Privacy Statement

This policy helps you to understand how Avon Community Therapists collects, stores, uses, and protects your personal information in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This policy aims to help you feel more confident about how your information is looked after.

What is personal data?

Personal data is any information about a person that can identify them such as their name, address, contact phone number, date of birth, bank card details. This can include information that is written (including emails and handwritten notes), spoken information (e.g. voicemail messages), photos, or videos. It also includes financial information such as bank details and payments made to us. It does not include information that is anonymised. 

Health data is called ‘special category data’ and is treated even more carefully.

What do we collect and why?

We need to collect some of your personal data as part of us providing a service to you. Any information you give us will be treated in confidence and will only be used to enable us to provide you our services. We will only ever share your data with a third party to provide essential services to you and will do so only with your permission. For example, if you need an adaptation to your home we will ask for your permission to share required data with a third party who can supply/fit these adaptations.

As well as basic information such as your name and address, we will also ask for information about your health conditions (health history/ diagnoses, other health professionals involved, current health status and any investigations), GP practice, and NOK details. We require this information to provide a safe service, therefore if you decline we may not be able to offer you our input. Should this happen we will always talk to you about it first.

We often take photos of parts of your property if needing to refer for adaptations or equipment, however we will ask for your explicit consent for this at the time of needing this information. Prior to the assessment you will be asked to sign a patient consent form, giving us permission to use your health data to further inform our treatment plan and to ensure there are no contraindications during our course of treatment.

When do we collect it?

We collect some information via direct interactions when you first contact our services, whether via email or phone call(s). Prior to the first visit we collect data through our written consent form that you complete and return to us by post or email. We collect more detailed personal information during assessments. We will always ask for consent prior to taking any recordings or photos, if required, and you can decline this at any time. If your personal details change at any point please let us know so we can make changes to your records.

When using our website we may automatically collect your technical data, such as browsing actions, usage patterns. These are collected by using cookies or similar technologies. You can set your browser to refuse all or some cookies or set up alerts if the website you are about to use accesses cookies.

If you use the contact us form on our website, please only supply the information that is necessary for your enquiry.

What do we use it for?

We use this data to enable us to provide a comprehensive service for you. Any information that we share with trusted partnering organisations will only be the information that is strictly necessary to fulfil our service to you, and will be discussed when planning your treatment. We will also need to use your information when we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation, such as HM revenues & customs, our insurance provider, banking services, auditors, legal services, and IT service providers. The information shared will only be the necessary data required and for specified purposes only. We require all third parties to respect the security of your information and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We will only contact you with regard to carrying out our services. Following our input we often send out feedback surveys and if complaints or concerns are raised then we will contact you about this. We may use anonymised quotes from patient feedback to help promote our service. We do not send marketing communications or sell any information.

International transfers

Your data will not be shared internationally and we do not accept bank payments from outside of the UK.

How do we store your information?

We have appropriate security measures to ensure your personal information is not lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way. Your information is held securely on a password protected computer system and any paper documents are held in a locked cabinet. If there is any breach of data protection (that meets the threshold for reporting), we will notify you and our regulators within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach and without undue delay.

We keep your written data for no longer than 7 years from the completion of our working together – this is so that we have a reference of our work for potential situations that may arise in the future. It may be that you come back to our services and so this information will be required. Following this time period your data will be shredded.

We are required by UK tax law to keep appropriate records for a minimum of 6 years.

While you are receiving our services, your name and contact information will be held in a locked cabinet accessible by the director’s NOK so in the event of the therapist’s death you can be contacted. This information will then be shredded.

In case of emergency

If you are thought to be at risk, your information may be shared with emergency services, a GP, or a Social Worker. If your therapist has become aware of an intent to cause harm to another person or organisation, the law may require them to inform the local authorities or police without your permission and share the necessary personal information.

How you can manage, amend, or delete your information

Any information that we collect is stored in line with the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation. You may wish to request a copy of the data we have about you by making a subject access request (free of charge for the initial request). It is your legal right to ask us to amend, add, correct, or delete information we have about you, or withdraw your consent for us to have your information. In some cases this may mean we can no longer provide a service to you but this will be discussed with you.

Avon Community Therapists is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). If you would like to make a complaint about how we deal with your data then please consider contacting us first to discuss your concerns. If you are unhappy with our response or have further questions please contact ICO on 0303 123 1113 or https://ico.org.uk

If you have any other questions please contact Avon Community Therapists limited:

Email [email protected]