Privacy Notice
Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd. 21.05.18. Version 1.
This privacy notice tells you how Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd will collect and process your personal data if you register as a client, purchase our services and products, and use our website.
About Us
Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd is an independent animal veterinary surgery in Ickwell Road, Upper Caldecote, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, SG18 9BS. We protect the health and well-being of your pets, offering a range of services that include: diagnosing and treating sick and injured animals, advising owners on the right pet care, and providing a range of care related products for purchase.
Who to contact regarding your personal data
We take your privacy seriously. Our Data Protection Manager looks after data protection and would be happy to answer any of your questions about this privacy notice and how Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd uses your data. They can be contacted directly at
The personal data we collect and process
There are four main ways we process the personal data you provide. We endeavor to keep this information accurate and up to date, and not keep it longer than is necessary.
- To administer your account as a surgery client
In order to provide our service effectively and ensure the best possible care for your pet, we need to collect and process the following personal data when we register you as a client.
| Personal data type | How the data is collected |
| First name, Last name | As part of registering to be a client |
| Address | As part of registering to be a client |
| Phone number(s) | As part of registering to be a client |
| Email address | As part of registering to be a client |
This personal data will be used for the following services and purposes:
- To administer your account and provide the products and services you have requested from us. For example, invoicing, calling to change an appointment and to keep a record for legal and accounting purposes.
- To inform you by email of service information about the practice. For example, notification of seasonal opening times or changes to out of hours availability.
- If you have pet insurance and you wish to make a claim, we will pass on your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to your insurance company to allow them to process your claim.
- If we take blood or tissue samples from your pet, we will send the sample to one of our contracted laboratories and provide your surname and pet’s name for identification purposes only.
- In the event of your pet passing, should you choose to take up one of the crematorium options that are available, we will send your pet to our trusted crematorium, along with your surname and pet’s name for identification purposes only.
- It may be occasionally be necessary to provide access to this data to our software provider, Teleos Systems Limited, when support issues arise within our Practice Management System.
- To send you marketing communications as a surgery client
We send all our clients the following marketing communications:
- Reminders for pet vaccinations and administering preventative healthcare treatments.
- News information on animal welfare, like top tips for exercise and health checks you can do yourself.
- Practice Information and newsletters.
- Promotions and the latest related product offers.
Clients find these communications useful in administering care to their pets and to keep up to date with what is going on at the surgery. They are only sent to existing clients who can opt-out at any time.
The personal data that we process for these communications is name, email address and mobile phone number.
We would like our clients to enjoy these communications, so it is important to note that you can opt-out at any time by:
- Dropping into the surgery and speaking to a member of our team.
- Calling the surgery on 01767 627317.
- Emailing the practice on
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . - Clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ link in any marketing communications email.
- Using the contact form on our website.
- To share with veterinary related 3rd parties WITH your consent
There will be occasions where we will need to ask for your consent to share your personal data with a 3rd party:
- If you would like your pet to be referred to a specialist veterinary surgeon, we will provide them with your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to enable them to confirm your referral appointment.
- Should you wish to move to an alternative veterinary surgery, we will provide your pet’s clinical history with your name and address to your new vets before closing your account.
- Should you wish to microchip your pet (cats and rabbits), we will register your name, address, and contact number with the microchip provider. Note that micro-chipping dogs is a legal requirement and we share your personal data in this case under a legal obligation to do so.
Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd will not pass on your personal data to any third parties without your consent unless the law requires us to do so. We do not provide any personal data to the suppliers of the medicines we administer or the pet care products we sell.
- When you use our www.esmithvet.com website
When someone visits www.esmithvet.com we use a third-party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things like the number of visitors to the various parts of the website. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone.
Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd uses a third-party service to help maintain the security and performance of our website. To deliver this service it processes the IP addresses (a number assigned to each of your devices connected to the internet by your broadband provider) of visitors to the Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd website.
We provide contact forms on our website and collect users’ personal information to help them complete certain tasks. Each form details the information required and an explanation of what the form is for. For general enquiries, once an enquiry has been dealt with, the data is deleted in line with Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd procedures.
Disclosure of personal data to our service providers
We may pass on your personal data to service providers contracted to Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd in the course of dealing with you. They act as a data processor on our behalf and are obliged under contract to keep your details secure, and only use them to fulfil the services they provide on our behalf. When they no longer need your data to fulfil this service, they dispose of it in line with Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd procedures.
How long do we process your data for?
Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd is required to retain information in accordance with the law, such as information needed for income tax and audit purposes.
In order to comply with our professional liability insurance, we keep and securely store past clients’ records for seven years. This includes full name, address, email address and telephone number, but excludes bank account details.
We will only process your personal data whilst you are a client. After 6 years of inactivity, we will contact clients to ask them whether they wish to remain as a client. After 6 and a half years we will write to or call clients again. If there has been no activity for 7 years and no response to our enquiries, we will close the client’s account and anonymise the data.
Your rights as a data subject
At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you the data subject, have the following rights:
- Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
You can do that by visiting www.esmithvet.com or by calling 01767 627317. If we do hold information about you we will:
- give you a description of it;
- tell you why we are holding it
- tell you who it could be disclosed to; and
- let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.
Please note that you will need to provide proof of identity – a current passport or driving licence.
- Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
- Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
- Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
- Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
- Right to object to automated processing, including profiling – you also have the right to be subject to the legal effects of automated processing or profiling.
- Right to judicial review: in the event that Elizabeth Smith Veterinary Practice Ltd refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why. You have the right to complain as outlined below.
Complaints
We take the processing of your personal data very seriously and are here to help with any concerns you may have. Please do contact the Data Protection Manager at