Privacy notice for current staff
View our Data Protection Privacy Notice for Current Staff 2025/26.
What this privacy notice is about
This is a summary of how we protect your personal data and respect your privacy. This notice is for current staff, including salaried employees, hourly paid lecturers, temporary workers, external examiners and governors.
Current staff 2025/26
We collect your personal data directly from you in your job application and during your time as a member of staff.
We may also collect data from other sources including:
- third party recruitment agencies
- referees, former employers, schools, colleges and universities
- government organisations, for example HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), benefits providers and the courts
- university procedures, for example, when you connect to systems
- via video and audio recording in classrooms, online teaching sessions and other learning and teaching scenarios such as field trips and site visits
We may collect the following types of personal data about you:
Personal details
- including name, date of birth, contact details, emergency contacts, National Insurance number, nationality
Contractual employment information
- contracts and terms and conditions of employment
- expenses and travel arrangements
- promotion proceedings
- disciplinary proceedings
- grievances, dignity at work and any other formal HR procedure or investigation
- appraisal, qualifications and training
- salary and grade details
- bank or building society account details
- correspondence between the University and third parties on your behalf
- correspondence between you and the University
- investigations into breaches of terms and conditions of employment and university policies and procedures
- superannuation details
Special category data
- gender and gender identity
- health-related information relevant to your work (for example, sickness absence and details of any disclosed disability and reasonable adjustments)
- racial or ethnic origin
- religious or philosophical beliefs
- sexual orientation
- trade union membership
Criminal offence data
- unspent criminal conviction(s) and/or pending cases, cautions and bind-over orders
- for roles which require a standard or enhanced DBS certificate, unspent and spent convictions
Academic and professional data
- your name, image, voice, online avatar and/or initials via video and audio recording in classrooms, online teaching sessions and other learning and teaching scenarios. We may also collect information about you expressed by others or by yourself, which may include special category data
- research interests and undertakings plus expressions of opinion regarding staff research for quality governance and Research Excellence Framework (REF) preparation
- REF appeals handled in line with the Code of Practice
- workload, work allocation and financial information
- metrics (for example, citations relating to your research)
- module evaluation data (for teaching staff only)
- time allocations to different domains of the academic career framework
Application data
- application forms and references
- right to work in the UK documentation including visa details and copies of passports
Other data
- health and safety records (for example, accident reports)
- information generated through your use of the University’s digital systems (for example, MAC address, location and device information)
We process staff personal data for the following purposes:
To manage your employment with us
- to enable staff to undertake their roles in teaching, research and administration (for example, to process and make available teaching timetables)
- to enable use of and access to university systems and facilities
- to manage staff training and development
- to monitor absence and sickness records in accordance with HR policy
- to pay your salary and expenses into your bank account
- to assess suitability for promotion
- to process any HR investigation relevant to you
- to handle claims in relation to insurance (for example, travel insurance for student trips)
- ensuring staff safety and security including the use of CCTV
- mobile trail cameras may be present on site for wildlife and conservation monitoring. Footage that shows illegal or inappropriate human activity may be passed to relevant authorities
To comply with employment, immigration and data protection laws
- to respond to freedom of information and subject access requests
- to return data for statutory requirements and government framework exercises (for example, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), REF, Teaching Excellence Framework and Knowledge Exchange Framework)
To share research and other data
- to provide basic details for participation in the annual QS survey of academic reputation
- to record staff research activities (for example, REF activities)
To manage and lead the university
- to support and enhance student learning
- to publish a staff profile page on the University website
- to participate in quality standards and benchmarking surveys
- to control university finances and inform strategic decision making
- to publish staff directories of basic contact details
- to promote our services (for example, providing information about teaching and learning, research, knowledge exchange, events or other University activity both on and off campus)
- to monitor equality, diversity and inclusion
- to review staff and University performance
We have identified appropriate legal bases for processing information as follows:
For a contract
We process some of your information because it is necessary for the performance of a contract with you, for example, to manage your employment with us and deal with any queries you may have or to capture lectures and other learning and teaching scenarios.
Legal obligation
We process some of your information in order to comply with employment, immigration, freedom of information and data protection laws.
Public interest
We process some of your information to perform a task in the public interest, for example, to share research data.
Legitimate interests
We process some of your information because it is necessary for our legitimate interests, for example, to manage and lead the university.
Consent
We process some of your information only with your consent, for example when responding to financial reference requests.
Special category data
We have identified appropriate conditions for processing special category data as follows:
- Substantial public Interest, equality of opportunity or treatment
- Employment law, the Equality Act 2010
- Made public by the data subject
We may share some of your personal data with:
Other Kingston University employees
- employees of Kingston University only where they have legitimate need to access the data
- the Development, Alumni Relations and Events (DARE) team, to stay in contact with you after you leave. For more information about how your personal data is used by DARE, please see the Privacy Notice for Alumni, Donors and Friends on the website under policies and regulations and Information regulations
Other Higher Education and related bodies
- bodies funding the research and other academic activities you are involved in plus collaborators in those activities as required
- other education and research institutions, for example, digital information relating to Eduroam connections or Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) surveys. For more information about how UCEA process your personal information, please see the UCEA Privacy Notice
- Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs), for accreditation purposes
- UK Research and Innovation, Advance HE and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), which is now part of JISC. For more information about how HESA process your personal information, please see the HESA Collection Notices
- selected external assessors of research quality
Government organisations
- HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
- UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI)
Other third parties
- benefits providers
- recipients of references (for example, prospective employers, financial institutions and tenancy agencies)
- third party suppliers (for example, our travel booking partner, our occupational health service provider, providers of software-as-a-service for university processes)
- trade unions
- internal and external auditors
- the police and other law enforcement agencies, for the prevention and detection of crime
In all cases access will be restricted to individuals with the appropriate permissions and duty of confidentiality.
We keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary. Employment contract, payroll and pension data will generally be retained after the end of employment for the current tax year plus 6 years.
For full details you can access the University retention schedule on our website at policies and regulations.
Data will be anonymised or securely destroyed at the end of its retention period.
Under the GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the following rights:
- to access the personal data we hold about you
- to require us to correct the personal data we hold about you
- to require us to erase your personal data
- to require us to restrict our data processing activities (and, where our processing is based on your consent, you may withdraw that consent, without affecting the lawfulness of our processing based on consent before its withdrawal)
- to receive your personal data, which you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and the right to transmit that data to another controller
- to object to any of our particular processing activities where you feel this has a disproportionate impact on your rights
- to not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which has a legal effect on you
Please note that the above rights are not absolute and we may be entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.
When considering your personal data, staff should ensure the information provided to the University remains accurate and up to date. You should inform the University as soon as possible if details, such as your address, change. You can make changes to your personal details online via Unified.
When handling other people’s personal data, staff are required to maintain confidentiality and abide by the GDPR principles. These responsibilities are set out in our Data Protection Policy on our website under policies and regulations and information regulations.
If you have any queries about this privacy notice or how we process your personal data, or you wish to request access to the personal data we hold about you, please speak to your line manager or a member of HR first. If you then wish to exercise your rights as a data subject, please use the Data Subject Request form on our website under policies and regulations.
If you have further questions, please email [email protected].
If you are not satisfied, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner. You can find out more about your rights under data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner's Office website.
Your copy of the policy
Download the 2025/26 version
Download the 2024/25 version
Changes to this privacy notice
This privacy notice will be updated on an annual basis. If we make any significant changes in the way we treat your personal information we will make this clear on the Kingston University website or by contacting you directly.
Kingston University is the data controller of your personal data and is subject to data protection legislation (the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018, Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR)). We are listed on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) register of fee payers.
You can find privacy notices and other relevant policies on our website under policies and regulations.