Privacy Policy & Cookies

1. About this Privacy Notice

The University of Essex is the controller for the purpose of data protection law.
Event Essex is part of University of Essex Campus Services Ltd (UECS Ltd), a wholly owned subsidiary company of the University of Essex. Our registered company number is 02534817.

This notice explains what personal data we process when you interact with our services, including visiting our website and informs you how this information is used and protected. Our web pages link to external websites: Event Essex has no responsibility for privacy or other legal issues relating to these external sites.

It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the data protection legislation.

Please read this notice alongside our overarching privacy statement, which is available on our Privacy Hub.

2. What type of information we collect about you

We may collect the following personal information from you when you interact with us in the following ways:

• making a reservation and using any of our services. When making a reservation or using services provided by Event Essex it is necessary for us to obtain information to identify you, contact you and process your purchase and requests. For an accommodation booking we will require information such as your name, address, phone number, email address and credit/debit card details. Where you have chosen to provide them, it may also include details pertaining to your personal preferences, such as the type of room, type of pillows, food allergies enabling us to ensure that your needs are met.
• visiting our website. You may choose to complete an online form located on our website eventessex.co.uk. The information requested on this form will include your name, telephone number and email address.
• corresponding with us by phone, email, Linkedin and social media sites (including but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) or otherwise. The information you give us may include your name, email address, postal address, telephone number, date of birth, credit card information, gender and other relevant information. We may keep a record of that correspondence.
• submitting details on a comment card or feedback form. This may include your name, email address, telephone number, details of your experience, details of your interests and other relevant information.
• participating in a competition or other marketing initiatives. This may include your name, email address, postcode and other relevant information. If you choose to complete a survey the information collected will be relevant to the research being conducted. This may include information such as your name, email address, date of birth, gender, interests and postcode.
• choosing to send us a CV or a completed job application. This can be by email, post or via an online recruitment site.

Technical data that we collect

When you visit our website and decide to accept cookies, we will collect the following personal information:

• your IP address
• webpages you looked at
• the duration of your visit
• the details of your web browser
• the details about the files requested
• the date and time of requests for each file requested
• the referring page, if any, from which you may have followed a hyperlink
• the search terms and search results
• your unique ID which is given to each visitor and the expiration date of the ID
• the domain from which your request originated

3. Why we use your personal data – and our legal basis for doing so

When we collect or otherwise process your personal data, we need both a purpose (i.e., a reason) and a legal basis. There are several legal bases under the UK General Data Protection Regulation. We generally rely on the following lawful bases when processing your personal data:

3.1 Performance of a contract

If you enter into, or are about to enter into, a contract with us in order for that to function we need to process certain data about you.

3.2 Legitimate interests

From time to time, we may need to use your personal data to pursue our legitimate interests or those of a third party. We rely on legitimate interests when the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party, unless there is good reason to protect your personal data which overrides those legitimate interests.

Where we rely on our legitimate interests, we mean our:

• pursuit of our activities and objectives, or those of a third party
• compliance with applicable legal and regulatory obligations and any codes of conduc
• improvement and development of our business operations and service offering, or those of a third party; or
• protection of our services, students, employees and customers, or those of a third party.

We have set out our reasons for using your personal information in the table below. Where we rely on our legitimate interests, we have set out those interests in the table below.

3.3 Legal obligation

We may need to process your personal data to ensure our compliance with our legal and statutory obligations. For example, should we be required to submit information to the police or to a court, and in cases where the processing is necessary for compliance with other laws. In all cases the personal data shared will only be that which is necessary for the purposes and subject to the University having measures in place to ensure that the data is handled in line with data protection laws.

3.4 Consent

We do not routinely rely on consent to process your personal data. If we wish to rely on your consent to process your personal data, we will provide you with full details of the information that we would like and the reason we need it, so that you can carefully consider whether you wish to consent.

Where we are relying on consent to process your personal data, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products, support or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent. You have the right to object to our use of your personal data at any time.

Please see the Data Rights section of our Privacy Hub for a summary of your right to object and the details of who to contact if you want to exercise them.

3.5 Vital Interests

We may use your personal information in situations where we need to protect your vital interests (or someone else’s interests).

4. Why we use your technical data and our legal basis for doing so

The purpose for collecting and processing data is to maintain and monitor the performance of our website and related digital advertising, and to look to improve the services we offer you.

We use this information to bring you the best content and experience on our website. If you do not provide us with the required personal data, we will try to provide you with the best service, but you may not be able to access all the functionality of the website.

Data relating to web server requests are used for completion of the current activity (e.g., a request to view a web page), and are subsequently stored in log files, which are later processed to provide statistical information about, for example, usage, load on servers, traffic patterns, troubleshooting, and incident investigation.

The data is also recorded by Google Analytics which is used by the University to report on web traffic on its sites. Analysis of web usage may be used for: systems and performance monitoring; research and marketing (e.g., analysis of demographic information and user behaviour).

We also partner with Microsoft Clarity and Microsoft Advertising to capture how you use and interact with our website through behavioural metrics, heatmaps, and session replay to improve and market our products/services. Website usage data is captured using first and third-party cookies and other tracking technologies to determine the popularity of products/services and online activity. Additionally, we use this information for site optimization, fraud/security purposes, and advertising. For more information about how Microsoft collects and uses your data, visit the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

5. Table 1 – Legal basis for processing your data

6. Where the data we hold comes from

We collect data directly from you when you interact with our services.

It is standard practice for web servers to collect data automatically about all requests for files (web pages, images, etc).

7. Whom we share your data with

In addition to the services we use above, we may share your data for the following purposes:

• log files and other data may be analysed by the University’s external support providers when investigating faults and other technical issues relating to webserver performance
• many University of Essex web pages include tracking code which allows Google Analytics to record usage and traffic information. These data are held on Google servers, are used for reporting and analysis by the University and a limited number of external consultants; they are not shared with any other parties. They are not and cannot be used to identify individuals
• when we need to take payment from users for goods and services we pass information necessary for processing these payments to our merchant services providers – currently Elavon. University webpages do not gather details of your credit or debit cards, nor is such information provided automatically to us by Elavon. Data about the status of payments are provided back to us from Elavon and is stored in our database.
• data may be passed to the police and other authorities where required in the investigation of illegal activities and security breaches
• data may be shared with business partners, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with them or you
• third parties under contract to provide services to us where the use of your personal information forms part of their contractual duty to us
• consultants and professional advisors as is our legitimate interest to do so.

Where data is passed to third parties, it is done so in compliance with Data Protection law.

Anonymised usage data may be provided in publicly available web statistics; any such data cannot be traced to individual users.

8. Where we keep your data and how long we keep it for

We have retention schedules that set out how long we keep information of all types.

We do not generally transfer your data outside of the UK. If we have to transfer any of your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA) we ensure the receiving country or organisation is deemed to have adequate data protection provision. Where a country or organisation does not have adequate protection we will put safeguards in place. Details of these safeguards can be provided to you upon request.

9. Changes to this Privacy Notice

This privacy notice was published on 15th October 2025. We may change this privacy notice from time to time and will communicate these changes directly to you where appropriate.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or if you would like to access any of your rights, please contact dataprotectionofficer@essex.ac.uk.
Last revised 06th November 2025