This notice provides information which is specific to our use of your personal data collected within The Access Platform. Please do read this notice to understand our use of your information and if you have any questions please contact us using the contact details provided below.

Who are we?

GMH, “we”, “our” and “us” refers to the Greater Manchester Higher; a group of universities and colleges across Greater Manchester that run a range of activities for young people to help them understand the benefits of higher education and to help increase the number of students who choose to progress onto higher education.

We are led by Manchester Metropolitan University; its members include other educational institutions in the Greater Manchester area, and we form part of the Office for Students (OfS) UniConnect project.

Why do we need your information?

We collect your personal data within The Access Platform in order to:

• Connect you with one of our GMH ambassadors or staff members (peer-to-peer chat) so we can answer and respond to your specific question or enquiry.
• In answering your enquiry, our ambassadors or staff members will promote the benefits, services and events offered by GMH.
• If you provide us with your consent to send you further information about GM Higher events, programmes and services you will be added to our communication list. You can unsubscribe from our communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe links or emailing gmhigher@mmu.ac.uk
• Our ambassadors or staff members will also likely ask you whether you would like to participate in our Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) activity, for further information please see: https://heat.ac.uk/. Please note, this is a separate data collection process and full privacy notice information will be provided to you if you would like to assist us with this activity.

To fulfil these purposes, we will collect: your name and e-mail address. You may also provide us with your nationality. This is mandatory to set up an account with The Access Platform and will enable us to connect you to an ambassador or staff member with relevant knowledge and experience to assist you. We may ask you additional questions which are optional, but will help us in monitoring your involvement in our activities; if you do provide this additional information,  we will process your personal data in accordance with the ‘legitimate interests’ lawful basis. We process your nationality information if you consent and provide us with this information.

Disclosures

In order to provide this peer-to-peer chat experience we utilise the services of the Access Platform as per an agreed contract. For further information about this platform and how they process your personal data please see: https://legal.theaccessplatform.com/privacy/privacy-notice

Retention

We will retain your personal data in relation to this activity for a period of three years after the end of the UniConnect programme.

Contact information

For further information about our use of The Access Platform please contact gmhigher@mmu.ac.uk in the first instance. Our Data Protection Officer can also be contacted using the dataprotection@mmu.ac.uk e-mail address.

Further information about data protection and the data subject rights can be found by searching for ‘data protection’ on the Manchester Metropolitan University’s website. To exercise any of your data subject rights or to complain about the processing please write to our DPO.

This privacy information is provided in addition to the information set out within our main GM Higher Privacy Notice. For further information about GM Higher please see this notice.

You also have the right of complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO can be contacted using the casework@ico.org.uk e-mail address.