The British Council collects and uses certain types of personal information about people (data subjects) with whom it deals in order to operate. These include current, past and prospective employees, suppliers, students, visitors, and others with whom it communicates. Examples of personal information include names, photographs, contact details, gender, and age.

In addition, it may occasionally be required by law to collect and use certain types of personal information to comply with the requirements of government departments for business data (e.g. health and safety statistics). Personal information must be dealt with properly irrespective of how it is collected, recorded and used – whether on paper, electronically or recorded on other media. There are safeguards to ensure this in the United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act 1998 (the Act).

The British Council regards the lawful and correct treatment of personal information as important to successful operations, and to the maintenance of confidence between it and those with whom it deals. This policy will operate in all of the British Council’s offices both in the UK and overseas. We will ensure that our staff and those acting on our behalf obtain, use and disclose personal information lawfully and correctly. To this end we fully endorse and adhere to the principles of data protection, as set out in the Act.

Specifically, the principles require that personal information shall:

• be processed fairly and lawfully and, in particular, shall not be processed unless specific conditions are met;
• be obtained only for one or more specified and lawful purposes, and shall not be further processed in any manner incompatible with that purpose or those purposes;
• be adequate, relevant and not excessive in relation to the purpose or purposes for which it is processed;
• be accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date;
• not be kept for longer than is necessary for that purpose or those purposes; be processed in accordance with the rights of the individual under the Act;
• have in place appropriate technical and organizational measures against unauthorized or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal information;
• not be transferred to a country or territory outside the European Economic Area ( the countries of the European Union plus Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) unless that country or territory ensures an adequate level of protection for the rights and freedoms of data subjects in relation to the processing of personal data or unless specific agreement has been sought from the individuals concerned.

The British Council will, through the use of appropriate and consistent management and application of controls:

• observe the conditions in the Act regarding the fair collection and use of information; meet its legal obligations to specify the purposes for which personal information d is used, this information being set out in the British Council’s data protection notification particulars which can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website at http://www.dpr.gov.uk; collect and process appropriate information, only to the extent that it is needed to fulfil our operational needs or to comply with a legal requirement; ensure the quality and accuracy of information; apply checks to determine the length of time information is held; ensure that the rights of people about whom information is held, are able to be fully exercised under the Act;
• take appropriate technical and organizational security measures to safeguard personal information; ensure that personal information is not transferred outside the EEA without suitable safeguards or agreement from the individual.

The British Council will ensure that there is someone with specific overall responsibility for data protection. Currently, the nominated person is the Data Protection Officer who can be contacted at:

The British Council will ensure that staff and external parties working on the Council’s behalf who manage and handle personal information understand that they are contractually responsible for following good data protection practice. Guidance for good data protection practice is provided in the British Council’s data protection standards.

The British Council will ensure that its staff are appropriately trained to handle personal information.

The British Council will ensure that anyone wanting to make enquiries about handling personal information knows what to do. The publication and distribution of this statement and Data Protection Standards will achieve this.

The British Council will regularly review the way it processes personal information in light of compliance with the Act.