Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice

In order to provide you with the best service possible I need to hold onto your personal contact details and records of your therapy sessions. This privacy notice tells you what I will do with your personal information from initial point of contact through to after therapy has ended.

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 the current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. I also adhere to the ethical guidelines regarding protecting client privacy and confidentiality set up by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

This policy tells you what I will do with your personal information 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 any other recipients of your personal information
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 the contact page on the website or by email.

‘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 (Amanda New). I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (registration ref: ZB604621). My contact details can be found on the contact page.

My lawful process for holding and using your personal information

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. 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 therapy sessions) and necessary for a contract with a health professional (in this vase, a contract between me and you).

How I use your information

I will never use your personal date for any purposes other than the administration of the therapy service that I am providing to you i.e. to arrange, cancel and rearrange appointments. I will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary. This is in line with guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Initial contract:

When you contact me to book your first appointment I will collect some information from you to help me to process your enquiry. This will include your name so that I can book the appointment into my diary and also make a note of your contact details (email / telephone number). This information is requested so that you could be informed if I was unable to attend an appointment due to unforeseen circumstances. If you do not want to be contacted under any circumstances you do not need to provide a contact method. Alternatively, an organisation such as a relative or employer may send give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf. If an enquiry is made and you decide not to proceed I will ensure that all of your personal data is deleted within one month. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, please let me know.

While you are accessing therapy:

Your email address and phone number will be used to provide you with written confirmation of your appointment times if you request this. Your email address and telephone number will only be used to contact you regarding appointment times unless we have agreed that I will also use your email address to send you information that is relevant to our therapy sessions.

At the beginning of our first appointment I will collect personal details from you on the counselling intake form including your name, address, date of birth, contact information for yourself (or a parent / guardian if you are under the age of 18), and also contact information for your GP. The form is stored in a locked filing cabinet that can only be accessed by me. Please be aware that I will not routinely contact your GP to inform your GP of your attendance as this is confidential. To fulfil my duty of care towards you while maintaining your confidentiality I will only contact your GP if it is necessary and should these circumstances arise I would discuss this with you wherever possible before making contact.

Rest assured that what is said in our sessions is kept confidential. I am a Registered Member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and I abide by their professional code of ethics. Confidentiality will only be broken if there are legal or ethical obligations to disclose, for example, if you disclose abuse / neglect of a child or vulnerable adult, or say something else that implies serious harm to yourself or others, or if a court of law requires me to disclose information. In the event that confidentiality must be broken I will try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevents this.

As counsellors we are required to have regular supervision support to discuss our work. This is done without revealing any identifying information. In any event, my supervisor is also a counsellor who abides by the BACP’s code of ethics regarding confidentiality.

I keep brief notes of our therapy sessions for the purpose of assisting our work together. The notes help me to keep track of issues that we are working on and they are for my use only. The notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and they are stored securely in a locked filing cabinet that only I have access to. Your therapy notes are stored separately from your counselling intake form.

After therapy has ended:

There are reasons why counsellors are required to keep records after therapy has ended. For example, in the case of financial transactions personal information must be retained for as long as is legally required in respect of tax or accounting purposes. Retained therapy notes do not include any personal details that could be used to identify you and these continue to be stored securely in a locked cabinet that only I have access to for seven years after therapy has ended. This time frame adheres with current industry guidelines. Seven years after therapy has ended your therapy notes will be destroyed. Your counselling intake form will be held for a year (in case you decide to return to therapy) and then destroyed. Please note that I need to keep a record of your name, date of birth and your client reference code for seven years after therapy ends. Your client reference code corresponds with your therapy notes and therefore enables me to identify your therapy notes if necessary.

Third party recipients of personal data

I sometimes share a limited amount of personal data with third parties in order to provide therapy services to you and to fulfil my legal obligations in respect of tax and accounting purposes. In such cases I have carefully selected which partners I work with. For example, my accountant is permitted access to my invoices. I will never pass your contact details on to any third party organisations for the purposes of sales, marketing or research. If your appointments are paid for or arranged via a third party, for example your employer or a parent / guardian, the only information shared will be the dates of attendance and non-attendance for invoicing and payment purposes. Details about what is discussed in your appointments will remain confidential and can only be shared if you give me written consent to do so.

Your rights

I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop me processing this. You have a right to ask for a copy of any information 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 is disclosed to
Let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form

You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in any personal information I hold about you.

To make a request for personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to amanda@anewcounselling.uk.

If you have a complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with my by writing or emailing me. 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.

Data security

I take the security of the data that I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. My email account is password protected, as is my mobile phone and laptop. I also have anti-virus software. Hard copies are kept in a locked filing cabinet which only I have access to.

Website visitors

By accessing the website, you are consenting to the information collection and use practices described in this privacy policy. Should you choose to contact me using the contact form on the website none of the data that you supply will be stored by the website or passed on to any third party data processors. Instead the data will be collated into an email and sent to me over the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL) meaning that the email content is encrypted before being sent across the internet. The email content is then decrypted by local computers and devices.

The website uses cookies and Google Analytics. Almost all websites use cookies which are small files that get put on your computer by websites as you surf them. These cookies can store lots of information which can have privacy implications. Good Analytics is a service that gathers anonymous data on how people are using websites and then provides visitor statistics, details of page views etc. This service is used by many website owners as the data helps them to improve their websites.

Some page elements are embedded from trusted third parties in order to provide you with interactive maps. This makes the website more helpful to you as a site visitor, however most of these come with their own cookies. This applies to Google Maps. I do not control these cookies so I cannot guarantee what they do. In many cases the cookies are used to generate identical information to Google Analytics and indeed use Google Analytics, so opting-out of Google Analytics will also opt you out of these cookies too. You can opt out of Google Analytics and Google services by clicking here.

Changes to privacy policy

This document may be updated from time to time, so please check occasionally for any updates

(Last updated: Dec 2023).