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Information charter

HEFCE, with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and partner organisations, has signed up to the following shared principles for handling your information.

Your privacy is important to us. We may need to handle personal information about you so that we can provide services for you. This charter is intended to give you confidence in the security of that information by explaining what we do with it.

If we ask you for personal information, we promise:

  • to tell you why we need it
  • to only ask for what we need
  • to look after it and make sure it's only accessible to those with a genuine need to see it
  • to let you know where we have shared your information with other organisations so that we can improve our services - and to give you the opportunity to say no to this where we can
  • to make sure we don't keep it longer than necessary
  • not to make your personal information available for commercial use without your permission.

In return, we ask you to:

  • give us accurate information
  • tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address.

This helps us to keep your information reliable and up to date.

You can get more details on:

  • how to find out what information we hold about you and how to ask us to correct any mistakes
  • agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information
  • circumstances where we can pass on your personal information without telling you (for example, to prevent and detect crime, to produce anonymised statistics, or where we are required to do so by a relevant authority)
  • our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete your personal information
  • how we check the information we hold is accurate and up to date
  • how to make a complaint about how we hold or use your information.

To learn more about requesting information in any of these areas, see our guidance on Data Protection Act requests.

When we ask you for information, we will keep to the law, including the Data Protection Act 1998. For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data-sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner at: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, WILMSLOW, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, tel 08456 306060 or 01625 545745, fax 01625 524510, web-site www.ico.gov.uk.

Last updated 18 August 2008