The correspondence below was emailed to providers on 6th December 2018:
Similarity Detection Service (SDS) notification emails: December processing and the UCAS Undergraduate 15 January deadline
Following the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the links in our SDS notification emails now expire after seven days. With this in mind, we will continue to flag personal statements for similarity up to, and including, Monday 24 December, but the last date we’ll send SDS notification emails will be 14 December.
For personal statements flagged between 14 – 24 December, you will not receive the SDS notification emails until Wednesday 3 January, giving you sufficient time to access the transcripts. This also applies to the SDS notification emails sent to applicants.
Following the 15 January deadline for our UCAS Undergraduate scheme, it may take our Verification Team a little longer than usual to screen personal statements. The usual turnaround time is two or three days, but due to the large number of applications we receive, there will be a backlog of personal statements waiting to be processed by Copycatch, resulting in SDS emails to applicants and providers being delayed.
If you have any queries about this, please contact our Verification Team on 01242 545 494, or at verification@ucas.ac.uk.
Kind regards
Provider Communications
UCAS