Privacy policy

Privacy Notice

When do we collect personal information?

We collect your personal information when you:

register your details as a new client at our practice or make an appointment at our practice;
engage with us on social media;
contact us by any means with questions about a service, product or treatment or to raise a complaint;
ask us to email you information about a service, product or treatment;
enter our prize draws or competitions;
choose to complete any surveys we send you;
use our micro-chipping service;
comment on, or review, our products and services. Any individual may access personal information related to them, including opinions - if your comment or review includes information about the colleague who provided that service, it may be passed on to them if requested;
fill in any forms. For example, if an accident happens in our practice a colleague may collect your personal information;
have given a third-party permission to share the personal information they hold about you with us; or
become an employee or work for us as a contractor.

What personal information do we collect and why?

You will be asked for some essential information including your title, first name, surname, postal address, email address, telephone, details of your pet and, if applicable, payment information when you:

register as a client;
book an appointment;
attend an event;
apply for pet insurance; or
enter a prize draw/competition.

This information is collected as a legitimate business interest.

This information is collected to help us:

provide veterinary care to your pet;
register your details as a new client (or update your details if they change) or make appointments;
process payments due to us (including for treatments for your pet);
contact you about your pet, account or credit status where required;
prevent and detect fraud – to do this, we may need to disclose information to assist legal or debt recovery processes;
understand your needs and listen to your feedback via market research/analysis, customer polls and surveys;
send you reminders about appointments, vaccination dates and worm treatment dates;
send you marketing and promotional offers and to manage your marketing preferences if you elect not to receive marketing and promotional offers from us; notify you about changes to our service.

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:

to specialist referral centres or specialist veterinary hospitals, when we refer your pet for specialist diagnosis or treatment;
to other veterinary professionals, if you request that we transfer your pet’s patient history on transferring to another veterinary surgery;
to insurance companies that have insured your pet;
to laboratories and other suppliers who you have agreed we may provide your details to and who require them to provide services in relation to your pet;
to our third-party services providers and business partners who provide data processing services to us, or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Policy or notified to you when we collect your personal information. Examples of the kind of third parties we work with are: IT companies who support our website, apps and other business systems; direct marketing companies or other third parties who help us manage electronic communications with you; Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and similar platforms to show you services that might interest you while you’re browsing the internet; This is based on either your marketing consent or your acceptance of cookies, tracking pixels or similar tracking technology on our websites;
to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights or apply our Terms and Conditions, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
to a potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Policy;
to any other person with your consent to the disclosure.

Where we share your personal information with third party service providers and partners we apply a policy to ensure your personal information is safe and to protect your privacy. Our policy requires we provide only the information they need to perform their specific services. They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them. We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times. If we stop using their services, any of your personal information held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous (subject to applicable law).

How do we keep your personal information secure?

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. Specific measures we use include: keeping your information up-to-date and accurate. Please note that, to do this, we require you to tell us if any of your details such as your name or address change; and having in place strict security procedures for the storage and disclosure of your information to prevent unauthorised access.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to and/or through our websites and apps; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

To ensure that your credit, debit or charge card is not being used without your consent, we will validate name, address and other personal information supplied by you during the order process against appropriate third-party databases.

Data retention

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible

You have the following data protection rights

If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting the practice.

In addition, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent. You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.