The Vet Whitehaven respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. 
This privacy policy explains the flow of any personal data which might be stored during our interactions with you, our client.

Content:
• What data is collected?
• How do we collect your data?
• How do we use your data?
• With whom do we share your personal data?
• Security and retention of your data
• International transfer of data
• Protection rights for your data
• Privacy policy changes
• How to contact us

What data is collected?
Personal data is any information about an individual from which that person can be identified.
We collect the following information:
• Identity: – Client’s first name, last name and title
• Contact: – Client’s address, email address and telephone numbers
• Pet’s name, species, breed, gender, insurance records and medical history
• Financial Data:- bank account and payment card details
• Transaction records of payments from you, including details of products and veterinary services you have purchased from us
• Profile information- such as your appointments, feedback and survey responses
• Marketing and Communications- we save your preferences for receiving marketing from us and/or our third parties and your choice of communication/contact

How do we collect your data?
We collect and process your data whenever you:
• Register your details as a new client and/or make an appointment
• Complete a form online asking to be contacted
• Book to attend an event we are holding, for example evening talks
• Are referred to us, for example by a behaviourist or physiotherapist
• Engage with us on social media
• Contact us by any means with a question or to raise a complaint
• Are emailed by us
• Enter prize draws or competitions
• Complete our occasional surveys or feedback forms.
• Use our micro-chipping services
• Review any of our products and services
• Fill in consent forms
• Give third parties permission to share with us any personal information held about you or your pet, for example transferring medical history
• Use our car park and practice, where CCTV systems record your image for security and crime prevention purposes

How do we use your data?
We will only use your personal data strictly within legal limits.
We routinely use your personal data in the following circumstances:
• To provide veterinary care for your pet
• To register you onto our system
• To process payments
• To contact you about your pet, account or credit status
• To prevent and detect fraud- we may need to disclose information to assist legal or debt recovery processes
• To act upon any feedback you send us
• To send reminders about appointments, vaccination, flea and worm treatments dates
• To fill in insurance claims for processing
• To respond to any issues or queries you have raised
• To notify you about changes to our services

With whom we share your personal data:
We may disclose your personal information to the following recipients:
• Specialised referral centres, hospitals, and other treatment facilities; we will always keep you informed of this and seek your permission
• Other vets, if you have requested your pet’s history to be transferred
• Insurance companies with whom you have a policy
• Laboratories and suppliers, only with your agreement
• IT companies who support our website and business system
• Law enforcement bodies, government agencies, etc when disclosure is legally necessary
• Anyone to whom you have consented the disclosure of information

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. 
We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Security and retention of your data
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being
accidentally lost, altered, disclosed or accessed in an unauthorised way.
In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees and third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it.
Such as for satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. 
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider:
– the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data
– the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data
– the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means
– the applicable legal requirements

We keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Pet, Financial and Transaction Data) for 7 years after they cease being customers for legal and tax purposes.

International transfer of data
We do not transfer your personal data outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

Protection rights for your data
We would like to make sure you are fully aware of all your data protection rights; every client is entitled to the following:
• Right to request access copies of your personal data.  (We reserve the right to charge a small fee for this service)
• Right to request ratification of any information you believe is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to request the erasure of your personal data, subject to certain legal conditions.
• Right to request the restriction of processing your data, subject to certain legal conditions.
• Right to object to processing your personal data, subject to certain legal conditions
• Right to request the transfer of your data to another organization or directly to you, subject to certain conditions.

If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us (details are in the How to Contact Us section).

Privacy policy changes
Our privacy policy is kept under regular review and updates will be posted on our website
https://www.thevetwhitehaven.co.uk This privacy policy was last updated on 1st March 2022

How to contact us
If you have any questions about our privacy policy, the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Email us at: hello@thevetwhitehaven.co.uk
Call us at: 01946 878108
Or write to us at: The Vet Whitehaven, Egremont Road, Hensingham, Whitehaven, CA28 8NH