Future U PRIVACY POLICY 2025
What is Future U and why am I attending this event?
What is Future U and why am I attending this event? Future U is a programme funded by a government body called the Office for Students (OfS), which regulates universities. The OfS has lots of functions, one of which is promoting widening participation in higher education (HE). The Future U project is run through a partnership between many different universities and colleges. All the Future U partners work together as part of the project and are all jointly responsible for the Future U activities. For more details and to see which universities and colleges make up Future U, please visit the Future U website: lancashirefutureu.org.uk. The aim of Future U is to give you information and guidance about different education opportunities to help you make decisions about your future. As part of this project, we work with school and college students to make sure you have fair and impartial information about options in higher education. The Future U team is working with your school/college to highlight the different options in HE that you might be interested in. We want to encourage people from different backgrounds to consider HE and increase the diversity in HE.
What information does Future U collect about me?
We need to collect information about the students we are working with so we can let the OfS know how many students from target wards have taken part in our activities. We also collect information to help us track the long-term outcomes of the project (e.g. after participating in a Future U activity, do more young people go to university?). By evaluating the project in this way, it helps us assess whether the activities we are offering are effective and whether government funding is being spent in the best way. When a Future U partner delivers an activity at your school/college, your school/college gives us some information about you and other students who attended the event. The information we are given is stored on a database called the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) and is combined with other information within HEAT that we receive from other organisations such as government departments. The information within HEAT allows us to see whether individual activities or events you have attended influence your exam results, education pathways and career choices. Using this evidence means we can make sure we focus funding on activities that are the most effective and benefit young people the most. If you attend a Future U event, your school or college will give us the following information about you.
For some events we run, we may collect this information directly from you instead of being given it by your school or college:
• Name• Date of Birth
• Postcode
• Details of the activity you participated in
• School/College name
• Gender 3
• Ethnicity
• Year Group
We may also collect the following data directly from your school/college or from the forms you fill in:
• Whether or not you have a disability
• Whether you are a young carer
• Whether you have any experience of care
• If you are from a military family
• Whether you are an asylum seeker or refugee
• Whether you are eligible for pupil premium funding
Once we have added this information from your school/college into HEAT, it is combined with the information outlined in the table below. If information is ‘anonymised’, it means we can’t tell who the data belongs to e.g. we get exam results for everyone who has taken part, but we don’t know which results belong to which student.
Who is responsible for the way in which my information is used?
For data protection purposes, all the Future U partners are joint controllers of the personal data collected as part of the Future U project. This means that each partner is equally responsible for complying with data protection legislation and for ensuring your information is handled correctly. All the partners collect and use your information for a common purpose to achieve the same outcomes. You can contact any of the partners if you have any questions about the way your information is used; however the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is the lead partner and is the main contact for any queries about the Future U project, including about how your information is handled. UCLan is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and our registration number is Z5512420. You can contact UCLan’s Data Protection Officer on DPFOIA@uclan.ac.uk. Further information and contact details can be found here: uclan.ac.uk/legal/dataprotection
You can contact the Future U team, based at UCLan, on FutureUData@uclan.ac.uk.
Will my information be shared with other people?
Your information will be used by all the Future U partners. It will also be shared with the University of Kent for national evaluation and to produce the reports detailed in the table above (the University of Kent runs the database HEAT). The University of Kent then shares this information with the Office for Students (OfS), the Department for Education (DfE), UCAS and HESA to obtain the data to produce the reports outlined in the above table. We will share your information with the OfS and our national evaluation partners (currently CFE Research) so that the activities of Future U can be analysed and evaluated nationally to see how effective they are. We will also share your information with UCAS so that we can use the UCAS STROBE service. We provide UCAS with information about you so that if you apply to higher education, UCAS can create reports to tell us where you applied, how many offers you received and how you responded to those offers. The information we receive back from UCAS is anonymised: we provide UCAS with information about groups of named individuals who have attended Future U events so that they can provide reports about where those individuals have applied, but the information provided back to us is not linked to specific individuals. This information helps us to evaluate how effective Future U events have been at increasing University applications made by the young people we work with. Your information will not be shared with any third parties for marketing purposes.
Will my information be shared with other people?
Your information will be kept on the HEAT database until you are 25 years old (or, if you are a mature student, for 10 years from the point this information is provided). At this point the information will either be fully anonymised or deleted.
Your data protection rights
Under data protection law, you have rights we need to make you aware of. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. Further information about each of these rights can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website here: ico.org.uk/your-data-matters As all Future U partners are joint controllers for data protection purposes, you may exercise your rights by contacting any partner; however, you are encouraged to send any requests to UCLan, as the lead partner, using the contact details above.
Your right of access
You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. This right always applies. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process. To make a request, please contact UCLan as the lead Future U partner using the details on our website here: uclan.ac.uk/legal/data-protection
You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. This right always applies.
Your right to restriction of processing
You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing
You have the right to object to any processing we carry out, if we carry it out on the basis that it forms part of our public task or is in our legitimate interests. You also have the right to object to your personal information being used for direct marketing purposes. If at any point you wish to object to your personal data being used by the Future U project, including your information being stored on HEAT, you can contact UCLan by emailing the Future U team on
FutureUData@uclan.ac.uk or ringing 01772 894433; if you would like to request Future U do not process your information, please fill out the following form on the Future U website: lancashirefutureu.org.uk/your-data
Your right to data portability
This only applies to information you have given us. You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us from one organisation to another, or give it to you. The right only applies if we are processing information because we have your consent or because it is necessary for a contract you have with us, and the processing is automated.
Your right to complain
We work to high standards when it comes to processing your personal information. If you have queries or concerns, please contact the Future U team at UCLan or UCLan’s Data Protection Officer, and we will respond. If you remain dissatisfied, you can make a complaint about the way Future U processes your personal information to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the UK supervisory authority for data protection. Further information can be found on the data protection pages of the UCLan website here: uclan.ac.uk/legal/data-protection