School admissions privacy notice

The data controller for the information we collect

This Privacy Notice is provided to meet the requirements of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) to explain how we process your personal data in delivering the School Admissions Service. 
Leeds City Council is the data controller for the purposes of the Data Protection Act 2018 and other regulations, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation, which means it determines what your data is used for and why it is collected. The purpose of this privacy notice is to tell you about what information we collect about you when you use our service, how we use that information, and who we may share it with. The contact details of the data controller are Leeds City Council, Merrion House, 110 Merrion Way, Leeds, LS2 8BB.

The data we will collect

To deliver the school admissions and school appeals service, we will process data on:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Phone number and email
  • Child’s name and Date of birth
  • Child’s home address if different
  • Gender
  • Looked after child status

Special category data:

  • Religion
  • Ethnicity
  • Disability
  • Special Educational needs

How we collect information about you

We collect information about you from you directly (for example, by asking you to complete one of our forms, via the telephone through, our contact centre, or face-to-face). We may also obtain your information from other sources, such as:

  • other persons acting on your behalf
  • schools and educational departments
  • internal council departments
  • area inclusion partnerships
  • other public authorities
  • school appeal panels
  • religious bodies for schools designated as having religious character (“faith schools”) 
  • NHS Trusts
  • Department for Education

Why we process your data

We use your information to:

  • Allocate school places in a fair, transparent, and open way, including triggering the fair access protocol
  • Arrange appeal hearings before an independent panel when a place is refused
  • Make a request to the DfE, or school adjudicator, for a pupil to be admitted to a school where the school refuses to do so.
  • To make statutory returns or reports to DfE, School Adjudicator or equivalent bodies

All the data collected will be treated in strict confidence and in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). The data provided by you will only be used for the purposes specified.

Lawful basis for processing

We will process your data in accordance with UK GDPR. The processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that the following applies:

Article 6(1)(c): processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject and

Article 6(1)(e): processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller. This is supported by the following legal framework.

This is supported by the following legal framework:

  • The School Admissions Regulation 2012
  • The School Admissions Regulation 2024
  • The School Admissions Code 2021

The lawful basis for processing your special category data is in accordance with the following:

Article 9(2)(g): processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest.

This is supported by Schedule 1, Part 2 (such as Condition 6- Statutory and Government Purposes) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

The above condition requires an appropriate policy document, which provides further information about this processing.

Data retention, storage and destruction

Our data retention policies and procedures are designed to help ensure that we comply with our legal obligations in relation to the retention. This means that your personal data will be retained up to your child’s 25th birthday, after which it will be confidentially destroyed. Any school admission appeal papers held by the council in respect of schools who conduct their own appeals will be held by the council for 2 years and will be destroyed after this period, unless the law says that we need to hold it for longer or if there is a business requirement to do so. You have rights in respect of the information we hold about you, including the right to ask for access to your information or to withdraw from this process.

Who we share your data with

We share your data with agencies shown below as follows:

  • schools, educational institutions and other local authorities who will use this information to refuse or offer places
  • internal council departments and Area inclusion Partnerships who will use this information to support children to access and attend school
  • other public authorities who may need to be involved in the processing of the school application
  • Department of Education (DfE) for statutory reporting purposes and in order to make the services of Leeds better
  • We have legal obligations to share data with bodies such as schools, the NHS, and police where there are safeguarding reasons or there is a law requiring us to disclose (for example, criminal investigations)
  • school appeal panels
  • religious bodies for schools designated as having religious character (“faith schools”)
  • NHS Trusts
  • Department for Education

In addition, we will share your personal data:

  • where such disclosure is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which we are subject
  • in order to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another natural person
  • for the purposes of security and prevention of fraud and other criminal activity
  • where such disclosure is necessary for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims, whether in court proceedings or in an administrative or out-of-court procedure
  • where there are safeguarding concerns

Automated decision making

We run an automated allocation process for school entry year groups (reception, junior, and secondary) for national offer day. An algorithmic process calculates which applications qualify for school places. Prior to the algorithm being run, the admissions team and schools have to run cross-checks to ensure the correct oversubscription criteria of the school’s individual admission policy are applied.

Your rights

The following rights under data protection law are available under the UK GDPR:

  • the right to access (where you can ask for copies of your personal data)
  • the right to rectification (where you can ask us to rectify inaccurate personal data and to complete incomplete personal data)
  • the right to erasure (where you can ask us to erase your personal data)
  • the right to restrict processing (where you can ask us to restrict the processing of your personal data)
  • the right to data portability (where you can ask that we transfer your personal data to another organisation or to you)
  • the right to object to processing (where you can object to the processing of your personal data)
  • the right to complain to a supervisory authority (where you can complain about our processing of your personal data)
  • withdraw consent (to the extent that the legal basis of our processing of your personal data is consent, you can withdraw that consent)

Where we process your information under legal obligation, certain rights do not apply, such as:

  • erasure
  • data portability
  • objection to processing
  • the right to withdraw consent

These rights are subject to certain limitations and exceptions. You can learn more about your rights and how to exercise them, with further details on the Information Commissioner’s Office website. You may exercise any of the above rights in relation to your personal data by writing to us using the contact details provided below.

If your data is sent to other countries

The information you provide will not be transferred to another country outside of the UK.

Contact us

Any queries in relation to this privacy notice should be forwarded to:
Email:  education.transfers@leeds.gov.uk

Data Protection Officer

Aaron Linden
Head of Information Management and Governance - Data Protection Officer
Leeds City Council
Merrion House
110 Merrion Way
Leeds
LS2 8BB

DPO@leeds.gov.uk 

The council privacy notice is available online.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with the way in which your information has been handled, you should speak with the specific service in the first instance. 
Any data protection complaints about how the council has processed your personal data will be handled in accordance with the council’s complaints policy. You can find out how to submit a complaint.

You can refer to the Information Commissioner if you consider that there has been an infringement of data protection legislation. Further details can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website. 

Changes to this notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. We will notify you of significant changes to this notice by email or other means as appropriate. This privacy notice was last updated 5 November 2024.