PRIVACY POLICY

Real Vets Ltd Privacy Notice

  • Real Vets Ltd

  • Beechwood Veterinary Centre, 139 Glasgow Road, Glasgow, G69 6TA

    Telephone: 0141 771 5565

    Low Waters Veterinary Centre, 84 Portland Place, Hamilton, ML3 7LA

    Telephone: 01698 283400

    Email: practicemanager@realvets.co.uk


  • 5th November 2024

Introduction

At Real Vets Ltd, accessible from www.realvets.co.uk, one of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors. This Privacy Notice document contains the types of personal information that is collected and recorded by Real Vets Ltd and how we use it.

  • Contact details

  • What information we collect, use, and why

  • Lawful bases and data protection rights

  • Where we get personal information from

  • How long we keep information

  • Who we share information with

  • How to complain

Consent

By using our services, you hereby consent to our Privacy Policy and agree to its terms.

What information we collect, use, and why

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual (the ‘Data Subject’) from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data in order to:

provide and improve products and services for clients; operation of client or customer accounts; for the prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of crimes; information updates or marketing purposes; comply with legal requirements; protect client welfare; dealing with queries, complaints or claims:

  • Contact details (e.g. name, address, telephone number or personal email address).

  • Animal/Pet Data including the name, species, breed, gender, insurance records and medical history of your Animal/Pet(s).

  • Third party information (such as family members or other relevant parties).

  • Financial Data including bank account and payment card details.

  • Customer or client accounts and records

  • Purchase, service or account history

  • Website user and journey information

  • Marketing and Communications Data including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.

  • Information relating to compliments or complaints

  • Relevant information from previous investigations

  • Records of meetings and decisions

  • Correspondence

  • Attachments

  • Information relating to health and safety (including incident investigation details and reports and accident book records)

  • Any other personal information required to comply with legal obligations

We also collect, use, and share Aggregated Data such as statistical or demographic data for certain purposes. Aggregated Data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law, as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your Usage Data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect Aggregated Data with your personal data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as personal data which will be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

We do not collect any Special Categories of Personal Data about you (this includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions, trade union membership, information about your health, and genetic and biometric data). Nor do we collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

How is your personal data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you, including:

Direct interactions: you may give us your Identity, Contact, Animal/Pet and Financial Data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:

  • register with one of our practices in person, by phone, or via ‘New Client Registration’ on our website.

  • request our products or services

  • request marketing to be sent to you

  • enter a competition, promotion or survey

  • or give us feedback on our products or services.

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for further details.

Third parties or publicly available sources. We may receive personal data about you from various third parties and public sources as set out below

Technical Data from the following parties:

Analytics providers such as Google based outside the UK and the EU.

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

  • Where we are about to enter or have entered into a contract for the delivery of veterinary services with you.

  • Where processing is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) as well as your interests, and your fundamental rights and freedoms do not override those interests.

  • Provide, operate, and maintain our website.

  • Improve, personalise, and expand our website.

  • Understand and analyse how you use our website.

  • Develop new products, services, features, and functionality.

  • Communicate with you, either directly or through one of our partners, including for customer service, to provide you with updates and other information relating to the website, and for marketing and promotional purposes.

  • Send you emails.

  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Generally, we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending direct marketing communications to you via email or text message. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

Note that we may process your personal data on more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. If you would like to know more about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data (where more than one ground has been set out), please contact us.

Log Files

Real Vets Ltd follows a standard procedure of using log files. These files log visitors when they visit websites. All hosting companies do this as part of hosting services' analytics. The information collected by log files include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date and time stamp, referring/exit pages, and possibly the number of clicks. These are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. The purpose of the information is for analysing trends, administering the site, tracking users' movement on the website, and gathering demographic information.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Like any other website, Real Vets Ltd uses 'cookies'. These cookies are used to store information including visitors' preferences, and the pages on the website that the visitor accessed or visited. The information is used to optimise the users' experience by customising our web page content based on visitors' browser type and/or other information.

How we store your personal information

Information is stored on:

Robovet (owned by Covetrus); the system we use for our database.

Google Drive; the system we use internally for our documents and filing of documents.

Squarespace; the system we use for our website and monitor the performance of our website.

Advertising Partners Privacy Policies

You may consult this list to find the Privacy Policy for each of the advertising partners of Real Vets Ltd.

Third-party ad servers or ad networks use technologies like cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons that are used in their respective advertisements and links that appear on Real Vets Ltd, which are sent directly to users' browser. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. These technologies are used to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and/or to personalise the advertising content that you see on websites that you visit.

Note that Real Vets Ltd has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

Third-party marketing

We will get your express opt-in consent before we share your personal data with any other company for marketing purposes.

Real Vets Ltd Privacy Policy does not apply to other advertisers or websites. Thus, we are advising you to consult the respective Privacy Policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information. It may include their practices and instructions about how to opt-out of certain options.

You can choose to disable cookies through your individual browser options. To know more detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers, it can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Opting out

You can ask us or third parties to stop sending you marketing messages at any time or adjust your marketing preferences or by following the opt-out or ‘unsubscribe’ links on any marketing message sent to you or by contacting us at any time.

Lawful bases and data protection rights

Under UK data protection law, we must have a “lawful basis” for collecting and using your personal information. There is a list of possible lawful bases in the UK GDPR. You can find out more about lawful bases on the ICO’s website.

Which lawful basis we rely on may affect your data protection rights which are in brief set out below. You can find out more about your data protection rights and the exemptions which may apply on the ICO’s website:

  • Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for. 

  • Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete. 

  • Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information.

  • Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information. 

  • Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.

  • Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you.

  • Your right to withdraw consent – When we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

If you make a request, we must respond to you without undue delay and in any event within one month.

To make a data protection rights request, please contact us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

No fee usually required:

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you:

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Our lawful bases for the collection and use of your data

Depending on the processing activity, we rely on at least one of the following lawful bases for processing your personal data under the UK GDPR:

  • Consent - where you have given us your explicit consent (or implied consent where appropriate), for example for marketing.

  • Contract – where it is necessary for entering into or the performance of a contract with you, for example where we are treating your animal.

  • Legal Obligation - where it is needed to comply with a legal obligation that is imposed on us, for example for passing on animal welfare concerns or responding to legal orders.

  • Legitimate Interest – where it is necessary for our legitimate interest (or those of a third party) to improve your overall customer experience and achieve the purposes set out above and your fundamental rights do not override those interests.

  • Vital interest – where it is necessary in an emergency situation, such as emergency medical care.

  • Public task – where it is necessary for the performance of a specific task that is in the public interest that is set out in law.

If you fail to provide certain information when requested (such as your payment card details), we will not be able to sign your pet up to a health plan and you will not receive any associated benefits.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If you wish to get an explanation as to how the processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us at practicemanager@realvets.co.uk.

Please note, we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Where we get personal information from

  • Directly from you

  • Third parties:

  • Records provided by other veterinary practices when clients change veterinary service provider or seek a second opinion.

Data security

We have security and other measures in place to help protect your data and limit how it can be accessed or used, and to identify and handle suspected breaches of personal data and other security threats.

We limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors, and service providers who have a need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality and other contractual terms to protect your data.

How long we keep information

We will retain your data for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax or reporting requirements.  In most cases, client personal data will be retained for a minimum of five years from the date at which we stopped providing services to you.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Request erasure above for further information.

Who we share information with

Third parties

We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions, set out in a Data Sharing Agreement.

Service providers based in the United Kingdom who provide IT and system administration services.

Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers based in the United Kingdom who provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance, debt and accounting services.

HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances.

Debt recovery agencies based in the United Kingdom who provide debt recovery services.

Where this is required by law, we may share your personal data with relevant law enforcement agencies without your knowledge or consent.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal data, you can make a complaint to us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.

If you remain unhappy with how we’ve used your data after raising a complaint with us, you can also complain to the ICO.

The ICO’s address:           

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Website: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint

Last updated: 19 September 2024