When using City St George's Report + Support platform to report a concern, City St George's aims to keep your information confidential as far as we are able to. Only staff members dealing directly with your report would usually see a copy. However, there may be circumstances where reports will be shared with other authorised City St George's staff members on a need to know basis, for the purposes of handling the matter at hand.
There may also be circumstances where we may be required to share your information with other parties outside of the University. Information will not be shared unless there is a clear and lawful justification to do so, and sharing will be restricted only to those who need to know the information and who are trained and understand their confidentiality obligations.
The purpose of this guidance is to provide more information on how we will keep your information confidential, and when and how your information may be shared with others.
There may also be circumstances where we may be required to share your information with other parties outside of the University. Information will not be shared unless there is a clear and lawful justification to do so, and sharing will be restricted only to those who need to know the information and who are trained and understand their confidentiality obligations.
The purpose of this guidance is to provide more information on how we will keep your information confidential, and when and how your information may be shared with others.
1. Reporting with personal details
When you make a report with personal details, we will know who has made the report and will make contact with you to arrange to talk to you to provide appropriate support.
City St George's Report + Support System Administrators will receive notification of the submitted report and will review it to identify any immediate risks and determine if there is any action that City St George's should take. No action will be taken other than in exceptional circumstances, as outlined in the Duty of Care Guidance.
Your report will be shared with the relevant Designated Safeguarding Officer (student concerns), or the HR Manager/Senior HR Adviser (staff member concerns) assigned to you to provide you with support (referred to as Advisers).
Report + Support is not intended to be used as a case management system for recording and managing formal complaints under the relevant City St George's policies and procedures. If your concern relates to the conduct of a staff member (including individuals who are not directly employed by City St George's e.g., an agency worker), a student, or any other person working on campus, e.g., a third party contractor, it may be informally investigated. If you wish your concerns to be investigated formally, you will need to make a separate formal complaint, which will be addressed under the relevant student or staff procedure.
The Designated Safeguarding Officer or Adviser supporting you will provide you with advice and guidance as to the relevant policy or procedure that will apply to your individual circumstances (where appropriate).
It is not City St George's intention that the content of reports made with personal details will be routinely used in formal investigations, or as part of grievance or disciplinary processes. This is because City St George’s Report + Support platform is intended to provide staff, students and visitors with a portal to report concerns and to seek support in respect of issues of bullying, harassment, discrimination, domestic abuse, hate incidents/hate crime, sexual harassment and sexual violence.
Students, or members of staff who are concerned about other students, can also tell us about any of the issues described under the Student Welfare Concerns category and use the tool to tell us about any safeguarding concerns.
There are certain exceptional circumstances in which City St George's may take action even where you do not wish to take further action. This is usually where there are concerns for your safety or another person’s safety. Please see our Privacy Notice together with our separate Duty of Care Guidance for further information.
There are certain exceptional circumstances in which City St George's may take action even where you do not wish to take further action. This is usually where there are concerns for your safety or another person’s safety. Please see our Privacy Notice together with our separate Duty of Care Guidance for further information.
In circumstances when the disclosure of the initial report to an investigating manager, is considered to be necessary, as part of a disciplinary process, then we will ordinarily notify you prior to disclosure. You will be given the opportunity to discuss the reasons for the disclosure, and to raise any objections that you would like considered before a final decision is made.
2. Reporting without personal details
Information provided within reports without personal details will be used as statistical data to monitor trends at City St George's, and to inform our work on preventing bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct, and help to shape our support services.
By choosing to report without your personal details, you do not wish to be identified as the person reporting, and do not wish to be contacted by an appropriate member of staff in order to receive any support. City St George's will respect your wishes and will not take any active steps to identify you. Furthermore, information contained in a report without personal details will still be treated in confidence and disclosed on a ‘need to know’ basis only.
By choosing to report without personal details, we are unable to provide you with direct support in relation to your concerns. City St George's will also not generally be able to take any steps such as investigating your concerns, initiating disciplinary or other formal proceedings or passing information on to third parties in order to take your report further.
When making a report without personal details, we advise you not to provide any details that name or identify yourself or other individuals in the free text box within the reporting form (which is optional) to ensure the confidentiality of the information provided within your report. The equality, diversity and inclusion questions at the end of the reporting form are also optional, and do not need to be completed if you do not wish to provide this information.
When you make a report without personal details, City St George's Report + Support System Administrators will receive notification of the submitted report and will review the report to identify any immediate risks and determine if there is any action that City St George's should take. No action will be taken other than in exceptional circumstances, as outlined in the Duty of Care Guidance.
When you make a report without personal details, City St George's Report + Support System Administrators will receive notification of the submitted report and will review the report to identify any immediate risks and determine if there is any action that City St George's should take. No action will be taken other than in exceptional circumstances, as outlined in the Duty of Care Guidance.
If you do provide details that identify yourself or others, and the nature of your report raises urgent concerns, we may judge that action is required even if you are not requesting action to be taken at this point. Where information included in the report identifies you or other individuals, there are certain circumstances in which City St George's may take steps, even where a report without personal details is received. This is usually where there are concerns for your safety or another person’s safety. Please see our Duty of Care Guidance for more information.
3. Meeting with a Designated Safeguarding Officer or an Adviser
Our Designated Safeguarding Officers and Advisers are trained in providing initial support and advice to you on the various further reporting options available and have undergone mandatory training in both data protection and information security awareness.
4. Dignity and Respect Advisers
City St George's Dignity and Respect Advisers are an additional source of support for both students and staff members. Individuals who report concerns of bullying and harassment via the Report + Support platform when making a report with personal details will be signposted to this source of support by the relevant staff member providing support to the individual.
Dignity and Respect Advisers are members of City St George's staff who are trained in providing initial advice to both students and staff members on the various options available, with a focus on informal resolution. They have also undergone mandatory training in both data protection and information security awareness.
5. Investigations and disciplinary or other formal hearings
5. Investigations and disciplinary or other formal hearings
If you make a report with personal details and meet with an appropriate member of staff to discuss your concern, this will not automatically result in a formal investigation. It is not City St George's intention that the content of reports made with personal details will be routinely used in formal investigations, or as part of grievance or disciplinary processes.
You will ordinarily have control over whether or not the matter is investigated by City St George's, except in limited circumstances. Please see the section above on reporting without personal details and our Duty of Care Guidance for further information about these circumstances.
If a formal investigation takes place, one of the possible outcomes is that the matter is referred to a disciplinary hearing. However, there may be limited occasions when the original report you have made through the Report + Support platform is disclosed as part of a disciplinary process. For example, if the subject of the complaint or their advisers have obtained part of your initial report through a Data Subject Access Request (see section below) and has identified information in the initial report that is inconsistent or otherwise conflicts with what you have included in your formal report.
6. Data subject access requests
Under data protection laws, individuals can make a subject access request (SAR) to obtain data that an organisation holds about them.
This means that you have the right to ask City St George's whether it is using or storing your personal information. You can also ask for copies of your personal information, verbally or in writing. This is called the right of access and is commonly known as making a subject access request or SAR.
If you make a SAR either as someone that has reported a concern or is the subject of a concern that has been reported, the personal data identified may relate to more than one individual. City St George's Information Assurance Team will consider each request on a case-by-case basis and balance our aim of protecting confidentiality with the requestor’s right to receive their personal data.
Anyone wishing to make a SAR or would like further information should email dataprotection@city.ac.uk. This applies to staff, students, former students and anyone else City St George's may hold personal information about. There is no fee for making a SAR. Data subjects also have the following rights:
· The right to be informed
· The right to be informed
· The right to rectification
· The right to erasure
· The right to restrict processing
· The right to data portability
· The right to object
· Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling
More information about these rights is available on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.
7. Disclosure of documents
If a claim is brought against City St George's or in the rare event, against any of its employees there are specific rules City St George's must follow concerning the documents it needs to provide to the individual who has initiated the litigation. This process of providing documents is called disclosure. A copy of the initial report you have made may be disclosed to the person bringing the claim, also referred to as the claimant.
8. Further information
Please contact City St George's Information Assurance Team at dataprotection@city.ac.uk for further information about this guidance.
For further information on how your personal data is processed by or on behalf of City St George's in the context of Report + Support, please refer to our Privacy Notice.