Student and Library Services Duty of Care

1. We ensure that our staff are competent to carry-out their roles. We do this by defining performance expectations, ensuring staff are qualified and maintain registration with relevant bodies where appropriate, and providing for ongoing training. We expect all our staff to operate only within the limits of their competency and in line with our policies and the relevant policies of the Universities.

2. We take steps to avoid our services causing direct or indirect harm where it is reasonably foreseeable. We do this by risk assessing our key activities and implementing actions to mitigate risk, where it is effective and reasonable to do so.

3. We are committed to confidentiality and take care of the personal data we are entrusted with. We always comply with relevant Data Protection legislation.

4. We collect, store and use information about students who use our services, including:

• Personal details.
• A record of meetings and communications between the student and us.
• A record of any actions we take as part of supporting a student.
• Information provided to us by others for the purposes of supporting a student.
• Use of library resources and systems (collected for all users).

5. We may share this information with other people. This may include staff in a student’s Academic Department, other Administrative and Student & Library Services departments, Health and Safety, Accommodation Services, Estates, IT Services, or Security. We may also disclose information to a student’s GP (doctor) or other relevant non-University professional, and in certain circumstances to their nominated emergency contact.

6. Sharing is on a strictly ‘need-to-know’ basis in order to provide support or meet legal requirements. Wherever possible we respect a student’s wishes regarding the use, storage and sharing of information. However, we may not be able to do so in certain situations such as disclosure of potential harm to self or others, or of criminal activity.

7. We store this information securely for up to six years after a student leaves university, and after that it is destroyed.

8. Where we receive, and determine it is appropriate to record information from or about a third party, we ensure that this is recorded in a way which clearly identifies this information as being from or about a third party.

Further details regarding our use of data can be found the Universities’ websites:

• University of Exeter.
• Falmouth University.

9. We are transparent about the services we provide, and what we expect of students in order for us to support them. We endeavour to also be clear with students about any specific limitations to the support we are able to provide them.

10. We regularly seek feedback from student and staff users and non-users of our services to influence and shape their development. We do this through a range of feedback methods including, for example, focus groups, surveys (including the National Student Survey), staff student liaison groups/committees and other user service reviews.

11. We operate a complaints procedure which we use to respond to any concerns regarding the provision of our services. This is fully detailed in the Student Complaints policies of our partner universities:

• Complaints Policy – University of Exeter
• Complaints Policy – Falmouth University