We give the best possible care to animals and the same goes for your information. We bring our own pets to the practice too, so we appreciate how important data protection is. As you have placed your trust in us when providing your information, we want to be totally transparent with you about how it’s handled.
This practice only processes personal data for core business purposes.
How we use your information
Your personal information is used for a number of different reasons depending on what it is. We only collect what is necessary in order to provide our service to you. The tables below set out what information is collected, our purpose for collecting it and our lawful basis (why we need to collect it) in line with data protection legislation.
Your personal details, such as your name, date of birth, address, email address, phone number and insurance policy number.
What we do and why
Identify who you are when you visit the practice so we can ensure it’s your pet, and our records are accurate.
As part of our contract with you.
Send you appointment reminders so you know when to bring your pet in to see us.
Our legitimate interests are to ensure your pet is, and remains in, good health and to optimise time efficiency in our practices by reducing missed appointments
Send you treatment reminders to keep you informed about when your pet needs treatment.
Our legitimate interest to ensure your pet is, and remains in, good health
Communicate with your insurance provider if applicable so that any claims can be submitted efficiently.
This is a legal requirement and part of our contract with you.
Send you service updates such as changes to our T&Cs or practice disruptions to inform you of any changes to the services we provide.
This is a legal requirement and part of our contract with you.
Send you information about animal health concerns in your area to keep you informed on issues that may affect your pet.
Our legitimate interest to ensure your pet is, and remains in, good health
Send you information about our wider services, events and resources. We like to keep you up to date and help you get the best from our services (you can find out more in the section on Marketing messages below)
Perform audio recording and upload this to transcription services to complete your pet’s medical notes
Only with your consent, so the choice is yours.
Any services we use will de-identify data, use end to end encryption, and be compliant with GDPR. Data will only be processed in the UK.
We sometimes ask for your feedback about our overall service. More often than not, they are anonymised, but we may want to respond to you directly if you’re unhappy with something.
Our legitimate interest to address your concerns and continue to improve our services for our customers and their pets.
Please note that, where we are required to process your personal information as part of our contract with you and you do not provide us with this information, we may not be able to provide our services to you.
Your payment information
This is information provided when you are required to pay directly for any practice services.
What we do and why
Take payments for the service we provide and give refunds where necessary as some of our services require direct payment.
As part of our contract with you.
Keeping a record of financial transactions so we know what you’ve paid for.
It’s a legal requirement.
Your contact history with us
This covers things you’ve said, whether that be via email, telephone or the ‘Contact Us’ page on our website.
What we do and why
Provide customer service and support.
It’s up to you whether you contact us via the methods above so it depends on the nature of your query. It could be part of our contract with you.
Improve our support services to ensure our customer service is the best it can be.
Our legitimate interest to keep our team trained to the highest standard to provide the best possible service to you and your pets.
Resolve complaints, disputes, and claims.
Our legitimate interest to resolve complaints and disputes in a timely manner and to exercise our legal rights.
We may also anonymise and/or aggregate your personal information, so you aren’t identifiable. This process may be used to facilitate the testing of our IT systems, research, data analysis, improving our site and developing new products and services.
How do we obtain your information
There are several ways in which we obtain your information. Most information is voluntarily provided by yourself via completing our forms or conversing with one of our members of staff during registering, creating an online account, or placing orders.
You have trusted us with your information, therefore the first thing we want to assure you of is that we do not, and shall not, sell any of your personal data to any third party.
However, we share your data with the following categories of companies as an essential part of being able to provide our services to you and your pets:
- Your primary veterinary practice in order to keep them informed of your pet’s treatment recommendations.
- Other referral practices so that they can arrange appointments, tests, treatments and services if your pet needs to be referred to a hospital or specialist with your consent.
- Laboratories and Animal Crematoria so that we can arrange tests, treatments and services and obtain results on your behalf.
- Your insurer, so that we can obtain permission to perform certain investigations and treatments at their expense. Also, to arrange payment for investigations and treatments provided.
- Banks and payment service providers so that we can deal with payments and refunds where necessary.
- Debt collection agencies, should you fall behind with payments for the services we provide.
- Email providers, printers and mailing houses, so we can send you reminders, administrative information relating to the way we provide services to you, information about animal health issues relevant to you and marketing communications if you agree.
- Law enforcement, government and other agencies should we receive a request from them to assist with any investigations, or we deem it necessary.
- Other practices, if you decide to move to a new practice and want to transfer your information
- Charities, in the unfortunate event that your pets find themselves with a charity for the facilitation of rehoming or other means, we may provide them with any necessary details for the continuation of animal welfare or other relevant matters.
- Third parties such as the police, RSPCA or other authorities where we are unable to reach you for consent and unlikely to be able to for some time, we may disclose necessary information to third parties for the facilitation of continuity of pet care.
- Third party software providers, where we implement and you make use of our third party provided apps, your data will be shared to facilitate a more convenient, streamlined and more accessible process.
We take the sharing of your data very seriously and only do so where necessary for the purposes set out above. Where your data is shared with third party software providers, we ensure that they have the appropriate data protection procedures, policies, and certificates in place before transferring any information.
If you would like to know more about the companies we may share personal data with, or how to find out more on how they will use your data, please contact our office.
Marketing messages
If you have agreed, we’ll send you marketing messages to keep you aware of what we’re up to and to help you see and find our products and services.
If you no longer wish to receive them then you can unsubscribe at any time via the following methods:
- Click the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of any marketing email communication that we send you
- Contact the practice directly via phone or email and ask to be removed from our mailing list
If you’ve asked us to stop sending any kind of marketing, we will action the withdrawal of your consent as soon as possible, although we ask that you please be patient so that we can update all of our systems. You may continue to receive messages from us whilst we process your request.
If you decide to opt-out of marketing messages, we will continue to send ‘service communications’ such as appointment/vaccination/treatment reminders.
Where your data is stored
All of the personal information we process is stored in accordance with the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation.
How long we keep your information
We will keep your data for as long as we need to in order to fulfil the purposes we have set out in this Privacy Notice. If you cease to be our client, we will still need to keep some of your data to meet our legal and regulatory obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse and to enforce our Terms & Conditions. We will only keep what is necessary for these purposes.
Your rights
You have a number of rights relating to your personal information, which are as follows:
- The right to be informed about how your personal information is used, most of which is within this notice
- The right to access personal information we hold about you
- The right to rectify personal information we hold about you if it is inaccurate or incomplete (we ask that you speak to a member of our practice team if any of your contact details have changed)
- The right to request that we delete your data, stop processing it or collecting it in some circumstances
- The right to stop marketing messages, further information of which is above in the ‘Marketing messages’ section
- The right to object to the processing of your personal information for the furtherance of our legitimate interests
- The right to portability where we would port or transfer elements of your personal information to you or another practice
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or have any questions, please contact us via the contact details at the end of this notice.
How to contact us
41 High Street, Dulverton, TA22 9DW
01398 630030
drjames@petpainrelief.co.uk