Accessing information
So far as is possible, the University of Stirling wishes to provide members of the public with any information they need that is held by the University. The University is committed to promoting public understanding and awareness of its role and activities through the publication of all relevant information. It will also make every effort to provide, where practical and permissible, additional information to members of the public in cases where routinely published information does not provide them with the information they require.
Under the terms of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, individuals have a number of rights with regard to obtaining information held by the University.
Request for information relating to yourself (Subject Access Request)
Under the terms of the UK GDPR, you have the right to ask the University for any information held about you as an individual. If you wish to make an enquiry about data that relates to yourself, then contact the Data Protection Unit, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA (tel. 01786 466670; email data.protection@stir.ac.uk).
Include the following information in your request:
- Full name and date of birth
- Your contact details
- If you are a student or member of staff, your student registration number or employee number
- If you are a previous student or member of staff details of when you were at the University and what you studied/which department you were in
- A full description of the information you are requesting. Provide as much information as possible to help the University locate the information such as the time periods concerned, names of members of staff who you may have dealt with or who may be able to locate the information, the department or areas of the University that are most likely to hold the relevant information. We may have to get back to you to seek further clarification if we do not have enough detail to enable us to find the information you are seeking.
The University may ask for evidence of your identity. Current staff and students are advised to submit their requests from their official University email address.
In most cases we will respond to your request within one month. If your request is particularly complex we may have to extend this time by a maximum of a further two months but in this case we will inform you and explain the reasons for the delay.
The University will not respond to any requests from third-party SAR platforms.
Request for other information held by the University
Under the terms of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 you also have the right to ask the University to provide you with any information held by the University. For example, you may wish to see the minutes of a particular meeting, or obtain standard information about student numbers. The Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 also entitle you to have access to certain environmental information.
The University already makes public large quantities of the information that it holds, and a description of all that we publish is available in our Publication Scheme or from the FOI Unit.
Before submitting any request you are advised to check the University’s Publication Scheme to determine whether the information you require is already available.
If you wish to make an enquiry about information held by the University which does not seem to be already available, then write or email to:
The FOI Unit
University of Stirling
Stirling
FK9 4LA
When we receive your request we shall instigate a search for the information you need. If we cannot determine exactly what information you require, we shall contact you as soon as possible to clarify your request. If we already publish the information you require, we shall send you details of how to find the information.
In all other cases, the information you need will be located and provided to you. Some information may be exempt from your access. Should that be the case, we will provide what information we can and also provide reasons why other information has not been released to you. We may need to charge a fee to cover the costs of our search and any copying. Until a fee is received, the information you require will not be released to you. In such cases where we do not provide all the information you seek or require payment of a fee, we will inform you of your rights of review and appeal.
Charges for requests
Details about how charges for Freedom of Information and Environmental Information requests are calculated are in the following document:
April 2019