The University of Bedfordshire is the organisation responsible for your personal data in terms of data protection legislation (the data controller). If you have any questions regarding the handling of your personal data, or your rights, please contact the University’s Data Protection Officer at DPO@beds.ac.uk

We will collect information necessary to manage your booking/attendance for a conference/event. This will consist of information you provide to us when registering. The information required will be clearly set out in the registration and depends on the event you are attending. At a minimum we will require your name and contact information. Depending on the event, we may ask for some additional information (where relevant), for example:

• job title/role, company/sector of employment;
• dietary requirements;
• accessibility requirements;
• academic profile, e.g. research interests, abstract submissions;
• marketing preferences;
• product and services you have used/shown an interest in;
• passport and date of birth details (only where you have requested a letter from us for visa
• purposes to attend an event); and
• payment details.

Photography/filming – at some events photography and/or filming will take place. If this is the case you will be advised in advance and at the event. Where necessary we will obtain consent.

Video Conferencing - When events are held using video conferencing applications, some personal data may be collected by the companies who own these applications. This may include your name, username, email address, your computer’s IP address and device name.

Where University-approved video conferencing applications are used to record meetings, personal data captured within the recording are stored for a limited period of time within the cloud service owned by that company, on behalf of the University. The University may choose to retain the recording on its own servers for a longer period. Where recording is taking place, you will be notified of this prior to the event taking place and it will be clearly visible to all participants during the event.

For further information about how third-party applications may use your data, please read the privacy policy of the relevant video conferencing application.

We require information to:

• manage your booking and attendance (including access and dietary requirements);
• to comply with legal obligations, e.g. health and safety, public health, equality requirements and/or licensing requirements; or
• to communicate with you after the event or about future events (depending on your marketing preferences).

We process your information on the basis that:

• it is necessary to fulfil a contract with you;
• it is in the legitimate interests of the University to process your information. Depending on the event this may include: managing registration and attendance and delivering the conference/event (which can involve a variety of tools, including online and video conferencing tools), group photography and post-event feedback;
• it is necessary in order to protect your or another person’s vital interests (emergency situations);
• we have a legal obligation, e.g. health and safety legislation or equality monitoring;
• it falls within the University’s public task (events relating to our learning/teaching/research activities); or
• we have your consent to process the information (e.g. marketing; sharing contact information; or photography/filming where you are clearly identifiable and the focus of the image).

Where we are required to collect any special category data (for example, relating to health), we process on the basis that:

• we have obtained your explicit consent;
• it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest (equality of opportunity)
• we have a legal obligation, e.g. health and safety legislation or equality monitoring;
• it is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes; or
• it is necessary to protect your or another person’s vital interests and you are not capable of giving consent, e.g. emergency situations.

Your information may be shared with third party agents appointed by the University to provide event services. These agents will only have access to your information if required to provide that service, they will use your personal data only under instruction from the University. If the event is being organised with another partner, who your personal information will be shared with, you will be advised of this when booking the event.

Where events which involve networking, we may want to share your contact details with other attendees. If we plan to do this, we will ask for your consent when you register for the event.

If we use any third-party tools to collect and process personal data, we will tell you about this when you register.

Your data will not be shared outside the United Kingdom, unless it is to a country covered by the UK ‘adequacy regulations’ (declaring the recipient country as a 'safe' territory for personal data) or by another safeguard, as set out in applicable data protection legislation.

Your personal data will only be retained for as long as is required. This may vary depending on the purpose of the event and if there are to be any follow-up events, for example. Information may be retained to manage marketing lists, if you have been asked for and have provided your consent.

Your information will not be used for profiling or automated decision-making unless you are otherwise notified of this.

You will be advised of any statutory or contractual requirements or obligations as part of the booking process/event information.

Under data protection legislation, you have a number of rights* including the right to:

• withdraw consent, at any time, where that is the lawful basis of our processing;
• access your personal data and obtain a copy, free of charge;
• rectify inaccuracies in personal data that we hold about you;
• erasure, that is have your details removed from systems that we use to process your personal data;
• restrict the processing in certain ways;
• obtain a portable copy of data you have given to us in a commonly used electronic form; and
• object to certain processing of your personal data by us.

*Please note that the ability to exercise these rights will vary and depends on the lawful basis under which the processing is being carried out.

Please contact DPO@beds.ac.uk if you wish to exercise/enquire about any of these rights.