Privacy Notice:

This privacy notice explains how the British Council will collect and process your personal information as part of your Future Leaders Connect application.

Information collected at application stage

The British Council will collect and process your personal information as part of the Future Leaders Connect programme application to determine whether you meet the eligibility criteria, available on the programme website and in the terms and conditions. This will include age bracket, the country in which you live in, whether you are fluent in English and whether you are currently employed by or are an immediate family member of the British Council, Guidant Global and the Møller Institute. To help us shortlist applicants, we will also ask for information on your policy ideas, your experience as a leader, your professional or voluntary experience and academic background.

We will ask you about the leaders you admire, and which global policy issues are the most important to you. These answers will be separated from your personal details as soon as possible to preserve anonymity. The answers will then be used to benefit programme design, and in the production of statistics, which we will publish as research, data reports and in Future Leaders Connect promotional materials, as well as for the British Council’s monitoring and evaluation of the programme.

We will ask you to provide this information through the Guidant Global’s (our external supplier) application platform.

Equality monitoring information

We will ask you to submit equality and diversity information. This will include personal information about your age, ethnicity, gender and disability (if any) for the purposes of monitoring equality of opportunity. Submission of equality and diversity information is entirely voluntary. This will lead to the production of statistics which do not allow you to be identified, and which we will publish as research and in Future Leaders Connect promotional materials. Equality and monitoring information will not be used for any other purpose and will not be used as part of the shortlisting and selection process.

Information collected if you are shortlisted or selected

If you are shortlisted or selected to take part in the programme we will ask for more information to aid your involvement and full participation. This will include information about any specific accessibility needs, a photograph and a biography, including a sentence on your vision for global policy change.

If you are selected, we may invite you to join a closed Facebook group for members of Future Leaders Connect, British Council staff and the Future Leaders Connect trainers. We will also contact you via email, may add you to the internet based OneDrive to share information with you, and we may contact you via Twitter or other social media.

If you are not selected, you can still stay in touch and receive updates, news and learning and development content through our digital network. For those of you who have opted-in (consented) to join our digital network we may use email details submitted for marketing.

Sharing data

Your application data including your policy vision and self-identified skill level and more may also be shared with partner organisations where it is necessary for delivery or evaluation of the Programme. This could include, our training provider and other partners involved in developing or delivering the training programme. We may also share your data with external research and evaluation agencies or internally with other British Council departments for research and evaluation purposes.

If necessary, your information including contact details will be shared with the relevant British Council country teams for future engagement. In the event that this is necessary, all relevant legislative requirements around international transfers will be adhered to, as well as any national privacy legislation.

How long we will keep your data for

We will keep your data for three years, and then it will be deleted (excepting statistics which do not allow you to be identified). If you have consented to join our mailing list, or if you are a member of our alumni group (after taking part in the UK Future Leaders Connect programme) we will retain the personal information and review it regularly to ensure it remains necessary for us to hold. You can remove your consent for us to hold your data at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails.

Legal basis for use of your information

The legal basis for collecting and processing your application information is in agreement with our terms and conditions of application (contract). You should provide this information we have requested. If you fail to provide the information, it is highly unlikely that your application will be considered any further and you will be unable to participate in Future Leaders Connect.

We also ask for equality monitoring information. It is your decision whether to submit this information and you can still take part in the programme if you decide not to.

We would like to send you policy and leadership learning resources by email, as part of the Future Leaders Connect Community. It is your choice whether you receive this information, and we ask that you opt-in.

The legal basis for using your information for these purposes is your consent. If you give your consent, you can remove it any time by unsubscribing by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the emails. For further information, please refer to the consent statement. If you decide not to give your consent, or if you later remove your consent (unsubscribe), this will have no impact on how your application is assessed and you can still take part in the Future Leaders Connect application process.

If you are disqualified due to ineligibility, you have the right to have this decision reviewed by human intervention. We will be happy to provide you with feedback on your application. If you wish to exercise this right, please contact futureleadersconnect@britishcouncil.org 

Further information

For further information about how we use your personal information, and your rights under UK data protection law, please use the following link: https://www.britishcouncil.org/privacy.