Privacy Policy

Introduction
Your privacy is very important to us and you can be confident that your personal information
will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given.

We adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection
Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and
Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. This privacy notice tells you
what we will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after
your therapy has ended, including:

• Why we are able to process your information and what purpose we are processing it for
• Whether you have to provide it to us
• How long we store it for
• Whether there are other recipients of your personal information
• Whether we intend to transfer it to another country
• Whether we do automated decision-making or profiling, and
• Your data protection rights.

We are happy to chat through any questions you might have about the data protection
policy and you can contact us via info@thepsychotherapyroom.com.

‘Data controller’ is the term used to describe the person/ organisation that collects and
stores and has responsibility for people’s personal data. In this instance, the data controller
is Natalie Knutton. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office ZA856412.

Our phone number is: 07469244815.

Our email address is: info@thepsychotherapyroom.com.

Our postal address is Room 10, 72 Wilson Street, Derby, DE1 1PL.

Our lawful basis for holding and using your personal information
The GDPR states that we must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There
are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which we are processing your data.

These are explained below:

If you have had therapy with us and it has now ended, we will use legitimate interest as our
lawful basis for holding and using your personal information.

If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with us to consider therapy, we
will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract.

The GDPR also makes sure that we look after any sensitive personal information that you
may disclose to us appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal
information’. The lawful basis for us processing any special categories of personal
information is that it is for provision of health treatment (in this case counselling) and
necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this case, a contract between the
therapist and you).

How we use your information

Initial Contact
When you contact us with an enquiry about counselling services we will collect information
to help us satisfy your enquiry. This will include email address, telephone number and name.
Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send us your details when making a
referral or a parent or trusted individual may give us your details when making an enquiry on
your behalf. If you decide not to proceed we will ensure all your personal data is deleted
within 5 years. If you would like us to delete this information sooner, just us know.

While you are accessing counselling
Rest assured that everything you discuss with us is confidential. That confidentiality will only
be broken if:

▪ A child at risk or in immediate danger
▪ If there is a real risk of harm to yourself
▪ If there is a real risk of harm to others
▪ Any breach of the UK’s Terrorism Act (2000)

We will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that
prevent this.

We will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling services run smoothly.
These details are kept securely on the JotForm database and are not shared with any third
party. We will keep written notes of each session, these are kept on the JotForm database.
For security reasons we do not retain text messages for more than 12 months. If there is
relevant information contained in a text message we will keep this securely on the JotForm
database. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after 12 months if it is not
important. If necessary, we will keep this securely on the JotForm database.

After counselling has ended

Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 5 years from the end of our contact
with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want us to delete your information
sooner than this, please let us know.

Third party recipients of personal data
We use Microsoft Office 365 as our IT package which includes emails. We use IONOS as our
web hosting company and JotForm to store your personal information, including any
assessment, progress notes, contact information, contracts, feedback forms and outcome
measures. We take great care to ensure that we have a contract with the third party that
states what they are allowed to do with the data we share with them. We ensure that they
do not use your information in any way other than the task for which they have been
contracted.

Your rights
We try to be as open as we can be in terms of giving people access to their personal
information. You have a right to ask us to delete your personal information, to limit how we
use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also
have a right to ask for a copy of any information that we hold about you and to object to the
use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at
www.ico.org.uk/your-data-matters.

If we do hold information about you we will:

• give you a description of it and where it came from
• tell you why we are holding it, tell you how long we will store your data and how we made
this decision
• tell you who it could be disclosed to
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.
You can also ask us at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal
information we hold about you.

To make a request for any personal information we may hold about you, please put the
request in writing addressing it to info@thepsychotherapyroom.com.

If you have any complaint about how we handle your personal data please do not hesitate to
get in touch with us by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. We would
welcome any suggestions for improving our data protection procedures. If you want to make
a formal complaint about the way we have processed your personal information you can
contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For
more information go to www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.

Data Security
We take the security of the data we hold about you very seriously and as such we take every
effort to make sure it is kept secure. We use locked filing cabinets, password protected IT
devices such as a mobile phone, laptop and tablet. In addition, we use an online password
protected database called JotForms that has servers located in the European Union which
comply with GDPR and uses all necessary means for data protection.