Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy sets out how Skylark Vets Limited uses and protects any information that you may provide.

Who we are

www.skylarkvets.co.uk is a site operated by Skylark Vets Limited (“We”). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 10173601 and have our registered office at Veterinary Surgery, Skinners Lane, Edenbridge, Kent, England TN8 6LW

Our privacy commitment

Skylark Vets Limited is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy (together with our Terms and Conditions and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us. As a veterinary practice, we have what is known as a legitimate interest in holding certain details of our patients and clients. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

You consent, by using our website, registering with us and by using our veterinary services that personal information you provide will be held on a secure database. As we require this data to treat your animals and for legal reasons, it is necessary for the performance of the contract with you, we consider (under section 3, article 6 of the GDPR regulations) that formal, written consent is not required to record this data.

We are fully committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have in place a suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedure to safeguard any information that we hold.

Skylark Vets may alter this policy from time to time, please check to ensure that you are happy with any changes.

Data we collect

Name and address
Contact information, including email address and phone number
Pet details, including name, breed, age and, if relevant, any previous veterinary history
Pet insurance details
Any other information which is reasonably required to carry out our service to you

When we may request this information

On initial registration
When making an appointment
When submitting an insurance claim for your pet
At the request of a repeat prescription
When registering for a health plan
If you send an enquiry to us
At any other time as reasonably required
Why we request this information

In order to understand your needs and to enable us to provide a quality service, we need to collect and store personal information from you.

We may collect data for the following reasons

To treat your pet(s) and maintain accurate medical records
To ensure that your pet’s healthcare is kept up to date by sending reminders for preventative treatment, via text, email or post
To contact you about your pet, your account or credit status, where required
To obtain any previous veterinary history from another practice
To process insurance claims on your behalf
To process payment for any services provided
To book appointments
To ask you to complete client satisfaction surveys to help us offer the best service we can
To let you know about changes to our services
To occasionally send you a Newsletter of inform you of any promotional offers that we feel you may benefit from.

We may send you SMS, post or emails to contact you about treatments we consider you pet(s) may require in the best interests of their health, for example, vaccination reminders. We may also send you health care advice for your pet(s). We consider the above communication vital to maintaining the health of your pet(s) and that it is required for us to offer the level of service we strive for and, therefore, do not require you to opt into such communications.

We will also automatically collect data such as dates and times of your visits to our website.

Who we share your data with

We may share your personal information with third parties to help us to provide our service to you. We do not sell or lease your data.

The following is a list of the types of organisation with whom we may share your information:

Law enforcement agencies if requested in order to prevent any unlawful activity
Your pet’s insurance provider, if applicable
Pet microchipping companies
Other veterinary practices, including referral centres and triage services
External laboratories
Our database provider, if necessary, for resolving any technical enquiries
Organisations which support us with the email or text communications we deliver to you
Relevant drug companies may require pet information for statistical or technical enquiries
Debt collection agencies assisting us with unpaid debt
Providers of the pet health plans we offer

How we protect your information

Your data is stored securely on our behalf by our Practice Management software providers (Lupa and VetIT), as data processors and joint data controllers. We endeavour to keep your data current and accurate. Please help us keep your data up to date by contacting us if there are any changes. We have in place strict security procedures for the storage and disclosure of your information to prevent unauthorised access.

Transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to us via our website; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Protecting your security

We may use for the purpose of promotional, marketing and publicity purposes in any media worldwide any comments or feedback (excluding personal data) which you post publicly or provide to the practice, without notice or without any fee being paid, once consent has been given.

We may monitor or record telephone calls to ensure our quality standards are maintained and for fraud prevention purposes.

How long we keep your information

We store your personal information as long as reasonably required to provide our service to you.

Due to the nature of our business we need to store data for a long time. We have relationships with many pet owners for the lifetime of the pet and then subsequent pets. Some pet insurance companies require history from the pet’s birth before assessing any insurance claim.

The record keeping requirements for veterinary medicinal products are set out in the Veterinary Medicines Regulations. Records of the retail supply (which includes administration) of POM-V and POM-VPS medicines must be kept for 5 years.

The record keeping requirements from HMRC is 6 years plus current year.

To determine the appropriate retention period for data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve the applicable legal requirements by other means.

If we have had no contact with you for 7 years, we will send you an email to ask if you would like us to retain your records. If we do not hear from you within a reasonable period, we will securely delete your data:

We shall hold your information for as long as you are a registered client.
We shall continue to hold your personal information for a period of seven years even if you are no longer a client, in order to comply with the requirements of our insurers and our professional regulator.
We will check with you after a period of seven years with no contact whether you wish us to retain your records.

Your rights

You have a right to access the personal data about you that is held by us. To obtain a copy of the personal information please apply by email to the practice on contact@skylarkvets.co.uk. Your data will be made available within 30 days. You also have a right to request we delete your data. As your data may have to be kept by us for legal reasons we would consult our professional advisers regards any legal requirements to keep any data and inform you of their decision. Legally we have 30 days to exercise this.

Social media

We may sometimes engage with you through social media channels.

When we do so, we may see the personal information which you have shared with the social media platform, but we do not collect or store this information.
If you communicate with us through a social media platform, for example Facebook messenger, we may retain your messages with the messaging platform for a reasonable period.
If you publicly share any information with us through social media, please note that we are unable to control who sees that information.

Cookies

A cookie is an element of data that a website can send to your browser, which may then store it on the hard drive of your computer. First time visitors to our site will be asked to consent to the use of cookies.

We use cookies on our website to monitor and improve the website, track user activity on the site and to enable various types of functionality. The site relies on some third-party services for analytics and provision of tools.

Please note that all of these cookies exist to enable functionality on the website and not for advertising purposes. If you do not wish these cookies to be tracked you can disable them in your browser, but this may negatively affect your experience on the site.

There are two types of cookie you may encounter when using this website:

First party cookies: these are our own cookies, controlled by us and used to provide information about the usage of our site.
Third party cookies: these are cookies found in other companies’ internet tools which we are using to enhance our site, for example, VidiVet, VetHelpDirect and Vetstoria.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

Any changes we may make to our Privacy Policy in the future will be posted on the Privacy Policy page or our website and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. If you have any queries about data protection, please contact us by email: contact@skylarkvets.co.uk.