Privacy Policy

This policy has been updated to reflect the requirements set out in General Data Protection Regulation 2018.

Keeping your data safe

Valuing Care are committed to keeping your personal data safe and secure, and handling it in accordance with our legal obligations. This Privacy Policy sets out in detail the purposes for which we process your personal data, who we share it with, what rights you have in relation to that data.

Data Controller

It is important that you understand who is responsible for keeping your data safe. Valuing Care are the “controller” of all personal data collected and used for the purposes of providing services. This means that we are responsible for deciding how and why your data is used and for ensuring that your data is handled legally and safely.

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who has ultimate responsibility within Valuing Care for making sure your data is treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy and the law. Our DPO can be contacted by emailing: dataprotection@valuingcare.co.uk

The information you provide

The information you provide to VC will include one or a combination of the following:

  • Name
  • Address
  • Individual reference number
  • Email Address
  • Care provider service type
  • Care provider service location postcode or town
  • Information that you voluntarily provide to us when you contact us with queries, complaints, comments or praise, or information that you voluntarily post about yourself on public areas of our platform (Voluntary Data).
  • We collect information about how you use Valuing Care using cookies and similar technology. This includes your viewing history, IP addresses, device identifiers and information about how long you have stayed on certain pages or what pages you have clicked on (Behavioural Data). You can find more detailed information about this in our Cookies Policy.

The information is used to:

  • Complete our consultancy services
  • To allow you to use any interactive features on our website
  • To note your interest in our website and measure the web traffic the site receives.
  • For complaints analysis (if appropriate)
  • For research and statistical analysis
  • For fraud prevention

The information will be stored in a company database with access restricted to VC employees only.

We will not disclose any of the personally identifiable information to any other body or organisation outside of VC or its group companies without your consent – except to prevent fraud or if required to do so by law. Parts of our website provide an opportunity to receive advice from skilled Negotiators. Your details will be passed to a Negotiator should you ask us to do so.

Information will only be used when necessary and will only be available to those who need to see it.

If you would like any further information about the data we collect please contact our Data Protection Officer: dataprotection@valuingcare.co.uk

Legal basis for using your data

Data protection law says that we have to tell you the legal basis that we rely on to process your personal data for the purposes that we have notified to you.

We process your personal data for all of the purposes identified under “The information you provide”  above on the basis that it is in our legitimate to carry out these activities and to make sure that we continue to improve our service and provide our users with the best and most effective service possible.

In respect of the use of your email address for email marketing purposes, we process this on the basis that we have your consent to do so. You can withdraw your consent at any time by following the instructions to “unsubscribe” in any email marketing communications.

How long do we keep your data for?

We will keep all your personal data for 5 years at which point we anonymise all your information.

Security

You are responsible for the security of your own computer upon which you access this website.

There is no guarantee that any e-mail you send will be received by us. There is no guarantee that the confidentiality of e-mails sent to us will be maintained during transmission nor are they secure unless they have been encrypted by you. Any information sent by e-mail is done so at your own risk and you should therefore carefully consider its sensitivity before transmitting it. If you have any doubts, you may wish to write to or telephone us instead.

We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.

Your Rights

You have a number of rights under data protection law. These rights and how you can exercise them are set out in this section. We will normally need to ask you for proof of your identity before we can respond to a request to exercise any of the rights in this section and we may need to ask you for more information, for example to help us to locate the personal data that your request relates to.

We will respond to any requests to exercise your rights as soon as we can and in any event within one month of receiving your request and any necessary proof of identity or further information. If your request is particularly difficult or complex, or if you have made a large volume of requests, we may take up to three months to respond. If this is the case we will let you know as soon as we can and explain why we need to take longer to respond.

You have a right to:

  • Ask us to send you a copy of the personal data that we hold about you. A request to exercise this right is called a “subject access request” and must be made in writing to: Dataprotection@valuingcare.co.uk
  • Ask us not to send you direct marketing or advertising. You can do this by opting out of the advertising you no longer want to receive by emailing Dataprotection@valuingcare.co.uk
  • Ask us to correct inaccurate data that we hold about you. If we are satisfied that the new data you have provided is accurate, we will correct your personal data as soon as possible.
  • Ask us to delete your personal data in certain circumstances, for example if we have processed your data unlawfully or if we no longer need the data for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy by emailing Dataprotection@valuingcare.co.uk

Contact 

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy and/or our processing of your personal data, you can get in touch with our Data Protection Officer using: dataprotection@valuingcare.co.uk

Complaints

You have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Officer (ICO), which regulates data protection compliance in the UK, if you are unhappy with how we have processed your personal data.
You can find out how to do this by visiting www.ico.org.uk.