Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy Summary

Gentle Podiatry is dedicated to respecting and protecting your privacy.

To provide your healthcare, we are required to gather and process personal information. 

We have a legal obligation to keep your medical records for eight years after your treatment finishes (or in the case of a young person or child; until they are 25 years old or 8 years after their death). 

Our medical notes are digital and stored with high security measures in place, in line with UK data protection law. Our digital booking service, Cliniko, can access your name, age, contact details and treatment type to help book and verify your appointment. 

All other medical and personal information is only available to your podiatrist at Gentle Podiatry (in addition to parents and guardians if you are a minor or need support at your appointment).

Any further use of your personal data will only happen with your informed consent, including sharing data with your nurse or GP or if necessary, or forward referral to other healthcare professionals concerning your health and wellbeing. 

If you have arranged to accept promotions, offers and information about new services by email from Gentle Podiatry, you can unsubscribe any time from the footer of Gentle Podiatry emails or by emailing andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk 

Your data will never be shared or sold by us for marketing purposes. You can access all the personal information that we store about you by sending a signed, written request to Gentle Podiatry at the address below.

What information we collect and when

We collect and process information when you telephone to make an enquiry or appointment, when you email us, when you access our online enquiry form via our website or if you visit the clinic in person.

At the point of enquiry or booking we may ask you for your:
  • Name
  • Date of birth  
  • Address
  • Telephone number, either landline or mobile or both
  • E-mail address.

At your appointment, we will ask for information regarding your general health, your previous health and information regarding the condition you are seeking advice about. We will also ask for information regarding any activities you undertake, your employment and any medication you take. We will also record the findings of a physical examination, treatment notes and forward planning in assisting to improve your condition.

We use this information

  1. To provide a legal record of any treatment or advice we provide
  2. To ensure continuity of care
  3. To contact you in regard to your ongoing treatment.
  4. To contact you if new information or treatments become available that may be of benefit to you.
  5. We may pass information with your permission to other medical professionals who may be involved in your care; this may include GPs, consultants, occupational health departments or other Health and Care Professions.
  6. We may use your information for quality feedback purposes.
  7. We may use your information for audit purposes.

We do not pass on your information for commercial purposes. We take all reasonable steps to ensure that our information is kept up to date and rectified if necessary. 

It is also your responsibility to inform us if any personal information changes.

Privacy Policy Detail

This privacy notice provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data.

Gentle Podiatry Ltd is the data controller and is responsible for your personal data (referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).

Our email address is andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk
Our postal address is Gentle Podiatry, Wavelength Salon, 131 Oxford Road, Hartlepool, TS25 2NN.

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. 

We would be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you. It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. 

Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by emailing us at andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk or contacting us at our postal address.

1. Gentle Podiatry Ltd may collect your personal information, when you: 

  • Book an appointment for assessment and treatment
  • Attend an appointment for assessment and treatment
  • Order sales items
  • Purchase sales items
  • When you request information about our services and products
  • When you agree to us sending you our newsletter online

2. The information we collect is:

  • Contact information such as your name, postal address, telephone number and email address for the fulfilment of podiatry services and products. 
  • Health and biometric data such as your date of birth, medical history, medication, presenting complaint, medical observations and medical assessment data to fulfil a defined podiatry treatment and management plan. 
  • With your permission, visual media such as photographs or videos of your feet and lower limb where it is necessary to monitor healing progress and suspicious lesions. 

3. Sensitive Data

We do not collect any sensitive data about you. Sensitive data refers to data that includes details about your race or ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinions and trade union membership, genetic and biometric data. 

We do not collect any information about criminal convictions and offences.

We do collect information about your health for clinical purposes. 

4. How Else We Use Your Personal Data 

We will only use your personal data when legally permitted (see section 5). The most common uses of your personal data are: 

  • Where we need to perform a contract between us, for instance, when you purchase clinical services and medical products 
  • Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests 
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation 

You have the right to withdraw consent to online marketing at any time by emailing us at andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk or using the unsubscribe button on the bottom of each email. 

5.1 Purposes For Processing Your Personal Data 

  • To ensure we have the ability to identify and contact you regarding your podiatry treatment and ordered goods. 
  • To enable you to make appointments with Gentle Podiatry 
  • To ensure we have a record of your purchases 
  • To administer and protect our business and our site, including administration, troubleshooting, data analysis, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data and reporting changes to our terms or privacy policy 
  • To use data analytics to improve our website, products, services and marketing. 
  • To enhance customer relationships and experiences, make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods and services that may be of interest to you, invite customers to leave a review, and enable customers to join prize draws or competitions hosted by us 

5.2 The Legal Basis For Processing Your Data As Listed Above Is: 

  • To enact the performance of a contract with you 
  • Necessary for our legitimate interests in terms of running our business, keeping our records updated provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud, recover debts owed to us, to keep our site updated and relevant and to develop our business and inform our marketing strategy 
  • Necessary to comply with a legal obligation. 
  • You will receive communication emails from us if you have requested information from us or, purchased goods/services from us. 

We will not share your information with any third parties. You can ask us at any time to stop sending you marketing emails by clicking on the unsubscribe button on every email we send out, or by emailing us at andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk 

This will not apply to personal data provided to us as a result of a product/service experience or other transactions. 

We may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground, depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data (as detailed in section 5). Please email us at andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your personal data where more than one ground has been set out (as detailed in section 5). 

6. Disclosure Of Your Personal Data 

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out in ‘How we use your personal data’: 

  • Service providers who provide client booking services (Cliniko), email administration service (MailChimp) and IT and system administration services (Gentle Podiatry). 
  • Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, insurers and marketing consultants who provide consultancy, banking, insurance and accounting services; however these professionals will not have access to your medical records. Medical association auditors and solicitors may need to access your medical notes to adjudicate over any cases of medical negligence. 
  • HM Revenue & Customs, regulators and other authorities based in the United Kingdom and other relevant jurisdictions who require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances 

We require all third parties to whom we transfer your data to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law. 

We only allow such third parties to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions. 

7. International Transfers 

Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria. 

Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. 

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented: 

  1. We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission; 
  2. or Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; 
  3. or Where we use providers based in the United States, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield, which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between the Europe and the US. 

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time. Please email us at andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the EEA. 

8. Data Security 

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. 

In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know such data. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. 

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so. 

9. Data Retention 

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. 

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. In some circumstances, you can ask us to delete your data, as detailed in ‘your legal rights’ (section 10). 

In some circumstances, we may anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you. 

10. Your Legal Rights 

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to: 

  • Request access to your personal data 
  • Request correction of your personal data 
  • Request erasure of your personal data 
  • Object to processing of your personal data 
  • Request restriction of processing your personal data 
  • Request transfer of your personal data 
  • Right to withdraw consent. 

You can see more about these rights at: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/individual-rights/ If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email us at andy@gentlepodiatry.co.uk 

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. 

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. We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. 

In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
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