Membership Privacy Notice

Our contact details

Name: Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH)
Address: 5-11 Theobalds Road, London, WC1X 8SH
Phone Number: +44 (0)20 7092 6000
E-mail: 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 

The College does not have an office outside the UK. To ensure the data rights of residents of the EEA and Switzerland, we have a dedicated page for EEA and Swiss residents, where you can find the in-country contact details for DataRep, who we have appointed as our Data Protection Representative in the European Union for the purposes of EU GDPR so that you can contact them directly in your home country.

How will we use the information we collect about you?

Most of the data we collect will come directly from you, from your membership application and within the course of your business with the College.  However, if you are nominated for an honorary fellowship of the RCPCH, your data will be sourced from your nominator. To find out more about how we use your personal data for this process, see the Awards privacy notice.  We will also use your data to communicate with you for various reasons as well as to occasionally send you surveys.  

The College undertakes to look after your data with care and in accordance with UK data protection legislation which is currently UKGDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in conjunction with the Data Protection Act 2018.

Under GDPR, we are required to have a legal basis for processing your personal data. 

Our legal basis for processing your data is:

• "Contractual obligation" - where it is necessary for performance of a contract with you or with a view to entering into a contract with you for your membership
• "Legitimate interest" - where necessary in our legitimate interests and we have balanced our legitimate interests against your right to privacy
• "Consent" - Where we have your informed consent
• "Substantial Public Interest"  -Where there is a substantial public interest with a clear basis in law (special category data) 
• "Public Task" - where we need to process your personal data to carry out a task in the public interest

As part of our contract with you, we will process your personal data for the following purposes:

• To process your application for membership and, if you are successful, to administer your membership subscription. This will include emailing you with annual membership renewal and fee reminders; sharing information across RCPCH departments to improve our communications and services; or to verify qualifications and to maintain and administer our membership database. We may also contact you to verify your membership status. 
• To send you College notices by postal address and/or email address as required by College bylaw 17.1 (available on our Governance page). This includes notification about our Annual General Meeting.
• If you are a UK Junior member, we will use your exam results to enable us to automatically upgrade you to Ordinary membership once you become eligible, in line with the College bylaws (available on our Governance page). We will of course write to you to let you know about the change in membership.

As part of your membership subscription we will also use your information to provide you with a number of benefits. This includes sending you our member magazine Milestones, providing you with information about our annual RCPCH Conference and exhibition and sending you College and professional updates which may include information about joint initiatives or organisations we are partnering with where we are supervising or project managing the project. We will also use your details to send you Archive of Disease in Childhood (where eligible). If you do not want to receive this journal, please contact the Member Services on membership@rcpch.ac.uk. You can opt out of any of these benefits by changing your mailing preferences on your online account. Please be aware that if you decide to opt out of these, you will stop receiving some of the benefits we offer as part of your membership. 
If you do not provide us with your personal data for these purposes, we may be unable to offer you membership of the College or you may not receive all of the benefits of membership.

We will collect and use your personal information where this is necessary in our legitimate interest for the following purposes:

• If you apply to be a member of an RCPCH committee, a member of Council, or are a member of one of our working groups we will use your personal data to process your application and for the purposes of administering the committee/working group and contacting you about committee/working group/Council business. For some roles, there is a requirement to have your chosen email address made publicly available on the RCPCH website. Where this is applicable, this will be detailed in the role description. If the applicant is unable to provide this, it may affect the eligibility of the applicant.
• If you undertake a volunteer role for the college, we will process your personal data where it is in our legitimate interest to do so, in connection with the role. If you are a non-member volunteering for the college, we will only collect and process your personal data where it is necessary in our legitimate interest to provide you with and support the administration of the role. 

We will collect and use your special category data where there is a substantial public interest to ensure equality of treatment and opportunity for the following purposes:

We collect equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) data to ensure compliance with the Equality Act 2010 and monitor and promote equal opportunities in paediatrics. We ask all members, examiners, candidates and those representing the College (such as officers and committee members) to provide EDI data, although it is not a requirement to submit these details. More information is available in the equality, diversity and inclusion privacy notice. 

In the execution of a public task, we will share the details of newly qualified clinicians, from the Certification of Completion of Training list, with the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (BPSU) to enable them to identify and contact relevant clinicians with information regarding the Report Card programme.  

Communications

We will also use your data in the following ways to communicate with you. You can opt out of receiving any of these at any time by updating your preferences on your online account. 

• We will update you about our audit work if you are participating in a particular audit, including clinical audits and the workforce census.
• We will send you communications (usually by email) to keep you up to date with our training and education activities and to let you know about other membership types you are eligible for, how to apply and the benefits.
• We will also send you RCPCH surveys about child health and the College's work and activities so that we can use the feedback to research how we can improve the way we support our members and the profession.
• We will send members our members survey so that we can feed this into our strategy and planning, to improve the membership service we offer. 

Where we are relying on legitimate interests, we will always balance our legitimate interests against your rights as an individual and make sure we only use personal information in a way or for a purpose that you would reasonably expect in accordance with this notice and that does not intrude on your privacy or previously expressed marketing preferences.

Where you have provided us with your specific consent (opted in), we will send you direct marketing communications (usually by email) relating to the field of Paediatrics and Child Health and also information about how you can support the College further. This includes activities such as CPD (continuing professional development), volunteering opportunities and media articles. We may also communicate with you on behalf of other organisations where you have opted in to receive third party communications.

If you have opted in (via your online account), we will also send you SMS (text message) alerts if we need to relay an urgent message to you.

You can view and update your preferences at any time on your online account to opt into or out of communications. 

What data do we collect?

Membership

Most of the personal data we process is provided directly by you. We will collect the minimal data required to administer your membership, provide you with member benefits, and contact you as necessary according to the contact preferences you select. 

We may collect additional data to provide your member benefits or administer your volunteering or participation in committees.

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

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, although "Prefer not to say" is an option on all these questions.

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.

Criminal offence data

We will only ask for criminal offence data (data relating to criminal convictions and offences, or related security measures) where this may restrict registering for membership, such as if there are any ongoing or completed regulatory action or criminal proceedings. We do not ask applicants resident in the UK to disclose convictions deemed as spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

Only relevant convictions will be taken into account and disclosure will not necessarily be a bar to membership application. We will only process your criminal data where we have consent or where it is necessary for the College functions in ensuring the public is protected by ensuring only fit and proper persons are members.
To find out more details about how we comply with UK Data Protection Legislation when processing criminal conviction data, please read our data protection and confidentiality policy (section 10).

Transferring Information outside of the UK

To provide some products and services we, or our data processors, may transfer and process information in countries outside of the UK. Some of these countries, such as those in the EEA, will have an officially recognised equivalent level of protection to the UK (adequacy decision). A list of these countries can be found via the ICO website. Where there is no adequacy decision, we will take all reasonable steps necessary to ensure that your information is protected by having in place a recognised safeguard with our partners and suppliers, such as regulatory approved UK International Transfer Agreements, Binding Corporate Rules or Codes of Conduct. Otherwise we will ask for your explicit consent. 
 
To find out more about any specific uses of information in countries outside of the UK, or for further information about the safeguards that we have put in place, please contact the RCPCH Data Protection Officer: information.governance@rcpch.ac.uk.

Information we share

We will share information internally between relevant internal departments, where necessary to fulfil our activities or to support our work (contractual obligation). If your membership is paid for by your employer as part of an arrangement with the College, we will share information about the progress of your application status with them. 

If another Royal Medical College asks us to verify your RCPCH qualification or membership we will verify this along with date of conferment if requested as it is within our legitimate interests to do so to protect the reputation of the College.

If another third party, such as a potential employer, asks us to verify your RCPCH qualification or membership we will follow our Verification of Membership and Examinations process. 

We will also share information with third parties where there is a statutory requirement or legal obligation to do so. This may include but is not limited to the General Medical Council, postgraduate deaneries and overseas equivalents, Department of Health, NHS, examination centres or to prevent fraudulent activity.

We will share details of retiring members with the BPSU to enable them to maintain the accuracy of their contact database.

We will share information with appropriate third parties where it is in our legitimate interest to improve clinical practice, medical training and our services and where it does not intrude on your privacy. We will always anonymise this data where possible. We may also share your data with a trusted partner organisation (if applicable) where it is necessary for us to be able to deliver member benefits (such as providing the Archives of Disease and Childhood journal). 

How long will we keep your information for?

We regularly review what information we hold about you and delete it in line with College Retention Schedules. When your membership expires we will retain your file for six years from the end of your membership in line with the Limitations Act 1980 and our College Retention Policy.

We currently store a core membership record on our database with details about you such as contact details and preferences, payment details, qualifications and work details. Some of this information, such as name, biographies and work history will be kept for the College Archives if it is of historical interest. We are currently developing a process to be able to review and securely and safely delete irrelevant information. Find out more about the College archive.

Currently, if your application is unsuccessful, we will retain a copy of the letter on your file so that it can be referred to if there are any further applications or concerns about the application in future. If you are then successful, your information will be incorporated into your membership file.
 

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).

Where you have consented to us using your personal data, you can withdraw consent at any time by contacting membership@rcpch.ac.uk or by phone at 020 7092 6000 (ask for Member Services).

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 dedicated EEA and Swiss Rep page.

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

How to contact us or complain

If you are unhappy with how we are using your personal data, you should contact us in the first instance so that we can understand and try to resolve your concern. If we can't resolve the issue you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). The ICO is the UK's independent body set up to uphold information rights. 

The ICO’s address:            
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk
If you have any questions about our privacy policy, the information we hold about you or you wish to make a complaint, please send an email to: information.governance@rcpch.ac.uk 

Further information

If you want to find out more about how we process your information in relation to specific systems or processes that we manage, please read the appropriate privacy notice. Below are links to privacy notices for some of our main processes:

RCPCH Learning

RCPCH examinations (see Appendix A)

RCPCH ePortfolio (Kaizen)

Award nominations

To find out more about how we process your personal data generally on our website, view the RCPCH website privacy notice

Last updated 27 November 2025