Privacy and data protection

Our vision

The vision of the Engineering Professors Council is that “as a crucible for the nation’s innovation and skills base, engineering in higher education will be held in high esteem and perspective of its workforce shall be respected and influential.”

Our mission

• To represent the perspectives of engineering academics to the wider higher education sector, to the governments of the UK and to the wider population.
• To ensure engineering academics are informed of developments in national and sector policy that may affect them.
• To encourage and facilitate the sharing of best practice and resources to enhance the professionalism of engineering academics.
• To work in partnership with other organisations in the higher education and engineering sectors to achieve the EPC’s vision.
• To be inclusive in all the EPC’s activities, supporting the involvement of academics at all stages in their careers, whatever their background, and supporting the diversity of the sector.

Our values

To the outside world, the EPC should be recognised as:

• Influential – able to achieve impact or change whether in national policy or in academic practice.
• Representative – speaking on behalf of all engineering academics.
• Authoritative – speaking from a position of expertise.

To our members, the EPC should represent:

• A collaborative approach – a willingness to work with our members and with other stakeholders in the broader interests of our members.
• Principled – acting honestly, transparently for the wider good.
• Support – meeting our members’ needs and enhancing their professionalism.
• Inclusiveness – supporting the diversity of the HE engineering sector through its institutions, its staff and its students.

We believe that our members share our values and want to know how to support us. We will process the personal information you have supplied to us to conduct and manage our business to enable us to give you the most appropriate marketing, information, services and events and provide the best and most secure experience. These are what we consider to be our ‘Legitimate Interests’.

The Engineering Professors’ Council (EPC) was founded in 1994 as a collective voice for heads of engineering departments throughout UK higher education.  Since then it has grown in support, reach and influence. We have an established record of policy impact and continue to extend our influence with messages from the expertise of our members and research.  We support our members working together and in partnership with those outside academia ensuring engineering academia serves our students, our institutions, our economy and our planet.

We take our duty to process your personal data seriously. This policy explains how we collect, manage, use and protect your personal data.

We may change this document from time to time to reflect changes about how we use, store and protect your information. Please check back frequently; you will be able to see if changes have been made by the date it was last updated which will be included at the top of the page.

Refer to the sections below for more details on how and why we use your personal information.

Who are we?

In this policy references to the Engineering Professors’ Council or to ‘EPC’, ‘we’ or ‘us’ are to the Engineering Professors’ Council Company Registration Number: 06791295 and whose registered offices are: First Floor Office, 3 Hornton Place, London, W8 4LZ

What we need

The EPC is what’s known as the ‘controller’ of the personal data you provide to us. We will usually collect basic personal data about you like your name, job title, and contact information including work email address.

Why we need it

We collect your personal data to understand your needs and provide you with our services. Without certain basic details, it is not possible to give you full access to all the benefits to which you are entitled as a member. In particular we may use your personal data to bring to your attention matters of relevance to those working in engineering in higher education, and to gauge opinion, consult and inform about matters of relevance to you and the sector.  Sometimes we will process your personal data to provide you with information about our work or our activities that you have requested or would expect form us.

The EPC also processes your data when it is in our legitimate interests to do this and when these interests do not override your rights. Those legitimate interests include providing you with information on our membership, services, events, conferences, newsletter requests and feedback. Please see the section below on Legitimate Interest for more information.

We will use the information you provide for the following purposes:

• where you have agreed for the purpose of consulting, informing and gauging your opinion about matters of relevance to you and the sector;
• to bring to your attention matters we are obliged by relevant legislation (for example, the Companies Act) regarding the constitution of the Engineering Professors’ Council and your role as a member.

How we obtain your details

We may also hold information about your details so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

We collect your personal information in a number of ways:

• When you provide it to us directly and consent to receive communications from us as a member.
• From your employer who subscribes to the EPC. Each year, when we send out our annual subscription notice to member institutions, we request the names, job titles and email addresses of staff in member department and ask the representative member to inform you that this has been done.  You have the opportunity to opt out of receiving communications from the EPC via the “unsubscribe” link on any emails you receive from us or by accessing the database via your My EPC profile page where you may also update and amend your details.
• We also monitor your use of this website to see what content you use most, so we can recommend further content that is relevant to you. We do not track your activity on other sites.

Legitimate interests

When we process your personal information for our legitimate interests, we will consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights under data protection and any other relevant law. Our legitimate business interests do not automatically override your interests – we will not use your personal data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

For more information about your rights, please see our Privacy Policy.

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal details at any time by using contacting us on admin@epc.ac.uk

The following are some examples of when and why we would exercise our Legitimate interests to use your data:

• Direct Marketing: We may send out postal marketing of conferences and events or to gather opinion. We will make sure our postal marketing is relevant for you, tailored to your interests. We may send electronic communications to your organisation in line with PECR (2003) business to business text and email regulations. Or we may send them to you as an individual having expressly agreed to this on taking out your direct membership.
• Your best interest: Processing your information to ensure our websites and systems are secure.
• Personalisation: Where the processing enables us to enhance, modify, personalise or otherwise improve our services/communications for the benefit of our members.
• Analytics: To process your personal information for the purposes of member analysis, assessment, and direct marketing, on a personalised or aggregated basis, to help us with our activities and to provide you with the most relevant information as long as this does not harm any of your rights and interests. Please see our Privacy Policy.
• Research: To determine the effectiveness of events, campaigns and to develop our services, systems and relationships with you.
• Due Diligence: We may need to conduct investigations on member organisations to determine if those organisations and individuals have been involved or convicted of offences such as fraud, bribery and corruption.

We will also hold information about you so that we can respect your preferences for being contacted by us.

We only disclose information to third parties or individuals when obliged to by law, for purposes of national security, or criminal investigations.

The EPC does not pass personal data to third parties, other than the database provider.  Any data processors used to help with the maintenance of the data stored is done so under contract and line with latest data protection policy.

We will not sell, distribute, or lease your personal information to third parties.

And, we will never sell or rent your personal information to other organisations.

Retaining your data

We hold your information only for as long as necessary for each purpose we use it.  If you leave your place of employment or your organisation does not continue with its membership, we will usually aim to link your information to your new employer if they are a member of the EPC, retain it so you can access membership benefits as a member of the Engineering Academics’ Network or delete your personal information if requested.

We will conduct an annual audit of our database to ensure it is up to date and accurate.  This happens when subscriptions are renewed.

If you decide to opt out of your membership or request that we have no further contact with you, we will keep some basic information in order to avoid sending you unwanted materials in the future and to ensure that we don’t accidentally duplicate information.  Your right to erasure does mean that you are entitled to have all your basic information removed with the understanding this will prevent the EPC from not contacting you again in future.

Keeping your information secure

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect.

Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which of our own pages are being used. This helps us analyse data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Many web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. This may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

UK data protection laws give everyone a number of very important rights. These are:

• Transparency over how we use your personal information (right to be informed).
• Request a copy of the information we hold about you, which will be provided to you within one month (right of access).
• Update or amend the information we hold about you if it is wrong (right of rectification).
• Ask us to stop using your information (right to restrict processing).
• Ask us to remove your personal information from our records (right to be ‘forgotten’).
• Object to the processing of your information for marketing purposes (right to object).
• Obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes (right to data portability).
• Not be subject to a decision when it is based on automated processing (automated decision making and profiling).

If you would like to know more about your rights under the data protection law see the Information Commissioners Office website.

Remember, you can change the way you hear from us or withdraw your permission for us to process your personal data at any time by contacting us directly by email or by post (see below), or by changing the settings on your My EPC profile page.

The EPC reserves the right to cancel any event and is not liable for any cost, whether incurred directly or indirectly, caused as a result of any cancellation or change of venue or date. Should circumstances arise that result in the postponement of an event, attendees will have the option to transfer the value of their ticket to a future event or to receive a refund, upon proof of purchase.

In the event of a cancellation, change of venue or date, the EPC will endeavour to notify attendees wherever possible and as soon as reasonably possible through the contact details given at the time of booking. Cancellations due to unforeseen circumstances may occur at any time. Should it be necessary for us to cancel events, we will offer refunds for tickets, but we cannot compensate for travel, accommodation, or other expenses which you may have incurred on your own behalf.

Unless otherwise stated, we will not normally issue refunds for paid events should you no longer be able to attend. We will always permit you to transfer your ticket to any colleague who would be entitled to book at the same price, subject to being able to accommodate any dietary or access requirements at short notice.

Please contact us about any queries or concerns relating to any specific events.

If you wish to talk through anything in our privacy policy, find out more about your rights or obtain a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact us and we will be happy to help. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our data protection officer who will investigate the matter. Furthermore you can contact our Board directly (see below).

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are not processing your personal data in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Our data protection officer can be contacted by writing to:

• Data Protection Officer, Engineering Professors’ Council, First Floor Office, 3 Hornton Place, London, W8 4LZ

Our Board can be contacted by addressing correspondence to “the Board” to president@epc.ac.uk

If you wish to talk to us about anything in the policy or the information we hold about you please contact us:

• By email: admin@epc.ac.uk