Data Protection and Privacy Policy
We give the best possible care to animals and the same goes for your information. We bring our own pets to practices 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.
For services in this practice, the controller (the company responsible for protecting your information) is CVS (UK) Limited.
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 | OUR LAWFUL BASIS |
|---|---|
| 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 so as to optimise time efficiency in our practices by reducing missed appointments. |
| 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 service 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). | Only with your consent, so the choice is yours. |
| 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.
Additionally, we may automatically obtain information about you such as your image or your vehicle registration number via our CCTV systems operating at our practice. We operate CCTV for our legitimate interests of helping to secure our premises and keep our customers, visitors and staff safe.
We may also record telephone calls for training, quality assurance and monitoring purposes.
Your payment information
This is information provided when you are required to pay directly for any services. We don’t store your card details, GlobalPay are our payment services provider.
| WHAT WE DO AND WHY | OUR LAWFUL BASIS |
|---|---|
| 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. Calls made to our practice may be recorded as referenced above.
| WHAT WE DO AND WHY | OUR LAWFUL BASIS |
|---|---|
| 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 and 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 or from the practice which is referring you.
Sharing your information
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 may 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:
- Companies in the CVS group, as different parts of our group are responsible for different activities such as MiNightVet emergency care.
- Other referral practices or the practice that referred yourself to us so that they can arrange any further appointments as and where necessary.
- Laboratories and Animal Crematoria within the CVS group, 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 (including our chosen payment provider, GlobalPay), so that we can deal with payments and refunds where necessary.
- Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies, so that we can obtain information about you and help to detect and prevent fraud.
- 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 request information.
- 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 us at the details below.
Please note that not all CVS group practices or other service providers such as laboratories or crematoria use CVS branding.
Marketing messages
If you have said we may, 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 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 within the European Economic Area (EEA). Therefore, we can guarantee that your data will be handled in accordance with the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation. It’s important for us to be transparent with you so if this were ever to change, we would let you know in advance.
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 retain some of your data to fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, and enforce our Terms and Conditions, as agreed upon at the start of our engagement. We will only keep the data necessary for these purposes.
We will keep CCTV images for up to 30 days and telephone call recordings for up to 3 months from the date of recording unless it is necessary for us to keep them for a longer period.
You can contact us if you no longer wish to be a client and ask that we deactivate your account. However, we will keep the data we need even after your account has been deactivated.
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.
Changes to this notice
We will keep this notice under regular review and publish any updates in practice or on this website. Any significant changes will be communicated with you directly, so you are kept up to date on how your data is handled.
This privacy notice was last updated on 30 August 2024.
How to contact us
Client feedback is essential in ensuring that we provide the best possible service to you. If you have any questions about this notice, want us to stop using your information or exercise any of your rights then please don’t hesitate to contact us:
Data Protection Officer
CVS House, Owen Road, Diss, Norfolk IP22 4ER
dataprotection@cvsvets.com
Complaints
If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us via the contact details above.
Whilst we would always prefer to have the opportunity to resolve your complaint first, you can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have used your data. Our ICO Registration number is Z7208449.
The ICO’s address:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
Website: www.ico.org.uk