Privacy notice
1. Introduction
Your privacy is very important to me and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR), and the Data Protection Act 2018 (the DPA).
I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me at susan@sccounselling.co.uk.
‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/ organisation that collects and stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller is me.
I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office [Registration Number ZA615237 ].
My postal address is: Unit 4 Hyde Business Centre 10 Corporation Street Hyde SK14 1AB. My phone number is: 07543 408551. My email address is: susan@sccounselling.co.uk .
2. My lawful basis for holding and using your personal information
The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data.
If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.
If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.
The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case counselling) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between me and you).
3. How I use your information
I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly. These details are kept securely and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session, which are either kept in a locked filing cabinet or as encrypted digital documents. For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than 3 months after the last contact from you. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 3 months if it is not important.
Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 6 years from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed.
4. Your rights
I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information.
You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.
If I do hold information about you I will:
• give you a description of it and where it came from;
• tell you why I am holding it, tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to;
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.
You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to susan@sccounselling.co.uk.
If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. I would welcome any suggestions for improving my data protection procedures. If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
5. Visitors to my website
My website is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Your data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and the general Wix.com applications. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall. You can read Wix.com’s privacy notice here https://www.wix.com/about/privacy