No, Get Help on Campus is an optional service to use when you need to. Its purpose is to make you feel safer on campus and be able to urgently contact campus security if ever required to do so.

The purpose of Get Help on Campus is to alert campus security of your location in the event of suspicious behaviour or an emergency that needs urgent attention but does not warrant calling the Emergency Services (999).

If you need support or need further support after using Get Help on Campus please contact the university wellbeing team. You can find information on this here: https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/ask/wellbeing/.

No, you can still contact campus security via phone, email or go direct to the security lodge. You can find the contact details for these here: https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/ask/contact/more/contact-security/.

Your location will only be tracked while sending an alert. Your location will only be seen if you are on campus as the alert is sent to campus security. Your location is not tracked in the background and is only seen by security once an alert has been sent.

Once the alert has been dealt with your details are no longer visible by the security team. Your location data will be stored for 30 days by ISS in case any further investigative action is needed on the issue.

Your location data will only be used so that campus security can quickly assist you in person if required. After an alert has been resolved the details of the incident will be in a security report, this information will be sent to relevant departments for welfare purposes and follow up support.

The information is securely stored by ISS to be used only in very occasional circumstances where the university may need to use this as evidence in any disciplinary or other university cases that might be made surrounding the incident.

Your data is stored for 30 days and is secure. Your data will never be visible or sent to any third parties and only used by the university for necessary purposes.
https://portal.lancaster.ac.uk/ask/gdpr/.

We recommend using “Always Allow Access” so that once an alert is set your location is constantly being updated. So you do not need your phone out for your location to be sent. This is in case you are in a situation where you need to put your phone down or away so that the information for the security team is still accurate.

You can access Get Help on Campus through the iLancaster app. Click the welfare button next to the overview button to access the features. From here you can activate an emergency or set a timed alert.

iLancaster is supported by IOS, Android and Huawei devices. It is also compatible with the web, you can access it via the iLancaster webpage.

Your university card number and Name will be used so that security can identify you and contact you if needed. This will be also used for the system to send a follow-up email after an alert has been sent to security.

If any incidents occur only the security team will have access to the details of the incident. You can reveal as much or little information as you like and once the issue is dealt with this information will not be added to a security log, the details of the incident will then be sent to relevant internal departments to provide appropriate support where required. Nobody else from the university or externally will have access to this information, unless required for severe disciplinary purposes.

Get Help on Campus needs access to your location so that if any issues are encountered on campus that when an alert is raised alerts, you can urgently get help. This location is only shared with campus security and is only intended to keep you safe. We recommend this is set to “Always Allow Access”.

Once an alert is set off you have 10 seconds to cancel this. You can set a timed alert if you are walking alone and feel unsafe so that if this is not cancelled it will send your location to campus security. You can cancel a timed alert at any time before the timer runs out, once this has run out you have one minute to cancel before security is notified.

Once the timer has gone off someone from the security team needs to cancel the alert, after security have checked the issue either over message or call, the security team will physically attend the alert where possible to check on your safety. This is so that you are not coerced into cancelling the alert by a third party.

The campus security team will be monitoring and responding to alerts. You will receive an email from the system afterwards with helpful links and may be contacted if needed by relevant internal departments.

As this only sends a live location once an alert has been sent and is not running in the background this should not impact battery performance.

This is so that you are notified of any status updates to your alert from the security team. This also notifies you of any new messages so that you do not need to stay on the app in case you need to be discreet.

Once security has acknowledged your alert you will be sent a notification and the status will change on the app showing that this has been acknowledged. Shortly after you will be messaged by the security team and have the option to either call or message depending on your situation and preference.

Once activated the responders will get the alert immediately. The alerts are monitored 24/7 and each alert sets off an alarm to grab the security team’s attention so that you can receive urgent assistance. The response time will be dependent on the situation but your safety is the priority so the response will be as quick as possible depending on the severity of the situation. The purpose of Get Help on Campus is to ensure help is provided as fast as possible.

Get Help on Campus works on campus as it notifies campus security, therefore once you leave campus you cannot use the services. If you encounter any issues while off campus call the emergency services at 999 to receive urgent assistance.

You can report issues on iLancaster's features via the help centre.

If the situation needs urgent assistance from the emergency services, please ring 999 as a first point of call. If you are unsure whether to ring 999 or needs support, then Get Help on Campus can be used in these circumstances to get help.

An email will be sent out after the incident occurs and will contain useful links to get extra support if needed. Other internal services may follow up as appropriate.

No, but we have created a step-by-step video explaining the process so you can learn how this works before using the service: Get Help on Campus.