Matthew Wood Psychotherapy and Counselling

Privacy Statement

This privacy statement describes the ways in which I collect, use and store your personal information. I also describe the specific reasons that I share your data with third parties. You may review their privacy policies to understand how they handle your data.

Browsing This Website

When you browse this website the IP address of your device is shared with my hosting provider, Netlify.

Communicating With Me

If you contact me for whatever reason then your name , contact details and the content of your message will be shared with third party communication providers. I use Mailbox for email and Giff Gaff for telephony.

Working Together

If we work together then I will ask you to provide the following information:

This information is required for admin purposes and so I can fulfill my duty of care to you as a client. Thus the lawful bases on which I collect and process your information are Contract (to provide therapy services to you) and Legitimate Interest (to ensure your safety and well-being).

I will also keep brief, factual notes about our sessions. They are used to help me provide effective therapy. They do not contain your name or other identifying information.

The information I store about you is strictly confidential. I will only disclose them if required by law.

All the information I collect about you is stored electronically and protected with strong encryption. It resides on a removable hard drive that is used for this purpose only and which is kept in a locked cabinet at my home address. Backups are encrypted in transit and stored on secure cloud storage provided by Mailbox.

I will retain all information about you for 7 years after our last contact, in accordance with UK legal and ethical requirements. After this period I will destroy all data using secure digital deletion methods.

I am registered as a data controller with the ICO. Under UK data protection law you have rights regarding the use of your information. For example you have the right to ask me to correct any information about you which you believe is innaccurate in my records, or you can ask me to delete any information I store about you. You can find more about your rights on the ICO website.

Please contact me if you have any questions about my use of your information. If you remain unhappy with how I’ve used your data after raising a complaint with me you can also complain to the ICO.