Harpenden Eye Centre

You have trusted us to take care of your eyes. You can also trust us with your personal details. Harpenden Eye Centre’s Privacy Policy means that we respect any personal information that you provide us with, or that we ascertain from your eye tests, from any purchase of our products and services or any other interactions with us.

Information about us
What personal information do you collect?
How and why do you use my information?
How long do you keep my information for?
Who do you share personal information with?
How do you process my personal information?
Our cookie policy
How can I update or change my personal information?
What rights do I have?
What choices do I have?
Protecting personal information
Updating our Privacy Policy
Contact us

1. Information about us

In this privacy policy, references to we, us or our means the staff at Harpenden Eye Centre that process your personal information, including each of those listed below:

Harpenden Eye Centre in an independent opticians established in 1991
We are located at 1a Leyton Road, Harpenden, Herts, AL5 2TJ

Harpenden Eye Centre are data controllers of your personal information for the purposes of any data-protection legislation that applies. You can contact us on 01582766668 or email us at staff@harpendeneyecentre.co.uk.

In this privacy policy, when we refer to you, we mean the person whose personal information we collect, use and process. This includes anyone who contacts us in connection with the products and services we provide or who otherwise interacts with us including, for example, on our website at www.harpendeneyecentre.co.uk (the website) or in store.

2. What personal information do you collect?

We may collect and process information about you including:

your name;
your date of birth;
your contact phone numbers (including mobile);
your email and postal address;
your relevant health details including (a) current and past eye conditions, general health conditions and glasses, contact-lens prescriptions, (b) current medication details, and (c) correspondence between your optometrist and your GP or ophthalmologist;
your examination and test results;
your payment details;
your employment, lifestyle and driving information;
details of any prescription supplied to you by your healthcare professional or medical practitioner;
information that you provide by filling in forms on our website;
details of your visit to the website and any transactions you carry out on the website;
any information or images you give us when you use our measuring mirror;
any other information you have voluntarily given us.

We mainly collect this information from you when you give it to us voluntarily, but we may also collect it from other sources if it is legal to do so. This includes from the NHS or other healthcare providers, institutions or people you have authorised to provide information on your behalf (for example, parents or guardians), third-party service providers, government, tax or law-enforcement agencies, and others.

3. How and why do we use your personal data?

Your personal data is processed for the following reasons, so that we can provide you with the best possible eye health care and customer experience. We will only process your information if we have a lawful basis to do so. The lawful bases we rely on are;

We rely on our legitimate interests to provide you with a professional eye service in the most secure and appropriate way:

To perform eye examinations so we can understand your eye health and any medical conditions.
To determine your prescription for eyewear needs and dispense your eyewear.
To book your eye tests.
To confirm your appointment.
To remind you of your appointment a short period before the appointment is due.
To contact you about changes to our service that could affect or inconvenience you.
To send you eye test reminders. Changes in your eyesight are usually very gradual, so regular eye tests are important.
To send you eye health communication regarding eye health and vision correction and how you can look after this.
To send you direct marketing communications about our products, offers and discounts by post, email, SMS, telephone and social media. You can opt out of these communications at any time.
If you are browsing our website, we will not collect any information which will identify you by name. However, we will collect information using cookies or traffic data which uses IP addresses or other numeric identifiers, which analyse how people use our website.
To communicate with you as well as send you healthcare information, details of special offers and discounts relevant to you.
So we can respond to complaints, queries and any claims made against us.

We rely on contractual obligations when we process your information to fulfil an arrangement we have made with you:

Administration of your online account
To process any transactions when you purchase our goods and services
To payment card processors to process credit and debit card payments and store payment information; for example Worldpay, Handepay, American Express and Paypal.
So we can provide our products and services to you
To meet our contractual obligations

We rely on legal obligations where we have a statutory or other legal obligation to process the information, such as for the investigation of crime:

We may need to make your personal data available to other optometrists, medical practitioners, health and social care providers or the NHS
Regulators may request information when carrying out their functions
Other third parties who have a legal right to access personal data eg the police, our insurers, external auditors and investigators
Other companies who provide us with updated personal information e.g. changes to your contact information, deceased indicators
If you choose to exercise your data rights e.g. a subject access request
So we're able to meet our obligations as registered and dispensing optometrists
So we can respond to any complaints or claims we receive from regulators or other third parties
Fraud prevention and detection
Health and safety of members of the public, our staff and our customers
Corporate requirements including mergers and acquisitions.

We rely on your consent and ask you to provide explicit permission to process your data:

To process your personal data within Harpenden Eye Centre
When using virtual facial measurement services to deliver personalised experiences such as our measuring mirror

4. How long do you keep my information for?

We will keep personal information for as long as is reasonably necessary (or as defined under healthcare laws and regulations which apply) to provide products and services, including aftercare services, and to maintain records as needed to satisfy tax and other legal or regulatory requirements, as well as to protect and defend against claims.

5. Who do you share personal information with?

We may reveal your personal information to other people, including in the following circumstances:

We use other organisations to help us process personal information but they are not allowed to use it for other purposes. We may use the information we receive from other organisations to add to and improve our databases of customer details.
We may reveal personal information to health authorities, including NHS or national equivalent bodies.
We may pass personal information to external agencies and organisations, including the police and other law-enforcement agencies to prevent and detect fraud (including fraudulent transactions) and criminal activity. These external agencies may check the information we give them against public and private databases and may keep a record of those checks to use in future security checks.
If a claim is made, or could be made, against us, we may pass personal information to our insurers.
If we sell or buy any business or assets, we may reveal personal information about you to the prospective seller or buyer of that business or the assets.
If we (or substantially all of our assets) are bought or taken over by another organisation, personal information we hold about customers will be one of the assets transferred.
We may pass certain personal information to your employer, if you have been referred to us as a corporate eye-care customer.
We may pass your personal information to others to keep to any legal obligation (including court orders) or other agreements we have with you, or to protect our rights, property and safety or those of our customers, employees or others.

6. How do you process my personal information?

We will always take reasonable steps to make sure that it is protected in line with UK law.

We also take reasonable steps to make sure your personal information is adequately protected in line with the requirements of the UK data-protection law.

7. Our cookie policy

We use cookies to improve how our website operates. You can find more information here.

8. How can I update or change my personal information

You can update or change your personal information in practice, or contact us by phone, letter or email.

9. What rights do I have?

You have certain rights under UK data-protection legislation, including the option to:

access your personal information – we may charge a fee if we are allowed to do so by law;
correct your personal information if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
erase your personal information and prevent further processing in specific circumstances and where there is no other legal reason for us to continue keeping or processing that information. These include for example:
if the personal information is no longer needed in relation to the purpose for which it was originally collected or processed;
if you withdraw your permission;
if you object to us processing your personal information;
if you ask us to stop processing your personal information (although we are entitled to store your personal information, we cannot further process it if you ask us not to);
if we move or transfer your personal information to another organisation; and
if you object to us processing your personal information in the following circumstances.
If processing is based on legitimate interests or carrying out a task in the public interest or when exercising an official authority.
If information is processed for direct marketing.
If information is processed for purposes of scientific or historical research and statistics.

To ask for any of the above rights, please contact us by phone, letter or email.

You have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. They can investigate whether organisations are keeping to data-protection law. See ico.org.uk

10. What choices do I have?

We may use your personal information to contact you about our products and services.

If you do not want to receive marketing material, including special offers and discounts you can let us know in practice, or by phone, letter or email.

11. Protecting personal information

We use a variety of security technology and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access and use. Examples of these are shown below:

Encryption, meaning that information is hidden so that it cannot be read without special knowledge (such as a password). This is done with a secret code or what’s called a ‘cypher’. The hidden information is said to then be ‘encrypted’.
Using a different name for you so we can hide parts of your personal information from view.
Controlling access to systems and networks as this allows us to stop people who are not allowed to view your personal information from getting access to it.
Training our staff so we make them aware of how to handle information and how and when to report when something goes wrong.
Regular testing of our technology and ways of working, including keeping up to date on the latest security updates.

We have no control over the contents of other websites or resources which are linked to our website. We accept no responsibility for them or the privacy practices they use, or for any loss or damage that may arise from you using those websites or resources.

12. Updating our Privacy Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. Any updates will take effect as soon as they are posted on our website.

13. Contact us

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, or you would like to change any of the preferences you have chosen in store, by phone, letter or email.

Last updated October 2021

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