School Admissions: privacy notice

School Admissions privacy notice

How we handle your data when you and your child are going through the schools admission process.

Purpose for processing your information

The School Admission service is the coordinator body for the application process for schools and academies and the initial contact point for school admissions related enquires. All schools, including independent schools, have a statutory duty to notify the local authority Admissions Team within 5 school days of all new pupil starting and leaving school.

We collect the following information

Information we request from you is for the purpose of processing your school application. This information includes:

full name of your child
date of birth
home address
parent or carer's full name
address if different from your child
your contact details, including phone numbers and email address
Council Tax number
current or previous education provision
professional supporting documents if relevant to your application
background education history of applying for as an in-year admission
country of origin if a new arrival to the country and length of stay in the UK
health and medical information (if applicable)

This information is only used for the intended purpose but if we intend to use it for any other purpose we will normally ask you first. In some cases, the council may use your information for another purpose if it has a legal duty to do so, to provide a complete service to you, to prevent and detect fraud, or if there is a risk of serious harm or threat to life.

How we collect your information

The initial application for a school place can either be submitted online or a hard copy paper. Additional information will be requested either by letter, email, telephone or face-to-face.

Who the information is shared with

The Admissions Team may also use your information for other legitimate purposes and may share (where necessary) with other council departments and external bodies responsible for administering services to children and young people. Reasons for sharing information with the internal and external bodies will be:

to enable the processing of school applications
to fulfil the council’s safeguarding duty
to comply with the Prevent Strategy
to provide central government bodies with mandatory data returns
the Home Office to notify of potential illegal immigration
the police may request information at any time as part of a criminal investigation.

Internal bodies include:

SEND (Special Educational Needs & Disabilities) team
Virtual School
Data Team
Early Help Service
MASH Team and Safeguarding service
Early Years’ Service
Governance and Legal Services

External bodies include:

schools and academies (previous current and applied for, including independent or boarding)
other councils or boroughs
the police
central government bodies, including Department for Education, Local Government Ombudsmen and the Office of the School Adjudicator; the Home Office and the Department of Work and Pensions

For the purpose of validating proof of address, the School Admissions Team will refer to data held by any of the services mentioned above, internal Council Tax records, the Housing Team, Parking Services and the Fraud Team.

The Admissions Team will keep your application record for 3 years. After this time it will be deleted.

How your information is retained

The lawful basis for the processing of the above-mentioned personal data is Article 6 (1)( e) public task.
The condition for processing special category personal data is:

Article 9(2)(g) - Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on

Article 9(2)(g) to process your special category data
Article 9(2)(j) - Archiving, research and statistics. We rely on the ‘Research’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(j) to process your special category data

The public task for School Admissions is the law which states that the LA must coordinate admission applications for the first point of entry to Reception, and the transition point from primary to secondary school for entry to Year 7. The team are required to coordinate admissions for all state-maintained schools that participate in local authority coordination.

The above establishes that the council has both a public interest task and duty to respond to the processing of school admission applications.

In addition, the council has other duties associated with:

maintaining adequate records of its transactions (activities, correspondence) as set out under the Local Government Act 1972 section 224. Specifically, evidencing its transactions, requires considering the integrity of those records
the Code of Practice on the Management of Records issued under section 46 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Included in the Code is the requirement to adhere to “three principles of value, integrity and accountability… to manage information and maintain a record of their (Public Authorities) activities”. When viewed together the council must be able to maintain records of its transactions as they happened

Your rights and access to your information

You have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you.

The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also gives you additional rights about the information we hold about you and how we use it, including the right to:

withdraw consent and the right to object and restrict further processing of your data, however, this may affect service delivery to you
request to have your data deleted where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing and provided there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it
request your data to be rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete
have your data transferred or copied should you move to another authority
not be subject to automated decision-making including profiling

To submit a Subject Access Request contain the the Admissions Team

If you have any concerns

School Admissions Team

phone: 0202 7745 6432 or 6433
9am to 2pm, Monday to Friday

You have a right to complain to us if you think we have not complied with our obligation for handling your personal information. Contact the Admissions Team

Your concerns will be investigated via the respective council’s complaints procedures.

If you are not satisfied with the council’s response you have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Visit the ICO website.

Changes in your circumstances

You must notify us immediately if there are any changes in your circumstances and personal details so we can maintain an accurate and up to date record of your information.

Last updated: 12 February 2026

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