GDPR privacy statement – General

Who we are

This is the privacy statement of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and its subsidiary company, Fifteen Ninety Nine Limited. References to "we", "our" and "us" should be construed accordingly.

How we use your personal information

This privacy statement explains how we collect and use personal information about you.

In general terms, we collect and use personal information to:

deliver our services to you and meet our legal responsibilities
verify your identity where this is required
contact you by post, email or telephone
understand your needs and how they may be met
maintain our records
process financial transactions, including subscriptions, VAT, fees etc.
update you on our activities or events that may interest you, including information about and fundraising for the College's charitable activities, such as our Hope Foundation
prevent and detect crime, fraud or corruption

More specifically, the table below explains how we use your personal information and the reasons that we rely on in doing so. Where these reasons include legitimate interests, we explain what these legitimate interests are.

What we use your information for	Our reasons	Our legitimate interests
To verify your identity where this is required	Contractual performance Legitimate interests Legal obligations	Complying with laws and regulations that apply to us
To provide services for the benefit of our membership. Maintaining a membership database. Corresponding with members in respect of their ongoing membership	Contractual performance Legitimate interests Legal obligations	To fulfil our functions under the Royal Charter and Acts of Parliament under which we are established To maintain up to date records concerning our members and their preferences
To promote professional standards and training	Contractual performance Legitimate interests	To fulfil our functions under the Royal Charter and Acts of parliament under which we are established To promote the interests of our members and the professions To protect the public
To comply with legal or regulatory requirements	Legal obligations Legitimate interests	To be efficient about how we comply with our legal duties To protect our reputation
To exercise our rights set out in contracts and agreements	Contractual performance Legitimate interests	Being efficient about how we fulfil our legal and contractual duties
To process financial transactions To run our affairs in an efficient and proper way. This includes managing our financial position, business capability, planning, communications, corporate governance and audit	Legitimate interests Legal obligations	Being efficient about how we fulfil our legal duties Complying with our constitution and our obligations as a charity Complying with regulations that apply to us
Fundraise to support our charitable work by seeking donations and other financial support	Fundraise to support our charitable work by seeking donations and other financial support	Fundraise to support our charitable work by seeking donations and other financial support
To send marketing communications and fundraising materials to you	Consent
For other marketing and business development activities, including to promote events and activities that we organise or are involved with	Consent Legitimate interests	To promote activities that further our interests
To provide you with information that you may ask for, including newsletters and updates on our campaigns	Consent Legitimate interests	To provide you with information that you may ask for, including newsletters and updates on our campaigns
For procurement purposes, including supplier due diligence, background checks and the assessing of tenders	For procurement purposes, including supplier due diligence, background checks and the assessing of tenders	For procurement purposes, including supplier due diligence, background checks and the assessing of tenders
To carry out credit checks	Legitimate interests	To carry out credit checks to manage credit risk
To prevent crime and for public safety, including through the use of CCTV	To prevent crime and for public safety, including through the use of CCTV	To prevent crime and for public safety, including through the use of CCTV Reporting criminality or the suspicion of criminality for the wider benefit of society
To register you as a visitor when you visit our premises and ensure your health and safety when you are on our premises	Legal obligations Vital interests Legitimate interests	Prevention of crime and public safety (including the safety of our own employees) Security of our premises Incident/breach reporting, management and investigation To ensure your health and safety whilst on our premises

The personal information we hold about you

We will only collect information about you to fulfil the purposes stated above. We will only collect your information where we have a clear purpose for doing so.

The information we may hold in our databases is as follows:

Types of personal information	Description
ID	Name, address, date of birth.
Contact	Email address, telephone numbers.
Financial	Bank details and details from credit checks.
Professional	Details about your place of work, educational history with the College, courses/events you may have attended, examination results for examinations you have sat at the College.
Contractual	Details about payments to and from and other details about services you purchase from us .
Consents	Any permissions, consents or preferences that you give us
Other	Photographic imagery of our events, including images of individuals participants at the events In some circumstances it may be necessary for us to hold the following: your spouse/partner's details dietary requirements for you or your spouse/partner Regulatory information, e.g. GMC/GDC numbers
Special types of personal information	Some types of personal information are defined as special. We will only collect and use these types of data if you have consented to providing it: Racial or ethnic origin Religious or philosophical beliefs Gender Sexual orientation Disability Age

Where we collect your personal information from

Information we hold about you will be supplied by you directly, or may be passed to us by another Royal College where there is an intercollegiate agreement to provide examination or membership services, or be passed to us by another organisation with whom we have a data sharing agreement.

Who we share your information with

We will not share your information with third parties unless:

It is necessary in order to provide our services to you
It is with a public body for the lawful purpose of performing a public task
For other purposes we have informed you about

Data Retention

We have a data retention schedule and personal information will not be kept longer than is necessary for its purpose. Different categories of personal information will be retained for different periods of time. Personal information will be destroyed or erased from our systems when it is no longer required.

We have a duty to retain information including personal information relating to data users and data subjects, for a period of time following their departure/cessation of engagement with us, mainly for statutory or legal reasons, but also for other purposes such as being able to provide references, or for financial reasons, for example relating to pensions and taxation.

We may keep personal information stored for longer periods insofar as the data will be processed solely for archiving purposes in the public interest, or scientific, historical, or statistical purposes but such data is subject to the implementation of appropriate safeguards.

Using our website

When someone visits rcpsg.ac.uk we use third party services, Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and HotJar, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitors' behaviour patterns, monitor the effectiveness of ads for purposes of statistics and tracks conversions that can be attributed to ads on Facebook. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow third parties to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Use of cookies by us - you can read more about how we use cookies on our Cookie Policy page.

Search engine

Our website search and decision notice search is powered by SiteSearch360. Search queries and results are logged anonymously to help us improve our website and search functionality. No user-specific data is collected by either us or any third party.

Security and performance

Activity from IP addresses is logged for security and fault finding purposes. We use a third party security service, however, no data is directly shared with this company.

Automated decisions

Marking of our multiple choice examinations is carried out electronically by scanner. This process is anonymised.

Your rights

Access to your information – You have the right to request a copy of the personal information about you that we hold.

Correcting your information – We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate, complete and up to date and you may ask us to correct any personal information about you that you believe does not meet these standards.

Deletion of your information – You have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you where:

You consider that we no longer require the information for the purposes for which it was obtained
We are using that information with your consent and you have withdrawn your consent – see Withdrawing consent to using your information below
You have validly objected to our use of your personal information – see Objecting to how we may use your information below
Our use of your personal information is contrary to law or our other legal obligations.

Objecting to how we may use your information – You have the right at any time to require us to stop using your personal information for direct marketing purposes. In addition, where we use your personal information to perform tasks carried out in the public interest then, if you ask us to, we will stop using that personal information unless there are overriding legitimate grounds to continue.

Restricting how we may use your information – in some cases, you may ask us to restrict how we use your personal information. This right might apply, for example, where we are checking the accuracy of personal information about you that we hold or assessing the validity of any objection you have made to our use of your information. The right might also apply where this is no longer a basis for using your personal information but you don't want us to delete the data. Where this right to validly exercised, we may only use the relevant personal information with your consent, for legal claims or where there are other public interest grounds to do so.

Automated processing – if we use your personal information on an automated basis to make decisions which significantly affect you, you have the right to ask that the decision be reviewed by an individual to whom you may make representations and contest the decision. This right only applies where we use your information with your consent or as part of a contractual relationship with you.

Withdrawing consent using your information – Where we use your personal information with your consent you may withdraw that consent at any time and we will stop using your personal information for the purpose(s) for which consent was given.

Please contact us in any of the ways set out in the Contact information and further advice section if you wish to exercise any of these rights.

Changes to our privacy statement

We keep this privacy statement under regular review and will place any updates on this website. Paper copies of the privacy statement may also be obtained by emailing the College Data Protection Officer at gdpr@rcpsg.ac.uk, or in writing to the address below.

This privacy statement was last updated on 16 November 2021.

Contact information and further advice

Finance Director
232/242 St Vincent Street
Glasgow
G2 5RJ
0141 221 6072
gdpr@rcpsg.ac.uk

Complaints

We seek to resolve directly all complaints about how we handle personal information but you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office.

Contact details are:

ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/
0303 123 1113