Privacy statement

The Darwin Trust of Edinburgh (the Trust) is a Data Controller. This means we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. The purpose of this statement is to make you aware of how and why your personal data will be used and for how long it will usually be retained. It provides you with certain information that must be provided under UK GDPR. You can obtain further information (https://ico.org.uk) and guidance (https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/) from the UK Government Information Commissioner’s Office.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles. This means that your data will be:

• used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way,
• collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you (and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes),
• relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes,
• accurate and kept up to date,
• kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about, and
• kept securely.

How will the Trust have obtained information about you?

The Trust may hold information about you because you have contacted the Trust to enquire

about obtaining financial support from the Trust or have applied for an award.

If you have applied for a PhD studentship or undergraduate scholarship to study at the University of Edinburgh then this information will have come from your initial enquiry and/or from the application form that you submitted to the Trust.

If you have applied to study for a PhD at an institution other than the University of Edinburgh and that institution has nominated you for Darwin Trust studentship then the Trust will have received information about you from that institution.

If you have applied for any other award from the Trust, either for yourself or on behalf of an organisation, then the Trust will hold the information about you that you provided at the time.

What will happen to your personal information held by the Trust?

If you enquire about applying for a PhD studentship but do not submit an application then your personal information will be destroyed as soon as the relevant application deadline has passed.

If you have applied for, or have been nominated for, an award from the Trust then your personal information will be processed to allow your application to be assessed along with other applications and to keep you informed about its progress.

If you fail to provide information that is necessary for us to consider your application then we may not be able to process your application successfully.

If your application for an award from the Trust is unsuccessful then any information that you have supplied during the application process will be retained by the Trust for one year from the time that a final decision has been made on your application and will then be destroyed.

If your application for an award is successful then the Trust will retain your application form and any other information that you have supplied to the Trust for a period of two years from the end of the award. After this time the Trust will retain for its records only

• details of the award itself,
• your name if you were the recipient of a PhD studentship or undergraduate scholarship, and
• the name of the organisation receiving any other award.

Decisions on applications to the Trust will be made by the Trust’s Administrative Committee or the Board of Trustees and no automated procedures will be involved.

What will the Trust do with your personal information?

Personal information that you provide to the Trust will only be used to process your application or to administer an award. If the Trust makes a payment to you directly then information necessary to make the payment may be passed to the Trust’s bankers. Information held by the Trust may be sent to the institution to which you have applied to be a PhD or undergraduate student to facilitate processing of your application or the administration of your award from the Trust.

Information about an award made to you may be used by the Trust to fulfil its responsibilities as a registered charity, for example for inclusion in its annual report. This may include your name but will not include any other personal information. The Trust may also include in its annual report your name and the title of your thesis after you have complete your degree. The Trust’s annual report is available on the Darwin Trust web site ( https://biology.ed.ac.uk/darwintrust )

The Trust may contact you after the end of your award to obtain information about your current professional activities so that it can assess the effectiveness of its awards, and may occasionally send you information about the Trust and its activities.

The Trust may supply information about you to a government agency, such as the Inland Revenue, if it is legally required to do so. The Trust may also provide information to help you obtain a visa to enter, or remain in, the UK but will only do so with your agreement.

How will the Trust store your personal information?

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Your rights concerning your personal information held by the Trust

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• request access to your personal information,
• request correction of any inaccurate information we may hold about you,
• request erasure of your personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it,
• object to processing of your personal information,
• request the restriction of processing of your personal information, and
• request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

If you want to exercise any of these rights please contact the Trust at darwin.trust@ed.ac.uk.

September 2023