The PARE (Practice Assessment Record & Evaluation) Service at the University of Chester is an online system for healthcare education, supporting students, mentors, and universities in managing and monitoring practice placements, offering tools for documentation, real-time evaluation, and quality assurance of learning environments across the UK. It's a collaborative tool for multi-professional practice assessment, helping track progress and providing data for quality monitoring.
The University of Chester ('the University') is committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of individuals as detailed in relevant Data Protection legislation including looking after any personal data that it collects, uses or holds. This data processing and Privacy Notice describes how and why the University of Chester (“We”, “our”, “us”) collects uses and shares personal information about “you” as a PARE user. It is issued under your right to be informed about how the University collects, uses and stores your personal data.
We will comply with data protection legislation, which says that the personal information we hold about you must be:
We may collect, use and hold the following types of personal data:
PARE does not collect special category data but may display information related to a reasonable adjustment plan if provided by you.
For some programmes, in order to assess your suitability to work with vulnerable persons and/or your fitness to practise for entry into some professions it is necessary to process special category data about your health and disability.
The PARE Service needs the data for the following purposes:
Not all of the personal information the University holds about you will come directly from you. It may, for example, come from other organisations to which you belong or professional service providers. We also collect personal information from third parties such as collaborative partner organisations, service providers offering services provided by your University.
We will process your data on one or more of the following lawful bases:
The PARE Service will only retain your data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected and in line with any necessary legal, financial accounting or reporting requirements. The PARE Service will take into account the nature and sensitivity of the data but in most cases the retention will be a maximum of seven years following the date of your graduation. Dependent on data controller requirements, some learner data may be held for a shorter period of time and / or transferred to a host university for storage before deletion from the PARE system.
We will share your personal information with your host university / employer, and placement provider organisations where required by any legal or regulatory obligation, where it is necessary to administer the contract with your university, to protect the University’s rights, property, or the safety of our employees, students, or others, or where we have any other legitimate interest in doing so.
As your course involves a placement in the UK or a period of study or employment overseas the PARE Service will share personal data with the host placement institution in order to support the study and/or employment placement. This may include data required in order to provide any reasonable adjustment as required by the Equality Act.
Where information is shared with third parties, we will seek to share the minimum amount of information necessary to fulfil the purpose.
We do not, and will not, sell your data to third parties.
All our third-party service providers are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
The University of Chester operates an Information Security Policy which recognises that with the increasing demands being placed on ICT and Information Systems there is a need to understand and control, in a coherent manner, the associated risks. The principal objective of the policy is to protect the information, including personal data, held by the University. In support of this policy the University publishes an Information Security Framework which is based on ISO 27001:2005 and uses ISO/IEC 27002:2005 Information Security Techniques – Code of Practice for Information Security Management.
The University has detailed measures implemented in the areas of Business Continuity Management; Information Handling; User Management; Acceptable Use of Computers, the Network and JANET; System Planning and Operation and Incident Reporting and Handling.
Access to all information services shall use a secure log on process and access to the University’s business systems is also limited by the location of the initiating terminal. All access to information services is logged and monitored in order to identify potential misuse of systems or information.
All users of PARE information systems must manage the creation, storage, amendment, copying, distribution and deletion or destruction of data (in electronic or paper form) in a manner which is consistent with the security policy, and which safeguards and protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of such data.
The PARE Service will ensure that all employees are familiar with the principles set out in this policy and will provide training and guidance where needed on policy interpretation, the information asset security classification scheme and information owner responsibilities.
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes.
As a data subject of the University, under the Data Protection legislation, you have a number of rights with regards to your data, dependent upon the legal basis for processing that data. As such you have the right to…
The above rights are not absolute and may only apply in some circumstances such as being dependent upon which lawful process has been used or whether an exemption may apply and your own university or employer policies.
You may contact the University’s Data Protection Officer as necessary regarding your rights.
The Data Controller is your own university or employing organisation, and for some information, the placement provider organisation to which you have been assigned. The PARE Service and the University of Chester, Parkgate Road, Chester, CH1 4BJ is the data processor. The university of Chester legal representative is Mrs Laura Gittins, University Secretary and Director of Legal Services, who may be contacted at the University address and on 01244 511000.
The University’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) is Sarah Pownall, who may also be contacted directly by email to dataprotection@chester.ac.uk for any queries relating to your privacy rights.
Should you have any questions, comments, concerns or complaints regarding the use of your personal data you should contact the University’s Data Protection Officer as detailed above.
You may also raise any concerns or complaints with the Information Commissioner’s Office who may be contacted as follows:
Information Commissioners Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 0303 123 1113.
www.ico.org.uk
We reserve the right to update this PARE privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new PARE privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.
The University has also published a Data Protection policy and accompanying notes of guidance as relevant.
