HEAT Privacy Notice

South East Wales Reaching Wider Partnership HEAT Privacy Notice

What is the purpose of this notice?

The National Reaching Wider Privacy Notice helps you understand why Reaching Wider collects and records  your personal data, how we use your data, our obligations under the law and information about your rights.

This HEAT Privacy Notice tells you what happens to your personal data when it is collected by the South East Wales Reaching Wider Partnership and entered into a Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT).

Where we refer to ‘personal data’; we mean any recorded information about you, from which you can be identified.

Where we refer to ‘processing’ of personal data, we mean anything we do with that information, including collection, use, storage, deletion or retention.

What is HEAT?

HEAT is the system supplied, hosted and operated by the University of Kent, which is used by  Higher Education institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of their outreach and widening participation activities. The system links closely with government agencies such as the Office for Students (OfS), the Department for Education (DfE), the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), and the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (MEDR) to establish which learners engaging with the partner universities have progressed into Higher Education.  

HESA and HEAT may process your data as detailed in their own privacy notices, which are accessible at the links provided:

HEAT Privacy Notice

HESA Privacy Notice

The South East Wales Reaching Wider Partnership may receive your data either directly from you, or from your school. This information will be added to the Partnership’s Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) database. The information will be used to see whether our activities have an impact on your later educational outcomes.

The universities within the South East Wales Partnership are “controllers” of your personal data. This means that we decide how your information will be processed, we are responsible for keeping it safe and ensuring it is processed in accordance with data protection legislation.  

Once your personal data is entered into HEAT, HEAT become a controller too. HEAT use the information to provide a collaborative targeting, monitoring and evaluation service for the Partnership in support of its work around equality of opportunity.  The Partnership has signed a data sharing agreement with HEAT, which places responsibilities on the parties. In the event that this agreement is terminated, your personal data may be retained by, or transferred, to another permitted recipient or any organisation taking over the HEAT tracker.

  1. The types of information which may be held about you in HEAT

We  may record the following information about you in HEAT:

  • name;
  • date of birth; 
  • address, email address and mobile number; 
  • sex; 
  • gender identity;
  • ethnicity;
  • religion;
  • disability;
  • identification number or similar identifier;
  • local authority care; 
  • asylum seeker/refugee status;

We ask for some of this information for the purpose of monitoring and the evaluation of underrepresented groups, or subgroups and the access, success and progression through Higher Education.

We obtain this data either directly from you, your parent or guardian, or from your school.

We may also add to HEAT information about you that we collect from third parties, including the Office for Students (OfS), the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), the Department for Education (DfE),Education and Skills Funding Agency - GOV.UK(ESFA). This information may contain statistics about the area in which you live, for example, how many people from your area go on to Higher Education. Data from these sources will also allow us to track your own educational journey from school to Higher Education, for example, which university you end up at and what type of degree you obtain.

  1. How the data in HEAT is used.

 Your personal data may be used for the following purposes:

  • monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of our outreach and widening participation programmes;
  • demonstrating the impact of our outreach and widening participation programmes
  • producing statistics, including event application and participation numbers, and participant outcomes; and
  • tracking future outcomes of event participants, including applications to the University and other Higher Education Institutions.
  • understanding the student journey through education and progression to Higher Education

Using your data for these purposes is necessary for tasks that we carry out in the public interest (equality of opportunity or treatment and promoting access to Higher Education).



  1. Who will your data be shared with?

Your personal data may be shared with the following third parties; 

  • UCAS – University and Colleges Admission Service
  • The Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (MEDR)
  • University members of the Reaching Wider Partnership 
  • The Higher Education Access Tracker(HEAT)
  • Partner organisations participating in the HEAT Core Service (members will be able to see if individuals whom they have collected data about, have participated in an outreach activity at any other HEAT member institution)

  1. How long will your data be stored for?

Electronic records are held within HEAT for a period of up to 15 years after an event. Please see section 9 of the HEAT Privacy Notice for more information.

  1. Your rights

Individuals have the right to access personal information, to object to the processing of their personal data, to rectification of their personal data, erasure, restriction and to port personal information.

Any requests or objections should be made in writing to the Data Protection Officer – [email protected]

Right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority

We would encourage you to expend our internal complaints procedure through our initial contact and the University data protection officer, prior to contacting the ICO.

If the matter is not resolved and the individual remains dissatisfied then they have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF

www.ico.org.uk

  1. Changes to this notice.

The University may update this notice at any time. You should check this notice regularly to take notice of any changes.  Where any change affects your rights and interests, we will make sure we bring this to your attention and clearly explain what this means for you.

This notice was last updated on 25/03/25