Skip to content

Data protection and privacy statement – Research Design Service Yorkshire and Humber

Data protection and privacy statement

Data protection and privacy

The Research Design Service Yorkshire and the Humber (RDS YH) is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to provide research design advice in health and social care research for the Yorkshire and Humber region.

The RDS YH complies fully with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act.

As a recipient of support from the RDS we will collect and securely store project information relating to your application in order to facilitate our advice giving. We will retain that data until one year after the end of our successive RDS contracts.

We additionally categorise our support by category and time spent. This information will be shared annually, along with details pertaining to the project’s principal investigator, with the NIHR Central Commissioning Facility (CCF) to evaluate the management and delivery of the RDS. The CCF is part of the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) NIHR. All information will be held securely and treated in the strictest confidence by the RDS, CCF and NIHR.

The NIHR privacy policy includes further information including ways NIHR may use your data, contact details and details of your individual rights regarding how your data will be used. This includes details of the information collected by NIHR, why it is collected, how long it will be retained and how the information will be used

All information that you provide us with will be treated in the strictest confidence. Your contact details are collected to facilitate our advice provision. RDS YH staff may also ask you for other details which may include, for example, your occupation and the organisation at which you are employed.

Registering your interest in RDS Yorkshire and Humber events

You can join our mailing list to receive information about RDS YH events, newsletters and other updates by email.  We will ask you for your contact details which include your name and email address.

This personally identifiable information is stored securely by the RDS YH and only members of the RDS YH staff are able to access this information. You can change your mind at any time and unsubscribe by emailing us at rds-yh@sheffield.ac.uk 

Evaluations

From time to time the RDS will ask you, anonymously, to evaluate the service that you have received, whether it is project support or, for example, event attendance. The feedback we receive is used to improve our service and quotes may be used as feedback to our funders. Collated data will be kept until one year after the end of successive RDS contracts, individual data will be kept for one year.

CCF asks us to circulate their RDS evaluation survey each year, to those who we have provided application support to in the latest annual reporting period. Please consult the NIHR privacy policy for the handling of that data.

Other information

If you wish to contact RDS YH to ensure that your contact details are correct and up-to-date or to ask for your contact information to be removed from our records, please contact RDS YH at:

Research Design Service Yorkshire and the Humber,
School of Health and Related Research,
University of Sheffield,
Room 2.04, The Innovation Centre,
c/o Regent Court,
Regent Street,
Sheffield S1 4DA

Data retention

Your contact information will be removed from our records, one year after the end of the RDS YH contract period (currently one year from 01/10/2023), unless the information relates to a financial transaction when we are obliged to retain it for up to seven years for auditing purposes.

If we decide to change our Data Protection and Privacy Statement, we will post details of any changes on our website at: www.rds-yh.nihr.ac.uk. This will help ensure that you are always aware of what personal information we collect, how we use it, how long we will retain it for and under what circumstances, if any, we share it with other parties.

Please contact us if you require any further information on 0114 222 0828 or rds-yh@sheffield.ac.uk

Please also see our Confidentiality Statement, Accessibility Statement and Cookie Policy.

Should you have any complaint about the way that the RDS YH processes your personal information you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner by visiting: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ – or by writing to the Commissioner at: The Information Commissioner, Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.