Confidentiality & data protection

The type of personal information we collect

We currently collect and process the following information:

• Personal identifiers, including name, email address, telephone number and location.
• Transactional information, for payment of counselling fees.

Additionally, for the purposes of providing counselling, we may ask you for information about your psychological and physical health, lifestyle, medical history, social circumstances, and any other relevant topics.

Client confidentiality is important to us and we will not share your details without your consent, other than in very exceptional circumstances and when legally required to do so.

We will seek your consent before counselling begins in order to confirm that you are happy with our therapy contract and terms of business.

We will keep an electronic record of any advice or information that we have provided to you.

How we get personal information and why we have it

The personal information we process is provided to us directly by you, via our secure website contact form and via our secure email, for the purpose of providing a counselling service.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

(a) Your consent. You are able to remove your consent at any time. You can do this by contacting us at enquiries@telephonecounselling.uk

(b) We have a contractual obligation.

How we store your personal information

Your information will be securely stored in digital form (we do not keep paper records).

We will store your personal details and counselling record for a maximum of seven years (for legal and insurance purposes). We will then dispose of your information by securely deleting it.

We will not share your personal information without your consent, unless required to do so by a UK Court, or to prevent criminal activity or to promote personal safeguarding in accordance with UK law.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access – You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

Your right to rectification – You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

Your right to restriction of processing – You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability – You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another person or organisation, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact us at enquiries@telephonecounselling.uk if you wish to make a request.

Our website

We use third party services to maintain the security and performance of our website and email. Articles on our site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.) from other websites, which behaves in the exact same way as if a visitor to our site has visited the other website. We strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy and the terms and conditions of every site you visit. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third party sites, products or services.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us at enquiries@telephonecounselling.uk

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address is:           

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk