your contact details, withdraw your consent to receiving Direct Marketing or object to the processing of your personal data, you can do this by:

using our online update form
emailing us at alumni@canterbury.ac.uk
writing to us at Alumni Relations Team, Canterbury Christ Church University, Augustine House, Canterbury, CT1 2YA

Your contact details will be updated on the Salesforce database as quickly as possible and no later than 1 month after receipt.

If you withdraw your consent for us to use your data for marketing purposes, we will stop sending you communications as soon as we have processed your request.

How long will we hold your data

How long we keep your personal information depends on our purpose for using the information and our legal obligations.

To find out more about this, see our Student Retention Schedule.

The Data Controller and further information

Canterbury Christ Church University is the Data Controller for this personal data.

Please click the link below to access further information regarding: