Privacy Notice

Last updated: July 2023

Here at Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), we are committed to protecting your privacy. Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited (USSL), the sole corporate trustee of USS is a controller of personal data and responsible for this website. We take our obligations very seriously and have appropriate procedures in place to ensure your information and rights are protected. This privacy notice tells you what to expect when USS collects your personal data in connection to the consultation. This privacy notice is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below.

  1. Who this notice applies to
  2. What personal information do we hold about you?
  3. How we use your information
  4. Your rights
  5. Security
  6. Contact our Data Protection Officer
  7. Google Analytics
  8. Our Use of Cookies
  9. Updates

This notice applies to information we collect about the following persons:

  • Pensions contacts at participating institutions involved in the consultation; and
  • Visitors to this website.
  • First name and surname (merged together)
  • Job title
  • Employer email address
  • Phone Number
  • Employer Name and code

Summary

This is information which identifies you and is essential for the administration of the consultation.

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data). Depending on which category of person you fall in to will determine what types of personal data we may collect, use, store or transfer. We collect and process this information for the following purposes:

  • for the purposes of administering the consultation;
  • to communicate with you;
  • to understand and improve our website.

Pensions contacts (at participating institutions involved in the consultation)

As part of the consultation and your use of this website, we may collect and process the identifiable personal information such as personal identifiers and contact information. Where this is corporate contact information, your personal identifiers such as your name may still preside.

We take great care to ensure that the information we collect and process about you is held securely and safeguarded and therefore require this of any third party we transfer your information to. We may disclose your personal information to our professional advisers and consultants. We will only disclose your information to the extent necessary to ensure this website and related tools work for you, and for the purposes of the consultation. We will store your personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purposes we collect your data for. This website is hosted by our supplier, Gallagher Communication Limited.

Visitors to this website

When someone visits this website, we collect certain information such as internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. For more information about this navigate to the Google Analytics section of this notice.

We fully support the enhanced rights for individuals as set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You have the right to be informed about what we do with your personal data, to access your personal data held by us, for it to be accurate and kept up to date, and for it to be deleted, transmitted or its processing by us restricted, if permissible. We do not use your personal data to make any automated decisions or profile individuals. Please visit the scheme's website to find out more about how you can exercise your rights https://www.uss.co.uk/public/privacy-notice

We take the security of your personal data very seriously. We have put in place appropriate technical and contractual measures to prevent the unauthorised disclosure or use of your personal data. We have implemented organisational measures to keep your personal data secure against the threat of human intervention. These measures include training all of our employees, and providing them with regular reminders of their individual obligations and responsibilities. We are accredited to the international standard of information security, ISO27001:2013.

To discuss any part of this privacy notice or if you have a query, you can contact our Data Protection Officer by email at dpo@uss.co.uk.

Our website uses cookies to provide us with information about your visit, such as the number of unique times you visit the site and to see how you move around the site. This helps us to know which areas of the site are most valued and how best to update the site in the future.

Our website uses a service called Google Analytics provided by Google. This service provide us with an opportunity to better evaluate and analyse how you use our website. It provides us with important feedback and information on behavioural patterns of users across our website’s pages, such as the number of unique times you visit the site and to see how you move around the site. This helps us to know which areas of the site are most valued and how best to update the site in the future.

All analysis and feedback information we collect is anonymous apart from your IP address in some cases. Google Analytics uses cookies placed on your computer or device’s browser to collect and process the following information:

  • Time of visit, pages visited, and time spent on each page of the webpages;
  • Referring site details (such as the URL you used to arrive at this site e.g. google search);
  • Type of web browser (Chrome, IE, Firefox);
  • Type of operating system (OS);
  • Flash version, JavaScript support, screen resolution, and screen colour processing ability;
  • Network location and IP address; and
  • Document downloads from our website.

Cookies are used to pass session data between pages. Our cookies neither reveal nor contain any identifying or personal data and cannot read any information on your computer or interact with other cookies on your system.

If you do not want your browser to accept our cookies you can turn off the cookie acceptance option in your browser settings. However, disabling cookie support may prevent this site from functioning properly and you may not be able to utilise fully all of its features and information.

For more information about how we use cookies, and how to disable them, click here to navigate to our Cookies Policy.

We may update this privacy notice from time to time without notice to you and any revised privacy policy will appear on this page. You should check back frequently for any updates or changes to this policy.