Our Privacy Policy

The Hanham Clinic is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and complies with the guidelines set out by the General Chiropractic Council as well the Data Protection Act 2018, which includes the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Basis for processing data

When you supply your personal details to the clinic, they are stored and processed for 5 reasons:

We need to collect personal information about your health in order to provide you with the best possible treatment. Your request of our services and our agreement to provide that care constitutes what the law calls a “Contract”.

We have what is termed a “Legitimate Interest” in collecting that information, because without it we could not do our job effectively and safely.

We also think that it is important that we can contact you in order to confirm your appointments with us or to update you on matters related to your medical care. This again constitutes “Legitimate Interest”, but this time it is your legitimate interest.

Consistent with our role as healthcare professionals, we may occasionally send you general health information in the form of articles, advice or newsletters. This again falls under the category of “Legitimate Interest”.

In order to keep accurate financial records and produce receipts/invoices for your visits, your basic contact details will be stored on our secure accountancy software. The data kept will also include your payment history but excludes medical details.

Medical record retention & data storage

We have a legal obligation to retain your records for 8 years after your most recent appointment (or age 25, if this is longer), but after this period you can ask us to delete your records if you wish.

Otherwise, we will retain your records indefinitely in order that we can provide you with the best possible care should you see us at some future date (or need us to transfer your records to someone else).

Your records are stored electronically on a web based diary management and note keeping system named Cliniko, which is also GDPR compliant. Access to all data is password protected. Any paper documents are scanned onto our system before being securely shredded.

Access to data

We will never share your data with anyone without your written consent. The only people who will have access to your data are your practitioner(s), in order to provide you with care, and reception staff (who may work remotely), in order to organise appointments/reminders, and who act as an intermediary between you and your practitioner(s).

It is good practice to liaise with other healthcare professionals, but we will seek separate consent for your permission to write to your GP, or to communicate with any other healthcare professional(s).

Your name/email may be stored on the Mailchimp server (or similar) that we sometimes use to coordinate messages. In all these circumstances, we ensure that outside agencies are compliant with the data protection regulations and are fully aware that all information is confidential.

Although we have card payment facilities, we do not retain any payment details. You have the right to see what personal data of yours we hold, and you can also ask us to correct any factual errors. Provided the legal minimum period has elapsed, you can ask us to erase your records.

CCTV usage in our reception area

In our clinic waiting room only, we record CCTV (excluding sound recording) solely for the safety of our staff and patients; sometimes our staff may work alone within the clinic. CCTV is stored securely and only ever reviewed if there is a concern that is raised over patient or staff safety.

Our cookie notice

When you use our website, we and third-party companies may collect certain information by utilising cookies and other technologies such as "pixel tags". For simplicity in our cookie notice we refer to both of the aforementioned as'cookies.

What is a cookie? 🍪

In web terms, a cookie is a small text file that contains a select amount of information, that a server may download to your computer, mobile or tablet. This occurs once you visit a website or use an app and once you have given that website permission to do so. More information on cookies can be found at either allaboutcookies.org or aboutcookies.org.

What are cookies used for?

Cookies can perform a number of functions that help improve the user experience; this can be allowing efficient navigation between pages of a website, or simply remembering your preferences from a previous website visit, whilst helping ultimately to improve your experience as a user.

Cookies that we use on our site:

We use a range of fairly typical cookies within our website that perform a role similar to that of many other modern-day websites.

1. Necessary and functionality based cookies

These allow you to navigate throughout the website and help to store relevant data when accessing certain parts of the website; namely our booking page. In this instance, cookies only store your data if you select the tick-box asking us to do so, and only store the personal information that you provide. This is done purely to enhance your booking experience should you return to the same webpage at a later date, so it can pre-populate the form with your details. This stored information is not accessible by us and is not shared with a third party, other than within our diary management platform. Functionality cookies are a standard sort of cookie that allows our website to remember the choices you have made when you visited our website. These cookies remember any adjustments you may have made, such as alterations to text size, or any accessibility related browser settings you may have changed.

2. Analytics cookies

These analytic cookies collect certain amounts of information about how visitors use our websites; this includes details of where the visitor has come from- such as a certain search engine, or social media platform during an advertising campaign. We also collect details regarding which parts of the website the visitors interacted with, and how many visits the user has made to the website. We only use this information to improve the functionality of our website and enhance the user experience. We may share this information with analytics and search engine providers that may be able to assist us with improving the functionality and performance of our site.

3. Advertising cookies

These cookies store information that relates to your browsing habits, which in turn helps to make advertising more relevant to you, based on your preferences and previous search habits. These sorts of cookies include data points such as age, gender and topics of interests, and other characteristics of such nature.

When running an advertising campaign, in order focus and personalise our advertising, cookies can help by providing an “ID” stored by a cookie, or alternatively a Mobile Ad ID that is used in order to create an individual profile for an individual. You should be reassured that this stored information or sorts of identifiers do not include information that can directly identify you; for example, your name, contact number or email address is not collected by the cookie. This type of cookie is only used in a situation such as that of running a social media campaign, or targeted advertising web campaign.

Can I control the use of cookies?

At any point in time you can adjust your cookie preferences within your browser settings, to limit the use of cookies. Through your browser settings you can also delete previously stored cookies and save these settings for future use- remember that use of cookies is purely optional, but may impact on the user experience if not allowed.

Contact us if you have any concerns

We want you to be absolutely confident that we are handling your personal data responsibly, and that we are doing everything we can to make sure that the only people who can access that data have a genuine need to do so.

If you have a concern over the mishandling of personal data in some way, you have a right to complain. The Clinic Director Dean Matthews is responsible for data protection, and can be contacted at the clinic by any of the usual methods, or by email at info@hanhamclinic.co.uk The privacy notice is also available upon request in paper form.