Privacy Policy

Protecting your personal information

Last updated in September 2021

Ben Ford, whose place of business is Unit 3, Port Dinorwic Marina, Y Felinheli, Gwynedd, LL56 4JN, United Kingdom, know that you care how information about you is used and shared; and I appreciate your trust in us to do that carefully and sensibly.

This is my Privacy Policy, relating to my website, use of emails, Whatsapp and texts for the purposes of contacting you about my service, and any other ways I collect information. It covers how I process personal information you provide to me, as well as how I’m committed to keeping it safe and managing it in line with data protection laws. I am registered with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a data controller under reference number A8786847 (Benjamin M T Ford)

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully. I know it’s long, but it contains important information about how I protect, use and process any personal information you give to me. I aim to be clear when I collect your data and not do anything with the data you wouldn’t reasonably expect.

Information I collect

The main pieces of information I collect are:

Name
Mobile phone number
Email address
Postal address
Surgery name and postal address

When I collect information

There are a few occasions when we might collect information from you. These include when:

You first call or email me to make an enquiry about my service; or to make an appointment to meet me
You contact me through the website via the contact form or chat function
You give me this information face-to-face if we meet on any occasion
You attend your first session and sign my Working Agreement

I will not collect this information from you at any other time.

How I collect information

We collect information in the following ways:

When you give me your information directly
When you submit your information via the website, email, or Whatsapp

When you complete a webform on the website, as part of the process, Wix.com collects the personal information given such as your name, phone number and email address. Your personal information will be used for the specific reasons stated above only. We access your data through Wix.com, which is password protected and only accessed by me.

How I protect information

I am an experienced psychotherapist, fully trained in the importance of maintaining confidentiality. I go to great lengths to keep all your information safe. I invest in the appropriate resources to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. I make sure we manage it in accordance with our legal responsibilities under applicable data protection laws.

However, no internet-based platform, including email, is 100% secure, so I cannot be held responsible for unauthorised or unintended access that is beyond our control. When I communicate via email, there is always the possibility that email platforms can be hacked; or email transmission may not be encrypted when corresponding back and forth. I remain mindful of this and ensure that we do everything in our capability to protect your personal information.

How I use and process information

After I have received your information, there are a few ways in which I might use it to ensure I give you the best possible service. They include:

To help me to identify you when you contact me
To contact you to make, confirm, cancel or reschedule appointments
To respond to any queries or complaints that you raise
If I have a legal obligation to use or disclose information about you for instance, where I am ordered by a court or regulatory authority
For any other purpose to which you agree

I will not disclose your information to any third party except in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Information safety and access

I want you to know that I will never sell or pass on your personal information to third parties for their own purposes.

As all therapists are required to keep appropriate records of their client work, I keep some brief notes of your sessions. These notes are fully anonymised and do not contain any of the information I collect from you, as detailed above. Anonymised notes are kept in a locked cabinet or on a password protected secure computer in accordance with data protection laws.

These anonymised notes are never shared with anyone, even other therapists that I work with.

My website is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Your data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and the general Wix.com applications. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall. For full details of Wix.com’s privacy policy visit https://www.wix.com/about/privacy

Information retention

My professional insurance requires that all my records are kept for 7 years after which time they will be destroyed.

How we communicate

I will only ever communicate with you via email or text message, outside of our sessions.

Visiting third party websites

This website contains links to other websites that I believe may be of interest to you. This Privacy Policy only applies to my website, so if you link to another website, I recommend you read the privacy policy of that website before sharing any personal or financial data.

Like most websites, I use ‘cookies’ to help us improve how I create, and how you use, our site. Cookies mean that a website will remember you and can obtain an overall view of visitor habits and volumes to my website. They can make interacting with a website faster and easier.

Cookies are small text files stored on your computer by websites that you visit. They are used by most websites in order to make them work efficiently, to make controls respond properly and to provide information to owners of web sites, or third parties. The cookies stored by my site cannot be used to identify you personally.

If you want to know how to disable the use of cookies on your device, visit aboutcookies.org. Please note that if you turn off the use of cookies on the website, you are likely to find your browsing experience significantly degraded.

When visiting this website, Wix.com uses third party services (Google Analytics) to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. This is done to track business needs, such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. Wix.com automatically collects certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device.

Your rights

I want to make sure you’re in control of how I use and keep your information.

You have the right to:

be told how your personal information will be used;
request a copy of the information I hold about you;
update or amend the information I hold about you if it is wrong;
change your communication preferences at any time;
ask me to remove your personal information from our records (see ‘How We Retain Your Information’ above);
request an electronic copy of your personal information be sent to you, or another organisation;
raise a concern or complaint about the way in which your information is being used.

If you wish to find out more about these rights, have any questions about this Privacy Policy, have anything you’d like to correct or you’d like to request of copy of the information I hold about you, please contact:

Ben Ford

Unit 3

Port Dinorwic Marina

Y Felinheli

Gwynedd

LL56 4JN

Email: info@ben-ford.co.uk

Or you can find out more on the Information Commissioner’s Office website at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/