Privacy Policy

This privacy policy explains how Centre for Sight uses any personal information collected about you and your rights in relation to that information.

When we refer to “personal information” in this policy, we mean information which identifies you as an individual, or is capable of doing so. Accordingly, we may hold and use information about you in your capacity as a customer, a patient, or in any other capacity, for example, when you visit our website.

What is privacy?

Privacy is the confidentiality of your personal information and is of paramount concern to us at Centre for Sight. We are registered with the Information Commissioner as required under the data protection laws in the United Kingdom and are committed to compliance with Data Protection legislation.

Why do we have a Privacy Policy?

We have developed this Privacy Policy because we want you to feel confident about the privacy and security of your personal information.

Please read this privacy policy carefully. If you are visiting any of our websites or using any of our services, by continuing to do so, you indicate your agreement for Centre for Sight to use your personal information as set out in this privacy policy.

What personal information do we collect and when?

We may collect and process personal information about you when, for example, you:

• Enquire about any of our services.
• Voluntarily fill in a form, complete a customer survey, provide feedback or participate in a competition or promotion sponsored by us.
• Register with us as a patient for use of our services.
• Message us via WhatsApp, or provide your mobile number so that we can contact you via WhatsApp.

PLEASE NOTE:

By emailing us your details you are accepting the fact that we will respond to that email address. This acts as your consent to allow us to respond to you.

Marketing emails sent by Centre for Sight and its staff is not encrypted and therefore like all unencrypted email may be intercepted and viewed by others.

Please refer to our Email Communication terms & conditions.

Submitting a web form, sending a WhatsApp message, or sending an email to Centre for Sight, or receiving a WhatsApp message or email from Centre for Sight or its staff or doctors, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have or suspect you have an urgent health care problem, please consult with your health care provider / General Practitioner immediately.

Centre for Sight replies, whether by email, WhatsApp or other means, are not intended as medical advice. Accordingly you cannot rely on them as a diagnosis of your medical condition, as a confirmation of your medical diagnosis, or as a recommendation of one or more treatments.

What legal basis do we rely on when collecting and processing personal data?

Performance of a contract: The use of your information is necessary to enable us to provide patient services to you once you register with us as a patient. You will become a registered patient with us once you have booked a consultation with us.

Consent: We may rely on your consent to use your personal information for certain direct marketing purposes, including marketing communications sent by email, SMS, and WhatsApp. We will ask for your consent to hold your data and to contact you by these channels — for example, by way of a tick box or other clear opt-in step at the point you enquire about our services, register with us, or otherwise provide your contact details — even though you may not go on to register with us as a patient. You may withdraw your consent at any time — see “WhatsApp Communications” and “How do we use your information?” below for how to do this.

Special category data: Much of the personal information we hold about you as a patient — including information about your health, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment — is “special category data” under Article 9 of the UK GDPR. We process this data because it is necessary for the provision of health or social care or treatment, or the management of health or social care systems and services, on the basis set out in Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR. This processing is also subject to the duty of confidentiality owed to you by our clinical staff.

How do we use your information?

Your personal information will be kept confidential and will be handled in accordance with our requirements under Data Protection legislation and medical confidentiality guidelines.

We may use your information for the following purposes:

• In the normal course of our business, to allow us to register you to use our services and to provide you with our services on the basis that processing is necessary in order to perform our contract with you to provide our services.
• To allow us to manage your enquiries for our services on the basis that processing is necessary in order to be able to provide you with information and more detail about the treatments that we offer.
• To store your data to pre-populate data fields to make it easier for you to provide information when you return to our sites.
• To communicate with you, including sending you general updates, news and offers about products and services which we think may be of interest to you, by email, SMS and/or WhatsApp. You will be able to opt out of such communications at any time — see “WhatsApp Communications” below for WhatsApp, or by emailing us on info@centreforsight.com for email and SMS.
• To validate your information to check that the data we hold about our customers is accurate, consistent and up to date on the basis that processing is necessary in order to perform our contract with you to provide our services.
• In pursuit of legitimate interests, to record CCTV footage to ensure the safety and security of our premises, staff and customers.
• To comply with legal obligations to which we are subject.

WhatsApp Communications

We offer WhatsApp as one of the ways you can contact us, and as a channel through which we may send you marketing communications such as general updates, news and offers, where you have given consent for us to do so.

Consent

We will only send you marketing messages via WhatsApp where you have given us your consent to do so, on the same basis as our email and SMS marketing consent described above. If you contact us first via WhatsApp (for example, using the WhatsApp link on our website to ask a question), we will only add you to WhatsApp marketing communications if you have separately given your consent for marketing; an initial enquiry message does not, by itself, opt you in to receiving marketing content.

What we may send

Where you have consented, we may use WhatsApp to send you general updates, news and offers relating to our services and treatments.

How WhatsApp works and who else is involved

WhatsApp is operated by WhatsApp Ireland Limited, part of the Meta group of companies. When you message us or receive messages from us on WhatsApp, your phone number and the content of those messages are processed by WhatsApp/Meta in accordance with WhatsApp’s own privacy policy and terms of service, in addition to this privacy policy. We recommend you review WhatsApp’s privacy policy to understand how it handles your data.

Using WhatsApp may involve your personal information being transferred outside the UK, including to the United States, as part of Meta’s global infrastructure. Where this happens, WhatsApp’s own data transfer terms for UK business users — which incorporate a UK-specific data transfer addendum — are designed to ensure that appropriate safeguards required under UK GDPR are in place for that transfer. We do not control the specifics of how WhatsApp/Meta processes or transfers data on its platform; if you would prefer not to have your information transferred in this way, please contact us using one of our other communication channels (telephone or email) instead.

WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted in transit, but please be aware that, as with any messaging platform, you should avoid sending highly sensitive medical information via WhatsApp where possible, and should not rely on WhatsApp messages from us as medical advice or as a substitute for consulting your health care provider.

How to opt out

You can withdraw your consent to receive WhatsApp marketing messages from us at any time, free of charge, by either:

• Replying to any WhatsApp marketing message with “STOP” or “UNSUBSCRIBE” (or similar wording indicating you no longer wish to receive such messages); or
• Emailing us at info@centreforsight.com to ask us to remove you from WhatsApp marketing.

Opting out of WhatsApp marketing will not affect your ability to contact us, or for us to contact you, via WhatsApp for non-marketing purposes (for example, responding to a query you raise with us), nor will it affect any other communication channel such as email or SMS, which you can opt out of separately using the same methods.

Who do we share your information with?

The information and data we collect is important for us and we shall not share this with anyone else. We shall never disclose, rent, trade or sell your personal data to any third parties for their marketing or mailing purposes without your express consent.

In the usual course of our business, we may use third parties to process your personal information on our behalf, including platform providers such as WhatsApp/Meta where you choose to communicate with us by that channel. Where a third party data processor is used, we will ensure that they operate under contractual restrictions with regard to confidentiality and security in addition to obligations imposed by data protection legislation and GDPR guidance.

How long do we store your personal data for?

How long we keep your personal information depends on what it is and why we hold it:

• Medical and clinical records: We retain your medical records, including clinical notes, test results and treatment history, indefinitely. These records are held electronically, and as a healthcare provider we keep them on an ongoing basis to support your continuity of care, to meet our clinical governance and regulatory obligations, and in line with relevant retention guidance such as the NHS Records Management Code of Practice.
• Marketing communications (email, SMS, WhatsApp): We retain your contact details and marketing consent status for as long as you remain subscribed, or until you withdraw your consent, whichever is sooner. We may keep a record that you opted out, to ensure we do not contact you again in error.
• Enquiry and general correspondence: We retain enquiry records for as long as is reasonably necessary to respond to and follow up on your enquiry, and for a limited period afterwards in case you get back in touch.
• CCTV footage: We retain CCTV footage for a limited period, sufficient to allow us to review and act on any incidents, after which it is automatically overwritten or deleted.

In all cases, we will not keep your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy, having regard to legal, regulatory, accounting and reporting requirements.

How do we protect your personal information?

We shall treat all your information in strict confidence and shall endeavour to take all reasonable steps to keep your personal information secure once it has been transferred to our systems. We adopt appropriate data collection, storage and processing practices and security measures to protect against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure or destruction of your personal information and data stored on our IT systems, the website and associated databases.

Other information which you submit online, including via WhatsApp, may not be subject to the same protection and you do so at your own risk.

What rights do you have over your personal information?

Under UK GDPR, you have a number of rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you. These are:

• Right of access — you can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, including your health records where relevant.
• Right to rectification — you can ask us to correct any information you believe is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to erasure — in certain circumstances, you can ask us to delete your personal information. Please note this right does not apply to your clinical records, which we are required to retain for the reasons set out above.
• Right to restrict processing — in certain circumstances, you can ask us to limit how we use your personal information.
• Right to data portability — in certain circumstances, you can ask us to provide you, or transfer to another organisation, certain personal information you have given us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format.
• Right to object — you can object to our processing of your personal information in certain circumstances, including where we rely on legitimate interests, and you can always object to direct marketing (including WhatsApp, email and SMS marketing) at any time, free of charge.
• Rights related to automated decision-making, including profiling — you have rights where decisions about you are made solely by automated means without human involvement and which have a legal or similarly significant effect on you. We do not currently use automated decision-making or profiling of this kind.

Some of these rights only apply in certain circumstances, and we may need to balance them against our legal and regulatory obligations as a healthcare provider — for example, our obligation to retain clinical records. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please email us on info@centreforsight.com or write to us using the details at the end of this policy, and we will respond in accordance with our legal obligations.

How do I access or correct the information you hold about me?

You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you at any time, including copies of your health records (where relevant).

If you would like a copy of some, or all, of your personal information, please email us on info@centreforsight.com. All requests must be made in writing.

We want to make sure that your personal information is accurate and up-to-date; you may ask us to correct or remove information you think is inaccurate.

Right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)

If you have concerns about how we have handled your personal information, we would encourage you to contact us first so that we can try to resolve the issue — see “Who do I contact if I have a question about your privacy policy?” below.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint at any time with the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can contact the ICO via its website at ico.org.uk, by telephone on 0303 123 1113, or by writing to: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

What are cookies?

A “cookie” is a small amount of data which often includes a unique identifier that is sent to your computer or mobile phone (referred to here as a “device”) browser from a website’s computer and is stored on your device’s hard drive, mobile device, set top box or other device.

We use cookies for a number of purposes, broadly grouped as follows:

• Strictly necessary / functional cookies — required for the website to work properly, and to remember your preferences (such as cookie consent choices).
• Analytics cookies — we use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use our website, such as which pages are most popular, so that we can improve it.
• Marketing cookies — we use tools including the Meta (Facebook) pixel and email marketing platforms to measure the effectiveness of our marketing and, where permitted, to show you more relevant advertising.
• Third party plugin and security cookies — used by services such as our website back-up provider and security tools to keep the site functioning safely.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies but you can disable this function by changing your browser settings if you so wish, or by using our cookie consent tool where available on the site.

For full details of the specific cookies we use, their purpose and how to manage your preferences, please see our Cookie Policy. You can also find out more about cookies generally, including how to control and delete them, at www.aboutcookies.org.

How do you find out about changes to our privacy policy?

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this webpage. We may change the content or services found on our website at any time without notice, and consequently our privacy policy may change at any time in the future. Your continued access to or use of the website will mean that you agree to the changes.

Who do I contact if I have a question about your privacy policy?

Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy, or wish to exercise any of your data protection rights:

Margaret Da Costa, Data Protection Officer, on info@centreforsight.com

Or write to us at:

Centre for Sight Limited,
Hazelden Place,
East Grinstead,
West Sussex
RH19 4RH