Privacy Notice
We give the best possible care to animals and the same goes for your information. We bring our own pets to the practice 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 data controller — the company responsible for protecting your information — is CVS (UK) Ltd.
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 sets 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.
| 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. | As part of our contract with you. |
| Send you treatment, vaccination, flea or worming reminders to keep you informed about when your pet needs treatment. | It’s important for us to ensure your pet is in good health. |
| 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. | We believe that you should be made aware of these things as soon as possible. |
| 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. | Only if you decide to provide feedback, it requires your consent. |
Your payment information
This is information provided when you are required to pay directly for any practice services. We don’t store your card details, WorldPay 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. | It’s 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. |
Preventing and detecting fraud
We are also legally and contractually required to use any of the information above for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud, against either you or us. Whilst it’s an unfortunate part of our service it is essential that we protect you and ourselves from fraud.
Personal information is also used for things like testing out IT systems, research, data analysis, improving our site and developing new products and services. Don’t worry though, this is all anonymised and aggregated so you aren’t identifiable.
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 will not, sell any of your personal data to any third party.
However, we share your data with the following categories of companies as an essential part of being able to provide our services to you:
- Companies in the CVS Group, as sometimes different parts of our group are responsible for different activities.
- Referral practices so that they can arrange appointments, tests, treatments and services if your pet needs to be referred to a hospital or specialist.
- Laboratories and Animal Crematoria, 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, 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 if 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 agencies if we receive a request from them to assist with any investigations.
- Other practices, if you decide to move to a new practice and want to transfer your 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.
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, please be patient so that we can update all of our systems. You may 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 you are a client of our practice or another practice in the CVS Group and for as long as we are required to retain it to ensure we meet our legal obligations.
You can contact us if you no longer wish to be a client and ask that we deactivate your account. However, we have a legal requirement to keep some of your personal data even after you have asked us to remove it. We will only keep what we absolutely need to, and only to make sure we can meet our legal or regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce our Terms & Conditions.
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’ section.
- 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 19 February 2021.
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 via the following methods:
Post
Data Protection Officer
CVS House
Owen Road
Diss
Norfolk
IP22 4ER
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.
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
