Privacy Policy 

 

This privacy policy tells you how The Village Veterinary Centre will collect and process your personal data if you register as a client, purchase our services and products, and use our website.

About Us

The Village Veterinary Centre is a small animal veterinary surgery located at 5 Pilgrims Close, Chandlers Ford, Hampshire, SO53 4ST. We protect the health and well-being of your pets, offering a range of services that include: diagnosing and treating sick and injured animals, advising owners on the right pet care and providing a range of care related products for purchase.

Who to Contact Regarding your Personal Data

We take your privacy seriously. Our Practice Manager looks after data protection and would be happy to answer any of your questions about this privacy notice and how The Village Veterinary Centre uses your data. They can be contacted via email at village.vets@yahoo.co.uk or by calling the practice on 023 8026 8001.

The Personal Data We Collect and Process

There are four main ways we process the personal data you provide. We endeavour to keep this information accurate and up to date, and to not keep it longer than necessary.

1. To administer your account as a surgery client

In order to provide our service effectively and ensure the best possible care for your pet, we need to collect and process the following personal data when we register you as a client.

Personal Data Type
First name, Last name
Address
Phone Number (normally mobile)
Email Address

How the Data is Collected
As part of registering to be a client
 

This personal data will be used for the following services and purposes:

• To administer your account and provide the products and services you have requested from us. For example, invoicing, calling to change an appointment and to keep a record for legal and accounting purposes.
• To inform you by email of service information about the practice. For example, notification of seasonal opening times or changes to out of hours availability.
• If you have pet insurance and you wish to make a claim, we will pass on your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to your insurance company to allow them to process your claim.
• If we take a sample from your pet, we send the sample to our external laboratory provider and provide your surname, address and pet’s name for identification purposes only.

If you decide to purchase our healthcare plan and pay by direct debit, you will also need to provide bank account details to set up and confirm your direct debit with Simply Health.

2. To send you marketing communications as a surgery client

We send all our clients the following marketing communications:

• Reminders for pet vaccinations and administering preventative healthcare treatments.
• News information on animal welfare, like top tips for exercise and health checks you can do yourself.
• Promotions and the latest related product offers.

Clients find these communications useful in administering care to their pets and to keep up to date with what is going on at the surgery. They are only sent to existing clients who can opt-out at any time.

The personal data that we process for these communications is first name, email address and mobile phone number.

We would like our clients to enjoy these communications, so it is important to note that you can opt-out at any time by:

• Emailing us village.vets@yahoo.co.uk with the marketing communications you would like to opt out of.
• Calling our team at the surgery on 023 8026 8001
• Dropping into the surgery and speaking to a member of the team.

3. To share with veterinary related 3rd parties WITH your consent

There will be occasions where we will need to ask for your consent to share your personal data with a 3rd party:

• If you would like your pet to be referred to a specialist veterinary surgeon, we will provide them with your pet’s clinical history with your name, address and contact number to enable them to confirm your referral appointment.
• Should you wish to move to an alternative veterinary surgery, we will provide your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to your new vets before closing your account.
• Should you wish to microchip your pet (cats and rabbits), we register your name, address, email address and contact numbers with the microchip provider. Note that microchipping dogs is a legal requirement and we share your personal data in this case under a legal obligation to do so.
• Should you wish to purchase an identification tag, we will provide your name, address, email address and contact numbers to the identification tag provider for engraving and delivery purposes.
• Should you wish to receive dietary recommendations on how much to feed your pet, we will provide your name and email address to the food supplier.

The Village Veterinary Centre will not pass on your personal data to any third parties without your consent unless the law requires us to do so. We do not provide any personal data to the suppliers of the medicines we administer or the pet care products we sell without your explicit consent.

4. When you use our www.village-vets.co.uk website

When someone visits village-vets.co.uk we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things like the number of visitors to the various parts of the website. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone.

We use cookies, which are small text files that are placed on your computer when you visit. We do this to make our website work more efficiently and to promote our news, products and services on social media. Visit www.village-vets.co.uk/cookies to manage your cookie settings and view more information on how we use them and why.

The Village Veterinary Centre uses a third party service to help maintain the security and performance of our website. To deliver this service it processes the IP address (a number assigned to each of your devices connected to the internet by your broadband provider) of visitors to the Village Veterinary Centre website.

Disclosure of Personal Data to Our Service Providers

We may pass on your personal data to service providers contracted to The Village Veterinary Centre in the course of dealing with you. They act as a data processor on our behalf and are obliged under contract to keep your details secure, and only use them to fulfil the services they provide on our behalf. When they no longer need your data to fulfil this service, they dispose of it in line with The Village Veterinary Centre procedures.

How Long Do We Process Your Data For?

The Village Veterinary Centre is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for income tax and audit purposes. We also keep client records to comply with our professional liability insurance. In both cases we keep client records and transactions for seven years. This includes full name, address, email address and telephone numbers, but excludes bank account details.

We will only market to you whilst you are an active client. After one year and six months of inactivity we will email or call clients to prompt them to see if they wish to remain as an active client. If no response, after two years we will write to or call clients again. If there is still no response to our enquiries we will mark the client’s record as inactive and store the data for a further five years. After which time we will redact all personal data leaving only a surname attached to the account and pet’s clinical record (clients often seek pet clinical data many years after ceasing to be an active client of the practice).

Your Right as a Data Subject

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you the data subject, have the following rights:

• Right of access – You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. You can do that by using our subject access request form which you can obtain by emailing us on village.vets@yahoo.co.uk or by calling us on 023 8026 8001.

If we do hold information about you, we will:

• give you a description of it
• tell you why we are holding it
• tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

Please note that you will need to provide proof of identity – a current passport or driving licence.

• Right of rectification – You have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – In certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• Right to restriction of processing – Where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing of your data.
• Right of portability – You have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – You have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – You also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
• Right to judicial review – In the event that The Village Veterinary Centre refuses your request under the rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain as outlined below.

 Complaints

We take the processing of your personal data very seriously and are here to help with any concerns you may have. Please do contact the Practice Manager by email at village.vets@yahoo.co.uk or by calling the practice on 023 8026 8001.

If you are still not happy with how your personal data is being processed by The Village Veterinary Centre or how your complaint has been handled, you also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the Information Commissioners Office at http://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by calling 0303 123 1113.

Tweets by @VillageVets