When you decide to accept an offer from BU

After you have accepted a place at BU, we will continue to use the contact details provided on your application to send you information related to your offer and your potential future study at BU.

Our Admissions team will contact you as necessary for the conduct of the admissions process.

We also like to send you additional communications to keep in touch and make sure you have all the information you need to plan and prepare for your time at BU. With your agreement we will send you regular communications for this purpose, which include information about important practical steps you need to take e.g. in relation to accommodation, accessing support at BU and arranging financial support. However you can choose to opt out of receiving these communications which are not directly related to your offer and the admissions process (any applicant who previously opted out of these additional communications will now start to receive them, unless they opt out again at this stage).

The communications from our Admissions team will include communications about the post-offer clearance checks described below, reminders to provide further information required e.g. to show you have met conditions on your offer and to let you know of any changes to your course. These communications will usually be sent by email, but on occasion we may need to telephone you or send you an SMS message. You cannot opt out of these communications as we need to be able to contact you about your place.

• Necessary in order to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract, i.e. in order to apply our admissions process with a view to you entering into our student agreement and enable you to access other services

• Necessary for BU’s core public task as a university, operating an admissions process to ensure that places on higher education courses are offered to the most appropriate candidates

The additional communications we send you will include: information relevant to you about life at BU, your BU course and your Faculty; invitations to relevant events; and information, links and reminders to help you take important practical steps in preparation for your life at BU, including information about applying for BU accommodation or finding other accommodation, arranging financial support, registering with BU’s Additional Learning Support service and accessing other BU services and sources of support. Email is our primary means of communicating with you, but we may also contact you by phone, SMS or post. You can decide to opt out of any one or more of these methods of communication by following links which will be provided in your offer letter, clicking the “unsubscribe” button on any email you receive from the address [email protected] or by emailing our Future Students team [email protected]. However, opting out of emails may mean that you miss out important information: if you decide to opt out, we suggest that you check our website regularly for relevant information. Opting out of these additional communications will not affect our core communications about your place at BU.

To minimise the chances of people missing out on important information, when you accept an offer you will start to receive these additional communications even if you previously opted out of receiving them at the application stage. If you still do not want to receive these communications despite accepting an offer from BU, you will need to opt out again now.

• Necessary for the legitimate interest of processing your application, ensuring you have relevant information about your potential future study at BU and ensuring you will be able to access relevant associated services.

• Consent: you have agreed to this processing (if you do not opt out).

This refers to certain health & social care courses within BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences which include mandatory work placements in the regulated professional environment and which are listed in this guidance document.

Declaration of criminal records matters

When you accept an offer to study at BU we require you to declare and provide details of any matters on your record which would be disclosed through an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service check. We also require you to complete an Enhanced DBS check, either immediately after you have declared matters on your record or, if you did not declare anything, before enrolment. We use this information to assess your suitability for your chosen course/profession and your ability to meet the course requirements to complete work placements in the regulated professional environment.

BU uses a third-party organisation called Atlantic Data Ltd to administer Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks on our behalf. BU shares limited personal details with Atlantic Data Ltd as part of this process (title, forename, middle name, surname, gender, date of birth, email, student ID). A copy of Atlantic Data Ltd privacy statement is available here: https://policydocuments.disclosures.co.uk/Privacy_Statement.pdf

If you have matters on your criminal record, these are not usually an automatic bar to acceptance on to a regulated professions course, i.e. declaring a relevant criminal matter does not necessarily mean that BU will refuse to offer you a place. However we must consider your criminal record before confirming that you can start your course. This is because a criminal record is relevant to whether you will be able to meet professional body requirements for entry to the profession and because the mandatory elements of these courses include work placements where you will be performing “regulated activity” in contact with vulnerable people. Our process for considering this information is set out in our policy 3E (Admissions Policy for Applicants with a Criminal Record) [see also this guidance document].

As for all other offer-holders, if a matter on your criminal record is a “relevant conviction” as defined in this guidance, we will carry out a wider risk assessment as described in the section below.

More information:

We ask about spent convictions and other criminal matters in relation to regulated professions courses because the purposes for which we use this information make our question exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

Information about your criminal record is only processed or shared within BU as necessary to carry out the risk assessment processes as described in our policy 3E (Admissions Policy for Applicants with a Criminal Record) and to complete any risk control actions identified in risk assessments. Where that assessment is carried out by a BU Panel (Disclosure Panel or Criminal Conviction Panel), information is given to Panels in anonymised (no-names) form.

Where risk assessment results in a decision that we need to pass some information about your record and our risk assessment in identifiable form to individuals within BU or at third party organisations (e.g. accommodation provider), we will tell you before this happens.

In relation to any application, you make for registration with a professional regulatory body, BU may disclose (on request from the professional body) information about whether you declared certain criminal records matters to us.

Otherwise information about criminal records which is collected before you start your course at BU will not be further processed or shared within BU unless this is necessary to manage any issue which arises in connection with the accuracy of previous declarations made to BU or in connection with any later concerns/additional criminal matters arising in relation to a student.

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: this refers to the University’s role in supporting the regulation of health and social care professions by assessing the suitability of applicants to courses leading to those professions, its task of providing education in accordance with its own regulatory requirements and the wider duty of the University and professional regulators to safeguard people within the University environment and people in the health and social care work placement environment.

We can only process this type of information where it falls into one or more of the paragraphs in Schedule 1 to the UK Data Protection Act 2018. The relevant paragraphs are:

• Paragraph 6: necessary for the exercise of a function conferred by law: this refers to the University’s need to comply with regulatory requirements set by the Office for Students, in particular regulatory conditions B1 and B2
• Paragraph 18: necessary for the purposes of safeguarding, i.e. protecting individuals from risks of neglect, harm or damage to well-being
• Paragraph 11: necessary for the exercise of a function intended to protect members of the public against seriously improper conduct, unfitness etc.

Disabilities, health conditions and learning support needs, including occupational health checks

You can choose to give us information at any time about any health conditions, disabilities or other support needs which need to be taken into account in respect of any aspect of your course. We encourage applicants to discuss their support needs with us during the admissions process and/or once you have accepted an offer.

In any event, where your course requires you to undertake work placements within health and social care settings, before the start of the course you must undergo an occupational health assessment to ensure you meet vaccination requirements, and to identify any risks or issues which may affect your ability to complete the placement and any needs you have for specific support in your placement, e.g. due to health conditions or disability. Your personal data will be shared with the University’s supplier of student occupational health services (currently Dorset Healthcare University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust). Outcomes from this assessment process will be shared with BU if they identify needs for support/reasonable adjustment to be put in place in the university and/or work place environment or if there is concern about your ability to undertake the required work placements in the professional environment. Further information will be given to you when we make the referral to the service.

Where relevant information is provided by you to BU or disclosed back to BU through the occupational health check process, we will work with you and placement providers to ensure that we identify any potential issues with your ability to access and undertake the course, to put reasonable adjustments and support in place where required (in both the BU and placement environments) and to identify and manage the small number of cases in which your condition or disability may affect your ability to complete compulsory course requirements even if all reasonable adjustments are put in place (these situations arise very rarely and are considered under 3D Admissions Policy and Procedure for applicants with a disability, medical condition or other support need). This will usually involve sharing of some of your information with placement providers or representatives of placement providers: we will keep you informed about this and only share information as necessary for these purposes.

More information:

Within the occupational health services provider, data relating to your health conditions or disabilities is processed only by healthcare professionals who are subject to professional obligations of confidentiality.

• Necessary for performance of BU’s core public task, i.e. delivery of higher education and research

• Necessary for healthcare purposes, including assessment of working capacity, medical diagnosis, provision of treatment or the management of healthcare arrangements.

• Necessary to protect your vital interests or those of another person, i.e. to prevent or manage significant risks of harm

• Necessary for the purposes of substantial public interest: safeguarding vulnerable people

This section does not apply to anyone applying regulated professions courses within the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (as identified in the section above).

• Information about relevant criminal convictions

Everyone accepting an offer to study at BU is asked to tell us if they have certain relevant unspent criminal convictions, as defined in our guidance. If you have a conviction of this kind, we may ask you for more information about the offence and your current circumstances. We process this information for risk assessment purposes, as set out in our policy 3E: Admissions Policy for Applicants with a Criminal Record. In addition, it may be necessary for you to complete a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check if you choose certain placement options on your course (this applies to placements which involve working in a regulated environment e.g. in a hospital or with children). More information about this is set out in policy 3E and the Student Privacy Notice, and in this guidance document.

BU uses a third-party organisation called Atlantic Data Ltd to administer Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks on our behalf. If a DBS check is necessary BU will share limited personal details with Atlantic Data Ltd as part of this process (title, forename, middle name, surname, gender, date of birth, email, student ID). A copy of Atlantic Data Ltd privacy statement is available here: https://policydocuments.disclosures.co.uk/Privacy_Statement.pdf

More information:

Information about your criminal record is only processed or shared within BU as necessary to carry out the risk assessment processes as described in our policy 3E: Admissions Policy for Applicants with a Criminal Record and to complete any risk control actions identified in risk assessments. Where that assessment is carried out by a BU Panel (Disclosure Panel or Criminal Conviction Panel), information is given to Panels in anonymised (no-names) form.

Where risk assessment results in a decision that we need to pass some information about your record and our risk assessment in identifiable form to individuals within BU or at third party organisations (e.g. accommodation provider), we will tell you before this happens.

Otherwise information about criminal records which is collected before you start your course at BU will not be further processed or shared within BU unless this is necessary to manage any issue which arises in connection with the accuracy of previous declarations made to BU or in connection with any later concerns/additional criminal matters arising in relation to a student.

• Necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest: this refers to the University’s task of providing education in accordance with its own regulatory requirements and the wider duty of the University to safeguard people within the University environment.

We can only process this type of information where it falls into one or more of the paragraphs in Schedule 1 to the UK Data Protection Act 2018. The relevant paragraphs are:

• Condition 10: necessary for the purposes of prevention or detection of unlawful acts
• Condition 18: safeguarding, as above

Disabilities, health conditions and learning support needs

When you accept our offer of a place we ask you to share information about any disabilities, health conditions, impairments (physical, mental, psychological or learning-based) or other needs you have which:

• May affect your ability to access your course at BU
• May affect your ability to access other aspects of life at BU
• Could result in you experiencing a medical emergency while at BU
• Mean that you need extra support, either generally or in relation to specific aspects of your studies or life at BU

We will use this information to work with you to ensure that we identify any potential issues with your ability to access and undertake the course (including exams or assessments), to put reasonable adjustments and support in place where required and to assess and manage any potential health and safety risks to you and others.

We will ask you for this information at this stage regardless of whether you have previously declared a disability during the admissions process. Any information provided previously during the admissions process is not sufficient for the purposes outlined above.

More information:

• Consent: this means that you have agreed that we can use your data for this specific purpose

Some of our courses include mandatory requirements for students to work in environments which could affect health and safety, or which require certain physical capabilities, such as workshops, laboratories or outside environments. This will be stated in the course information on the BU website. Where you are accepting a place on one of these courses and you have a disability, health condition or impairment which could affect your ability to carry out the required course activities fully and safely, we have to ask you to share this information with us so that we can make sure that you and others will be safe and that you are able to complete the mandatory requirements of the course.

Otherwise you do not have to provide us with this information about health conditions, disabilities or support needs at this stage, and there is no deadline for notifying us of support and adjustment needs. However we encourage you to share information at this stage, so that we can identify any significant access considerations as soon as possible, and have the best chance of putting any appropriate support and adjustments in place for the start of your time at BU. It can take time to assess needs and put support in place. We can only start to do this where you have given us the relevant information. Any information that you provide will be used for the following purposes to the extent that they are relevant to you:

• To enable us to work with you to establish needs for adjustments or support to be put in place: this could mean ensuring that you have access to equipment required to manage a learning support need, adjusting examination arrangements e.g. to give you extra time, arranging for your classes to be delivered in a location that is physically accessible to you or making arrangements for course content/materials to be available in accessible formats;
• To identify, assess and manage any health and safety risks: for example, if your course requires you to undertake activities in a workshop, lab or outdoor environment and you have a condition which could affect your safety or that of others in this environment;
• To enable people around you to respond promptly and appropriately to a medical emergency which may arise from a known condition while you’re at BU (e.g. seizures, loss of consciousness or allergic reactions);
• To identify and manage the small number of cases in which your condition or disability may affect your ability to complete compulsory course requirements even if all reasonable adjustments are put in place. These situations arise very rarely and are considered.

We will review any information you provide, tell you which (if any) of these purposes we think may be relevant to you and give you information about our proposed next steps. We will need to work together with you to understand any conditions or disabilities you have and their impact, so you will always be involved in these processes and kept informed about how we plan to process your information.