Privacy notice - equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)

Our contact details

If you are a located in the UK, please contact RCPCH if you wish to make a request or if you have a general enquiry.

Name: Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH)

Address: 5-11 Theobalds Road, London, WC1X 8SH 

Phone number: +44 (0)20 7092 6000

Email: Data Protection Officer (for privacy/data protection enquiries only): information.governance@rcpch.ac.uk

General enquiries can be sent via our contact form or contact the relevant team directly.

Our EEA representative

If you are located in the EEA (European Economic Area) or EU (European Union), you can contact DataRep if you wish to make a request under EU GDPR.

As we sometimes process personal data of individuals in the EU and EEA area, in either the role of ‘data controller’ or ‘data processor’, we have appointed DataRep as our Data Protection Representative in the European Union for the purposes of EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) so that you can contact them directly in your home country.

For more information, and the full list of offices, please visit our EEA and Swiss Rep page.

What information do we collect about you?

RCPCH is committed to ensuring equal opportunities across all its activities. We ask all members, examiners, exam candidates and those representing the College (such as volunteers, officers and committee members) to provide equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) data through our diversity form (under login), although it is not a requirement to submit these details. 

Diversity monitoring data is provided to us directly by you where you choose to provide it. Diversity monitoring data is special category data under the UK GDPR and includes information regarding:

• ethnicity
• health data including information about disability
• sexuality and gender identification, including reassignment
• religious beliefs.

Why do we collect this information?

Data protection law requires that we have one or more of the following lawful bases to process your information:

• “Consent” – we may ask for your consent to process your personal data. You can withdraw consent at any time. 
• “Contractual Obligation” – where we need to process your personal data either to take steps to enter into a contract with you or to fulfil a contract we already have with you. 
• “Legal Obligation” – where we are required to process your personal data by law or to fulfil a statutory obligation.
• “Vital Interest” – where the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life. 
• “Public Task” – where the processing is necessary for us to perform a task in the public interest, and it has a clear basis in law. 
• “Legitimate Interest” – where we have assessed that the benefits of us processing your data are legitimate and not outweighed by your interests or legal rights. 

We collect diversity monitoring data as it is in the public interest for us to ensure compliance with the Equality Act 2010 and monitor and promote equal opportunities in paediatrics. 

As diversity monitoring data is special category data, we also require an additional legal basis for processing. We process diversity monitoring data under Article 9 of the UK GDPR for reasons of substantial public interest to ensure compliance with the Equality Act 2010 and Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 to promote and maintain equality in paediatrics. 

It is not a requirement to submit diversity monitoring data. 

How we use your information

We use the diversity monitoring data shared by members to compare representation and assess our impact on EDI. Data are anonymised, reviewed internally within the College as a reporting tool, with summary reports shared publicly as part of our commitment to accountability. 

Your anonymised data may be used for the following purposes within the College to:     

• compare diversity monitoring data of volunteers and to monitor whether our volunteer cohort reflects the breadth and diversity of our membership
• monitor and report on performance of exam candidates across the protected characteristics
• monitor and report of progression of trainees, eg ARCP outcomes, across the protected characteristics
• feed into the workforce census and AAC process to support campaigning, influencing, workforce planning and evaluation of work such as retention initiatives; 
• ensure our examiner cohort reflects the breadth and diversity of our membership
• report on diversity across all awards, and monitor diversity within our events, media spokespeople and panel members and ensure it reflects our membership.

Who might we share your information with?

The information you provide is stored as part of your membership record with restricted access and used for equal opportunities monitoring, which may include publishing anonymised research. No information that could identify you will be published.

We may share your data with the following for the following purposes:

• General Medical Council (GMC) and Health Education England in an anonymised format to comply with legal and regulatory responsibilities, including monitoring under the Equality Act 2010
• NHS England for the Workforce Race Equality Standard data in an anonymised format to share information on the ethnicity of Royal College members, Fellows and Council members
• We may share anonymised data with organisations where it is in our legitimate interest to enable those organisations to provide additional support to paediatricians and to improve paediatrics as a whole.  This may include special category data where we have determined that the purpose is to promote equality of opportunity in the workforce.

Your personal data will not be transferred outside of the UK. We do not use your personal data to make automated decisions or undertake profiling about you.

How long do we hold your information for?

We regularly review what information we hold about you and delete it in line with College Retention Schedules. We will retain EDI data for as long as you choose to provide it or for as long as your online account is active. Please see our website privacy policy for information about online accounts, or if you are a member, you can see the membership privacy policy for more information about how long your account is retained.

We will only retain your information for as long as you choose to provide it or for as long as necessary to fulfil our legal or statutory obligations, our business need or because it is of historical importance. This means that we may retain some of your personal information for a set period of time after our relationship with you has ended.

It is not a requirement to provide EDI data and you can update your EDI data at any time by completing the webform; there is no limit to how many times you can submit the form.

Understanding GDPR and your data rights

To help you understand more about the information in this and all our privacy notices, see our page, Understanding GDPR and your data rights. This explains common words and phrases used in our privacy notices, describes our use of artificial intelligence (AI) and details the rights you have in relation to the processing of your personal data under UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

Please contact the RCPCH Data Protection Officer if you wish to make a request, contact details are at the top of this privacy policy.

If you are located in the EU/EEA, wish to make a request, you can contact our EEA Representative, contact details are on our EEA and Swiss representatives page.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

How to make a complaint

If you are unhappy with how we are using your personal data or how we have dealt with a rights request, you should contact us in the first instance so that we can understand and try to resolve your concern. If you would like to make a complaint, please follow our data protection complaints process. If you remain dissatisfied, you can complain to the Information Commission. 

Changes to this privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under review, and we will place any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on 18 May 2026.