Privacy policy - website

​​Protecting the privacy and personal data of visitors to our site is highly important to us. The following explains how the RCPCH uses any information you give to us and the way we protect your privacy and to comply with UK Data Protection legislation. This privacy statement only covers the website rcpch.ac.uk and subsidiary pages administered by the RCPCH. It does not cover links within this site to websites owned or administered by other organisations or RCPCH &Us.

Date last updated: 1 January 2021

Who we are

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) is a registered charity in England and Wales (1057744) and in Scotland (SC038299). The College is a membership organisation that provides postgraduate medical education, sets professional standards and undertakes research and policy work in the area of paediatric and child health.

This privacy notice covers the data processed on the RCPCH website only (rcpch.ac.uk) which includes your RCPCH online account.

It does not cover RCPCH &Us work. To find out more about how RCPCH &Us manages your personal data, please read the RCPCH &Us 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 

If you are located in the EEA or EU, 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 so that you can contact them directly in your home country. 

If we have processed or are processing your personal data and you are located outside of the UK, you may be entitled to exercise your rights under EU GDPR in respect of that personal data. For more details on your rights in the EU, please refer to the European Commission or the national Data Protection Authority in your country.

If you want to raise a question to RCPCH, or otherwise exercise your rights in respect of your personal data, you may do so by:

When mailing enquiries, it is essential that you mark your letters for ‘DataRep’ and not ‘RCPCH’, or your inquiry will not reach them. Please refer clearly to RCPCH in your correspondence. On receiving your correspondent, RCPCH is likely to request evidence of your identity, to ensure your personal data and information connected with it is not provided to anyone other than you.

Please note this is for GDPR/privacy queries only. If you have a general enquiry, please use the contact details above

If you have any concerns over how DataRep will handle the personal data they will require to undertake for their services, please refer to their privacy notice.

What information do we collect about you?

Most of the personal data that we receive and store via our website is provided to us directly by you. However, we sometimes also receive personal data indirectly from other sources. Below is a list of the information we process:

  • Information about your use of our site including details of your visits to pages viewed and resources accessed through the use of cookies. Such information includes traffic data, location data and other communication data. 
  • Information provided voluntarily by you, such as when you register for an online RCPCH account, update your personal or work details, or complete a webform, such as nominations with your uploaded CV, order form, room booking enquiry form and feedback.
  • Information that you provide when you communicate with us by any means.
  • Within our bye-laws, we have a requirement to maintain certain committees. Minutes and papers relating to some of these Committees are also stored in a restricted access area of the website and may contain some personal data about staff, members and officers as our legal record of these meetings.
  • We may use profiling techniques and publicly available data, which includes public databases (such as Companies House), news and other media to identify and contact members of the public who may have the means to help, attract, provide or support RCPCH's work, including fundraising, promotional and campaigning activities. We will only do this where we have carefully considered our legitimate interest and balanced it against the individual's privacy, using work and professional contact details where possible and never using solely automated means. 

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. 
  • "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.
  • "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.
  • "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

We collect and process your personal data for the following purposes:

  • To make improvements to the website and to our services (legitimate interest).
  • To administer your online account including verifying your identity, such as by collecting your date of birth (legitimate interest).
  • To process your enquiry (legitimate interest).
  • To maintain and administer college committees in line with our bye-laws (legal obligation). 
  • To administer an activity or service for which you have provided the information, such as to process your application (contractual obligation).
  • To promote equal opportunities across our activities by asking you to submit diversity monitoring data (public task). More information is available in the equality, diversity and inclusion privacy notice.  
  • When signing up to an online account, we ask you to select your contact preferences for marketing. Where you have consented, we will use your details to send you communications that are relevant to you (consent). You can change all contact preferences at any time through your online account. This does not cover RCPCH &Us communications - to manage your RCPCH &Us preferences, you can email and_us@rcpch.ac.uk.
  • If you provide feedback on our website we will only use it to develop and improve the site. We do not store feedback but anonymous analysis of feedback may be kept indefinitely (legitimate interest).

If you are a member, please see the Membership Privacy notice for further details on how we manage your data and how long we keep your data for.

Information we share

In accordance with data protection law, we have a legal duty to protect any information we collect from you. We may sometimes need to share your information with RCPCH third party suppliers who are acting on our behalf as data processors to provide certain products and services for the College. However, we will only use your information for the purpose as described and we do not pass on your details to any other government department or other third parties unless you have given us permission to do so or we have a legal requirement to do so - for example, because you have opted in to receive third party communications via your mailing preferences on your RCPCH online account.

You can change your mailing preferences at any time by logging in to your online account.

How long do we hold your information for?

We put security measures in place to ensure that your information is securely stored. We will only keep your information for as long as it is necessary to fulfil our legal or statutory obligations, our business need or because it is of historical importance, in line with the College Retention Policy. This means we may retain some of your personal information for a set period of time after our relationship with you has ended.

If your online account is inactive for more than two years and you have never been a member, we will securely delete your account.

Transferring information outside of the UK

To provide some products and services we 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 Standard Contractual Clauses, Binding Corporate Rules or Codes of Conduct.

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

Your rights

You have the following rights in relation to your data:

  • Right of access and right to have a copy of your personal data in a standard format (right to data portability).  You can ask us for a copy of the information that we hold about you and you can ask us for a copy of your data in a standard format where this is technically possible. This only applies where we are holding your information with consent or as part of a contract with you.
  • Change any factual errors or inaccuracies (right of rectification). If you have an RCPCH online account you can change and update your personal data. It is your responsibility to update us of any changes to the personal information you have provided. You can also contact us either via our contact form or contact the relevant team directly.
  • Delete your personal data (right to erasure). We cannot delete all personal data as we may have a legal obligation or because we have a requirement to retain it for a task in the public interest, but we can delete non-essential data. 
  • Restrict the use of your data (right to restriction). You can request that we deactivate your RCPCH online account or that we only store your data but undertake no further processing. However, this only applies to certain circumstances.
  • Object to processing (right to objection). You can ask that we stop using data that is not necessary for fulfilling our legal obligations. 
  • Where you have consented to us using your personal data, you can withdraw consent at any time by contacting us via our contact form or contact the relevant team directly.

Please contact the RCPCH Data Protection Officer if you wish to make a request (information.governance@rcpch.ac.uk , +44(0)20 7092 6000, 5-11 Theobalds Road, London, WC1X 8SH).

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

RCPCH handles personal and special category information in accordance with the College’s data protection policy.

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

Use of cookies and analytics

We do use cookies and analytics on this website - find out how they work and how they use your personal data.

Other websites

Our website contains links to other websites such as RCPCH ePortfolio, including CPD Diary, RCPCH Learning, iParl (for campaigns), Libsyn (for podcasts), social media and the events booking system. Some of these sites may transfer data outside of the EEA with appropriate safeguards.

This privacy policy only applies to this website (rcpch.ac.uk) and the forms held on this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies to find out how they use your data as well as cookies, tracking and analytics information.

Security

This site has security measures in place to protect the loss and alteration of information under our control. We will always manage your data in safely and securely in accordance with UK Data Protection legislation. Your data on the website will only ever be stored within the EU but it may be viewed internationally. If we upload your personal data to the website, we will only do so with your consent or where it is necessary as part of a contract or with a view to entering into a contract with you. 

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. See top of page for date last updated.

Please check these terms on a regular basis to make sure you are aware of any changes made by the RCPCH. Your continued use of this site after changes are posted indicates that you agree to these terms as updated and/or amended.

Downloads