Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice – Riverside Vets

This privacy notice tells you how we will collect and process your personal data if you register as a client, purchase our services and products, and use our website.

About Us

Riverside Vets is an independent small animal and equine veterinary practice in Eastleigh, Hampshire. We protect the health and well-being of your pets/horse, offering a range of services that include diagnosing and treating sick and injured animals, advising owners on the right animal care, and providing a range of care related products for purchase.

Who to contact regarding your personal data

We take your privacy seriously. Our Data Protection Manager looks after data protection and would be happy to answer any questions about this privacy notice and how Riverside Vets uses your data. They can be contacted directly at enquiries@riversidevets.co.uk or on 02380 620607/620605.

The personal data we collect and process

There are four main ways we process the personal data you provide. We endeavour to keep this information accurate and up to date, and to not keep it longer than is necessary.

1. To administer your account as a surgery client

To provide our service effectively and ensure the best possible care for your pet/horse, we need to collect and process the following personal data when we register you as a client.

This personal data will be used for the following services and purposes:

• To administer your account and provide the products and services you have requested from us. For example, invoicing, calling to change an appointment and to keep a record for legal and accounting purposes.
• To inform you by email of service information about the practice. For example, notification of seasonal opening times or changes to out of hours availability.
• If you have pet insurance and you wish to make a claim, we will pass on your animal’s clinical history with your name and address to your insurance company to allow them to process your claim.
• If we take a sample from your pet/horse, we may use an external laboratory (if unable to test on site) and send the sample to our supplier and provide your surname for identification purposes only.

If you decide to join our healthcare plan membership and pay by direct debit, you will also need to provide bank account details to set up and confirm your direct debit. We do not retain this information once your direct debit is confirmed.

In some circumstances as a surgery client, we require to verify your identity by either/all of the following: Driver Licence, Passport, Proof of address. We do not retain this information once your identity has been confirmed.

2. To send you communications as a surgery client

We send all our clients the following communications:

• Appointment reminders
• Reminders for animal health checks, vaccinations and administering preventative healthcare treatments. (Although we provide this service, we cannot take responsibility should any reminder fail to reach you. Please diarise ongoing boosters.)
• News information on animal welfare, like top tips for exercise and health checks that you can do yourself.
• Promotions, latest related product offers, surveys.

Clients find these communications useful in administering care to their pets and to keep up to date with what is going on at the surgery. They are only sent to existing clients who can opt-out at any time.

The personal data that we process for these communications is your name, email address and mobile phone number and in some cases your address.

We would like our clients to enjoy these communications, so it is important to note that you can opt-out at any time by:

• Calling our team at the surgery on 02380 620607/620605.
• Dropping into the surgery and speaking to a member of our team.
• Emailing us on enquiries@riversidevets.co.uk.

3. To share with veterinary related 3^rd parties WITH your consent

There will be occasions where we will need to ask for your consent to share your personal data with a 3^rd party:

• If you would like your pet/horse to be referred to a specialist veterinary surgeon, we will provide them with your animal’s clinical history with your name, address, email and telephone numbers to enable them to confirm your referral appointment.
• Should you wish to microchip your pet, we register your name, address, email and contact numbers with the chip provider. Currently it is a legal requirement for dogs and horses to be microchipped, therefore we share your personal data in this case under a legal obligation to do so.
• Should you wish to purchase an ID tag, we will provide your name, address, contact numbers (any other details requested on the tag) for the identification and posting of the engraved tag by our provider.

Riverside Vets will not pass on your personal data to any third parties without your consent unless the law requires us to do so. We do not provide any personal data to the suppliers of the medicines we administer or the pet care products we sell.

Should you wish to move to an alternative veterinary surgery, we will provide your animal’s clinical history with your name, address, email, and telephone numbers to your new vets before closing your account.

4. When you use our websites – riversidevets.co.uk or www.riversidevetsequine.co.uk

When someone visits our sites, we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things like the number of visitors to the various parts of the website. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone.

We use cookies, which are small text files that are placed on your computer when you visit. We do this to make our website work more efficiently and to promote our news, products, and services on social media. Visit www.riversidevets.co.uk/cookies-policy or www.riversidevetsequine.co.uk/cookies-policy to manage your cookie settings and view more information on how we use them and why.

Riverside Vets uses a third-party service to help maintain the security and performance of our website. To deliver this service it processes the IP addresses (a number assigned to each of your devices connected to the internet by your broadband provider) of visitors to the Riverside Vets and Riverside Vets Equine website.

We provide contact forms on our website and collect users’ personal information to help them complete certain tasks. Each form details the information required and an explanation of what the form is for. For general enquiries, once an enquiry has been dealt with, the data is deleted in line with Riverside Vets procedures.

Disclosure of personal data to our service providers

We may pass on your personal data to service providers contracted to Riverside Vets while assisting you. They act as a data processor on our behalf and are obliged under contract to keep your details secure, and only use them to fulfil the services they provide on our behalf. When they no longer need your data to fulfil this service, they dispose of it in line with our procedures.

How long do we process your data for?

Riverside Vets is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for income tax and audit purposes.

To comply with our professional liability insurance, we keep and securely store past clients’ records for seven years. This includes full name, address, email address and telephone numbers, but excludes bank account details.

We will only process your personal data whilst you are a client. If there has been no activity for two years and six months, we will contact you to see if you wish to remain a client before we close the account and archive the data.

Your rights as a data subject

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you the data subject, have the following rights:

• Right of access – You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.

You can do that by calling 02380 620607/620605. If we do hold information about you, we will:

• give you a description of it
• tell you why we are holding it
• tell you who it could be disclosed to
• let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

Please note that you will need to provide proof of identity – a current passport or driving licence.

• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
• Right to judicial review – if Riverside Vets refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain as outlined below.

Complaints

We take the processing of your personal data very seriously and are here to help with any concerns you may have. Please do contact the Data Protection Manager at enquiries@riversidevets.co.uk or call 02380 620607/620605.

If you are still not happy with how your personal data is being processed by us or with how your complaint has been handled, you also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the Information Commissioners Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/ or by calling 0303 123 1113.