Privacy Policy

Your privacy is very important to me 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 to me. I 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 I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact, through to after your therapy has ended, including: 

Why I am able to process your information and what purpose I am processing it for 

Whether you have to provide it to me

How long I store it for

Whether there are other recipients of your personal information

Whether I intend to transfer it to another country

Whether I do automated decision-making or profiling

Your data protection rights

I am happy to chat through any questions you might have about my data protection policy and you can contact me via my phone number and email which are 07877664982 and info@rhiannonchaloner.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 me. I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and my ICO registration certificate number is ZB912974.

The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data. I have explained these below: If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract. The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me 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 me and you). 

I will keep a record of your personal details to help my counselling service run smoothly. These details are kept securely in password protected files and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in ‘TherapyLock’ which is an encrypted vault, for counsellors and psychotherapists. For security reasons, I do not retain text messages for more than one week. If there is relevant information contained in a text message, I will add this to your TherapyLock file. Likewise, any email correspondence will be deleted after two weeks, if it is not important. Once counselling has ended, your records will be kept for no more than seven years from the end of our contact with each other and are then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me. 

You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I 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 I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at ico.org.uk/your-data-matters. If I do hold information about you I will:

Give you a description of it and where it came from

Tell you why I am holding it 

Tell you how long I will store your data and how I 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 ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to info@rhiannonchaloner.com. If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by emailing to the contact details given above. I would welcome any suggestions for improving my data protection procedures. If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I 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 ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

I take the security of the data I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. All information is stored in password protected files and via TherapyLock. 

My website is hosted by Hostinger and I manage the content of it. I use Hostinger to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. I do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I do not make, and do not allow any other companies to make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting my website. I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit my website. Like most websites, I use cookies to help the site work more efficiently.