Introduction
Your privacy is very important, 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. We adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.
This privacy notice tells you what we will do with your personal information including:
• Why we process your information and what for
• Whether you have to provide it
• How long we store it for
• Whether there are other recipients of your personal information
• Whether we intend to transfer it to another country,
• Whether we use automated decision-making or profiling, and
• Your data protection rights.
We can discuss any questions you might have about our data protection policy and you can contact us via email: mail@mjpowell.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 Martin Powell.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Our phone number is: 01825 703 201. Our email address is: mail@mjpowell.uk
Our lawful basis for holding and using your personal information
The GDPR states that we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which we are processing your data. These are explained below:
If you have used our services we will use legitimate interest as lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.
If you are using or considering using our services we will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.
The GDPR ensures we look after any sensitive personal information that you may appropriately disclose. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for processing any special categories of personal information is that it is for provision of health treatment (such as counselling) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between us and you).
How I use your information
Initial contact.
When you contact us with an enquiry about our services we will collect information to help us satisfy your enquiry. This will include any necessary personal information such as your name and contact details. Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send us your details when making a referral or a parent or trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf.
If you decide not to proceed with any of our services we will ensure all your personal data is deleted within one month unless you consent to us keeping your details for any future communications, such as promotions, offers or discounts.. If you would like us to delete this information sooner, just let us know.
If you are accessing counselling.
Rest assured that everything you discuss is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if there is a significant risk of harm to you or another. We will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this.
We keep a record of your personal details to help our services run smoothly. These details are kept securely on a password protected computer and are not shared with any third party.
We keep written notes of each session and these are also kept securely in password protected files on a password protected computer.
For security reasons we do not retain text messages for more than three days. If there is relevant information contained in a text message we will transfer this to your electronic record, stored as described above. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after one month, unless necessary for accurate record keeping, in which case it will be stored in the same file described above.
After counselling has ended.
Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for ten years from the end of the contact and are then securely destroyed. If you want us to delete your information sooner than this, please tell us.
Third party recipients of personal data
We sometimes share personal data with third parties, for example, where we ask a supplier to carry out specific tasks. In such cases we carefully select which partners to work with and only use those with robust privacy policies. We take great care to ensure that we only contract with the third party that states what they are allowed to do with the data we share with them. We ensure that they do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been contracted. At the present time, we do not outsource any aspects of our services, but in future this could include employing a separate company to answer initial calls and queries, for example.
Your rights
We try to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask us to delete your personal information, to limit how we 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 we hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at www.ico.org.uk/your-data-matters
If we hold information about you and you ask us to, we will:
• give you a description of it and where it came from;
• tell you why we are holding its, how long it will be stored;
• tell you who it could be disclosed to;
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.
You can also ask us at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information held about you.
To make a request for any personal information we may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to mail@mjpowell.uk
If you have any complaint about how we handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with us by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. We would welcome any suggestions for improving our data protection procedures.
If you want to make a formal complaint about the way we 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 www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
Data security
We take the security of the data held about you very seriously and as such take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. Any paper records are shredded confidentially as soon as relevant information is transferred to a secure electronic record, stored in password protected files, on password protected computers.
Website visitors
When someone visits our website, we use a third party service, [Wix.com] to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow [Wix.com] to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting the website.
We use legitimate interests as our lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit the website.
Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently – find out about our use of cookies: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/cookies-and-similar-technologies/
No user-specific data is collected by us or any third party. If you fill in a form on our website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to us.