Privacy Notice for visitors to our school
This Privacy Notice explains how we handle personal information for visitors to our school. It is designed to be transparent about our data collection practices in line with relevant laws and reflects our commitment to protecting your privacy.
The relevant legislation governing data privacy in the UK is:
- The Data Protection Act 2018
- The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR)
- The Data (use and Access) Act 2025 (DUUA)
Why are we giving this to you?
When you visit our school, we will ask for and collect data about you for safeguarding purposes. This document sets out what personal data we will collect when you visit. Anything that we do with your personal data is known as “processing.”
This document explains why we process that data, who we share this information with, and your rights in relation to your personal data processed by us. We also explain below how the school keeps your information safe.
If you want to know anything about the information that we keep, contact details can be found at the end of this document.
Policy Statement
Visitors (including parents of children on roll) are asked to sign in at reception. Signing in involves giving some information and registering a photograph on the school visitor management system. If your visit is planned as part of an educational activity we may ask you to complete a visitor form.
What information do we hold about you (and your child, if appropriate) and where do we get it from:
We will collect, hold, share and otherwise use information about you and your child as set out in the boxes below:
| Where do we get it from? | Why we need it? | |
| Your name(s) | You | To issue visitor passes and for identification around school |
| Your image | Sign In & CCTV | To safeguard all students and staff both during and outside of school hours when they are on our site |
| Vehicle registration | You | To keep a log of the cars in our car park |
Additionally – if your visit is part of an educational activity
| Organisation | You | To keep a log of the organisations we work with |
| DBS information | You | To safeguard our students |
| Your consent to the use of your image (or not) | You | To ensure we understand your wishes in relation to your image |
We are required to process visitor data in order to comply with our public task, in accordance with Article 6.1.e of the Data Protection Act 2018 (DLA 2018) namely to ensure that the security of our pupils, staff, visitors, buildings and their contents are always maintained.
How long will we hold your information?
We will hold information relating to you only for as long as necessary. Visitor information is automatically deleted from our visitor management system after 6 years.
Contact information such as email address may be stored for longer to maintain contact over time but you can request that your data is deleted at any time.
Who will we share your information with?
We do not routinely share information about our visitors with anyone without consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so.
Keeping this information safe
It is very important that only people who need to use your information can see it. The school keeps your information safe by putting in place procedures and technologies to make sure all information about you and your child is safe, from when we collect it to when we destroy it.
Security procedures include:
- Entry controls for the site and buildings. All staff wear photo-ID on school lanyards. All authorised DBS-checked visitors wear photo-ID on green school lanyards. Visitors/contractors wear photo-ID on green or red lanyards.
- Secure lockable desks and cupboards etc.
- Equipment. Staff are trained to ensure that individual PC monitors do not show confidential information to passers-by and that they log off from their PC when it is left unattended.
- Training. We provide training to our staff on the importance of keeping data secure.
Your rights in relation to your information
You can ask to see the information we hold about you. If you wish to do this you should contact the Headteacher in the first instance. (Contact details are on the school website)
You also have the right to:
- Object to what we are doing with your information (but remember that some of the things that we do have to be done by law)
- Have inaccurate or incomplete information about you amended
- Ask us to stop doing certain things with your information in some cases
- Make a claim against the school in certain circumstances where you have suffered as a result of the school breaching your data protection rights
If you feel it necessary to do any of the above, you can speak with the Headteacher who will arrange a meeting with you. The school does not have to meet all of your requests but we will let you know where we are unable to do so.
Withdrawal of Consent
Where we are processing your personal data with your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent. If you change your mind or are unhappy with our use of your personal data, please let us know by contacting the Headteacher.
Complaints
If you wish to raise a complaint about how the school manages your personal data, please refer to our Data Protection Policy for further information on the complaints process.
If there are still concerns, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office should you consider this to be necessary, at https://ico.org.uk/concerns
Contact
If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact our Data Protection Officer on DPO@bywaterkent.co.uk
Last Updated
This version was last updated in January 2026.