PRIVACY NOTICE

Most of the data we hold is about your animals, our patients, and is not covered by data protection regulations.

Drake Vets is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and when you register your pet at our practice, you will be asked for some essential information. This policy, together with our general terms & conditions, sets out how we use your personal information. This applies to any activity involving use of personal data for example, collecting, storing, sharing, and destroying.

We do hold contact data about you, our clients, for the purposes of helping to identify our patients, and to enable us to contact yourselves about your pets.

We also hold financial data about our relationship with you, and details of your pet insurance policies.

We will only share your data to improve the care of your animals, or to resolve financial issues.

Examples would include external laboratories (where it is used to identify samples); referral services (to arrange the referral of a case); other veterinary surgeons – when a patient leaves our care; our reminder service partners, to send you reminders about preventive treatments; insurance companies, where we assist you in making a claim; or our debt collection partners, should fees remain unpaid.

These instances of data sharing are made under the lawful basis of our mutual legitimate interest in caring for your animals and maintaining our mutual financial relationship.

The information we hold is kept for the duration of our relationship, and for a further period of seven years after this time (a timespan recommended by many higher authorities, including HMRC and RCVS).

If you are concerned about the way your data is used or handled please speak to one of the Directors. If we are unable to satisfy your concerns you have the right to take your concerns to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) www.ico.org.uk or telephone 0303 123 1113