Last updated: September 2026

This notice explains how I collect, use, store and protect your personal information when you enquire about or receive counselling services from Ceri Pritchard Counselling Services. It should be read alongside your counselling agreement and other relevant client information.

1. Who is responsible for your information?

Ceri Pritchard Counselling Services is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice. I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration reference ZB639411.

For privacy or data-protection enquiries, please email info@ceripritchard.co.uk.

2. What information I may hold

• Your name, contact details, address and date of birth where required.
• Emergency contact details where you provide them.
• Appointment, attendance and communication records.
• Relevant personal, health, wellbeing, medication, risk, safeguarding and biopsychosocial information needed for safe and appropriate counselling.
• Brief counselling/clinical notes and information about the work undertaken.
• Information about unusual reactions, significant incidents or risks where relevant to the work.
• Payment, invoice and transaction information.
• Correspondence between us and relevant consent or agreement records.

I aim to collect only information that is relevant and proportionate to providing counselling safely, administering the service and meeting my professional, legal and insurance responsibilities.

3. Why I use your information and the legal basis

For ordinary personal data, I may rely on the performance of our counselling contract, steps taken at your request before entering into a contract, my legitimate interests in providing and administering a safe professional counselling service, and legal obligations where they apply.

Counselling records can include special-category data, particularly information about physical or mental health. Special-category data requires both an Article 6 lawful basis and an additional Article 9 condition. Depending on the purpose and circumstances, I may rely on your explicit consent and, in limited situations, other lawful conditions such as vital interests or the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. I will not use sensitive information for unrelated purposes.

4. How I collect information

Most information is provided directly by you during enquiries, forms, assessments, counselling sessions, emails, telephone calls or other communications. Website enquiries are handled through WriteUpp. I may also receive information from a parent or guardian, referrer, GP, other professional or another person where this is appropriate and lawful.

If I receive personal information about you from another source, I will handle it under the same data-protection principles and provide privacy information where required.

5. Confidentiality, supervision and when information may be shared

Counselling is confidential, but confidentiality is not absolute. I may share information where you have agreed to this, where it is necessary for the service, or where there is a serious safeguarding, legal or professional reason to do so.

• Clinical supervision: I discuss my work in supervision to support safe and ethical practice. I minimise identifying information and do not routinely use clients’ names.
• With your consent: I may communicate with another professional involved in your care where you have agreed to this.
• Serious risk or safeguarding: if I believe there is a serious risk of harm to you or another person, or a safeguarding concern involving a child or adult at risk, I may need to share relevant information with appropriate services or authorities. Where safe and appropriate, I will aim to discuss this with you first.
• Legal requirements: information may be disclosed where I am legally required to do so, for example in response to a valid court order or other lawful requirement.
• Professional advisers and insurers: limited information may be shared where genuinely necessary for legal, accounting, insurance or professional purposes.

6. Systems and service providers

I use a number of trusted services to operate my practice. Depending on how we work together, these may include:

• WriteUpp - client/practice management, contact handling and appointments.
• Square - booking, invoicing and card-payment processing where used.
• Microsoft Outlook and Teams - email, diary and online sessions where used.
• 123 Reg - website/domain and email-related services.
• Google services, including Gmail, Google Forms and Google Meet - communications, forms and online sessions where used.
• Zoom - online counselling sessions where used.

If you pay by card, Square processes and stores card/payment information within its own system. I do not need to retain your full card details separately. If you pay by bank transfer, your name and payment information may appear in my banking and accounting records.

7. Online counselling

Where counselling takes place online, I may use Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams. Online platforms necessarily process technical and connection information in order to provide the service. I will not record counselling sessions unless this has been specifically discussed and a separate, clear agreement has been made.

8. How long I keep client records

In accordance with the record-keeping requirement provided by my professional indemnity insurer, adult client consultation records are retained for five years after the counselling work ends.

Where the client was under 18, records are retained for five years after the client’s 18th birthday. After the applicable retention period, records will be securely destroyed or deleted unless there is a specific legal, regulatory, insurance or other lawful reason requiring longer retention.

Financial or accounting information may be retained for a different period where this is required by tax, accounting or other legal obligations.

9. Security

I take reasonable steps to keep information secure and confidential. Measures include using appropriate password and access controls, secure practice systems, protecting devices and accounts, limiting access to information, and securely deleting or destroying records when they are no longer required.

10. Data breaches

If a personal data breach occurs, I will record and assess it and take appropriate steps to contain and address it. Where the legal reporting threshold is met, I will notify the ICO without undue delay and, where feasible, within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach. If a breach is likely to result in a high risk to your rights and freedoms, I will also inform you without undue delay where required.

11. International transfers

Some technology providers may process or store information outside the UK. Where an international transfer of personal data takes place, I expect the provider to use an appropriate lawful transfer mechanism and safeguards required by UK data-protection law. You may contact me for further information about a particular provider used in connection with your data.

12. Your rights

Depending on the circumstances and the lawful basis being used, you may have the right to access your personal information, ask for inaccurate information to be corrected, request erasure or restriction, object to certain processing, and request portability of certain information. Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw that consent. Some rights are not absolute, and I may need to retain or continue processing information where there is a lawful reason to do so.

To exercise your rights or ask a question about your information, email info@ceripritchard.co.uk. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

13. Automated decision-making and marketing

I do not use solely automated decision-making or profiling to make decisions about your counselling. I am not currently using client information for email or text marketing. If I introduce marketing in the future, I will provide appropriate information and use a lawful basis before doing so.

14. Changes to this notice

I will review this notice periodically and update it when my practice, systems or legal obligations change. I will make the current version available to clients.

Acknowledgement and consent where required

This Privacy Notice explains how your information is handled. Receiving the notice is not, by itself, the legal basis for every use of your information. Where I need your explicit consent for a particular use of special-category information or another specific purpose, I will ask for that consent clearly.

Contact

Ceri Pritchard Counselling Services
Email: info@ceripritchard.co.uk
ICO registration: ZB639411