Privacy Policy
Last updated 9th June 2022
1. Introduction
Wallace Veterinary Centres respect your right to privacy. This Privacy Policy explains in detail the types of personal information we may collect about you when you interact with us. It also explains how we will store and handle that personal information, how we keep it safe and how you can exercise your privacy rights
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact form here, selecting the ‘Privacy concerns (GDPR) option.
2. Who are Wallace Veterinary Centres?
Wallace Veterinary Centres are made up of two separate legal entities:
Wallace Vets Limited, registered at 285 Queen Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee, DD5 2HT and trading from 71-73 Ravensby Park Gardens, Carnoustie, Angus, DD7 7NY and Wallace Vets of Broughty Ferry Limited, registered at 285 Queen Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee, DD5 2HT and trading from 285 Queen Street, Broughty Ferry, Dundee, DD5 2HT and 5 Fisheracre, Arbroath, DD11 1LE.
3. When do we collect personal information?
We collect your personal information in a number of instances, including when you:
Register your details as a client at one of our practices or make appointments at one of our practices or are referred to one of our practices from another veterinary centre;
Complete a form asking to be contacted by one of our practices or regarding an appointment;
Sign up to our Premium Pet Care Plan;
Sign up to our Fixed Payment Plan;
Submit and Insurance claim;
Visit our Website;
Engage with us on social media;
Contact us by any means with questions about a service, product or treatment or to raise a concern;
Ask one of our colleagues to email you information about a service, product or treatment;
Enter prize draws or competitions;
Choose to complete any surveys we send you;
Use our micro-chipping service;
Fill in any forms. For example, if an accident happens in one of our practices, a colleague may collect your personal information;
4. What personal information do we collect and why?
The personal information that we collect about you broadly falls into the following categories:
Information that you provide voluntarily
When you register as a client, book an appointment, sign up to our Premium Pet Care Plan or Fixed Payment Plan, you will be asked for some essential information including your title, first name, surname, postal address, email address, telephone, details of your pet and, if applicable, payment information. These are collected to help us:
Provide veterinary care to your pet(s);
Register your details as a new client at one of our practice or via our website (or update your details if they change);
Manage and process your Premium Pet Care Plan;
Process payments due to us (including for treatments for your pet);
Contact you about your pet or account;
Prevent and detect fraud – to do this, we may need to disclose information to assist legal or debt recovery processes;
Understand your needs and listen to your feedback via polls and surveys;
Enhance your experience;
Send you reminders about appointments, vaccination dates and flea and worm treatment dates;
Send you marketing and promotional offers and to manage your marketing preferences if you elect not to receive marketing and promotional offers from us;
Where you a member of our Premium Pet Care Plan, to administer your membership and to contact you with any changes, offers and promotions;
Provide you with information about the fundraising activities of our affiliated charities;
Respond to any issues or queries;
Conduct analytics to understand how our services are used; and/or
Notify you about changes to our service.
Information that we collect automatically
When you visit our Website, we may collect certain information automatically from your device. In some countries, including countries in the European Economic Area, this information may be considered personal information under applicable data protection laws.
Specifically, the information we collect automatically may include information like your IP address, device type, operating system, unique device identification numbers, browser-type, broad geographic location (e.g. country or city-level location) and other technical information. We may also collect information about how your device has interacted with our Website, including the pages accessed and links clicked.
Collecting this information enables us to better understand the visitors who come to our Website, where they come from, what content on our Website is of interest to them, what they have viewed or looked at. We use this information for internal analytics purposes, to improve the quality and relevance of our Website to our visitors.
Some of this information may be collected using cookies, tracking pixels and similar tracking technology, as explained further under the heading “Cookies and similar tracking technology” below.
Information that we obtain from third party sources
From time to time, we may receive personal information about you from third party sources, but only where we have checked that these third parties either have your consent or are otherwise legally permitted or required to disclose your personal information to us. For example we may receive personal information from other veterinary professionals if you are referred to one of our practices or if you transfer from another veterinary surgery and register with us as a client.
5. Who do we share your personal information with?
We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients:
to specialist referral centres or specialist veterinary hospitals, when we refer your pet for specialist diagnosis or treatment;
to other veterinary professionals, if you request that we transfer your pet’s patient history on transferring to another veterinary surgery;
to insurance companies with whom you have insured your pet or are looking to set up insurance;
to Premier Vet Alliance with whom our Premium Pet Care Plan is administered through;
to Easy Direct Debits with whom our Fixed Payment Plan is administered through;
to laboratories and other suppliers who you have agreed we may provide your details to and who require them in order to provide services in relation to your pet;
Direct marketing companies or other third parties who help us manage electronic communications with you;
Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and similar platforms to show you services that might interest you while you’re browsing the internet; This is based on either your marketing consent or your acceptance of cookies, tracking pixels or similar tracking technology on our websites, as explained further under the heading “Cookies and similar tracking technology” below; and/or
Data insight and data analysis companies (to provide us with tools to analyse the data which we hold);
Promotional partners;
Customer review companies (so you can leave feedback and we can improve our service to you); and/or
Competition or prize-draw partners
to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation, (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights or apply our Terms and Conditions, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person;
to TNC Group Services and Alex M Adamson LLP who act as a debt collection agent on our behalf;
to any other person with your consent to the disclosure.
Where we share your personal information with third party service providers and partners we apply a policy to ensure your personal information is safe and in order to protect your privacy. Our policy requires:
We provide only the information they need to perform their specific services.
They may only use your data for the exact purposes we specify in our contract with them.
We work closely with them to ensure that your privacy is respected and protected at all times.
If we stop using their services, any of your personal information held by them will either be deleted or rendered anonymous (subject to applicable law).
6. Legal basis for processing personal information
Our legal basis for collecting and using the personal information described above will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.
However, we will normally collect personal information from you only (i) where we need the personal information to perform a contract with you, (ii) where the processing is in our legitimate interests and not overridden by your data protection interests or fundamental rights and freedoms, or (iii) where we have your consent to do so. In some cases, we may also have a legal obligation to collect personal information from you or may otherwise need the personal information to protect your vital interests or those of another person.
If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contact with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).
Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.
If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us.
7. Cookies and similar tracking technology
We use cookies and similar tracking technology (collectively, “Cookies”) to collect and use personal information about you. For further information about the types of Cookies we use, why, and how you can control Cookies, please see our Cookie Policy.
8. How do we keep your personal information secure?
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information. Specific measures we use include:
Encrypting your personal information.
Keeping your information up-to-date and accurate. Please note that, to do this, we require you to tell us if any of your details such as your name or address change; and
Having in place strict security procedures for the storage and disclosure of your information to prevent unauthorised access.
Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the Internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to and/or through our Websites; 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.
9. International data transfers
Your personal information may be transferred to, and processed in, countries other than the country in which you are resident. These countries may have data protection laws that are different to the laws of the UK.
Our Website server is located in the UK, but some of our third party service providers, partners and data back-up providers may operate outside of the UK. This means that when we collect your personal information it may be processed in another country.
Any transfer of your personal information will follow applicable laws and we will treat the information under the guiding principles of this Privacy Policy.
10. Data retention
We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).
When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.
11. Your data protection rights
You have the following data protection rights:
If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us.
In addition, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. You can exercise these rights by contacting one of our practices.
You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you. To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
Similarly, if we have collected and process your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information.
We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
12. Contacting the regulator
If you feel that your personal information has not been handled correctly, or you are unhappy with our response to any requests you have made to us regarding the use of your personal information, you have the right to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office. You can contact them by calling 0303 123 1113 or go online to www.ico.org.uk/concerns(please note we cannot be responsible for the content of external websites).
13. Updates to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in response to changing legal, technical or business developments. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.
You can see when this Privacy Policy was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Policy.
14. How to contact us
If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the form on our ‘contact us‘ page and selecting ‘Privacy Protection (GDPR)’.
The data controller of your personal information will be the Wallace Vets Limited.
15. How to unsubscribe from reminders and marketing communication
If you have previously subscribed to reminders and marketing communication and now want to remove any details, you can do by calling either of our practices or by completing the form below, ticking which form of communication you would like to remove.
