Privacy Policy

Who we are

This Site is owned, operated and provided by I-Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling which is a trading arm of Allerston Limited. Allerston Limited is a company registered in England under company number 09816424, whose registered office is 116 Duke Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, England, L1 5JW.

I – Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling provides personal therapy and counselling services to individuals. Therapy and counselling services are delivered by Gillian Kearney, counsellor and member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITTA).

Gillian Kearney/ I-Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling is the controller of personal data obtained via the website, meaning we are legally responsible for deciding how and for what purposes your personal data is used.

Your privacy

We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information about the I-Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling business and this Site and how and why we collect, store, use and share any information relating to you (your personal data) in connection with your use of this Site. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal data and how to contact us or a relevant regulator in the event you have a complaint.

I-Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling and this Site are based in the UK. Collection, storage, usage and sharing of personal data about you (in connection with your use of this Site), is done so in accordance with data protection laws. These are the UK General Data Protection Regulation (which is the Retained Regulation (EU) 2016/679), as tailored by the Data Protection Act 2018, together known as the UK GDPR.

Given the nature of this Site, we do not expect to collect the personal data of anyone under 13 years old. If you are aware that any personal data of anyone under 13 years old has been shared with this Site, please let us know so that the data can be deleted.

What this policy applies to

This privacy policy relates to your use of this Site only: when you visit it, browse it, submit an enquiry via the online form, or otherwise use the Site.

Throughout the Site there may be links to other websites from time to time owned and operated by third parties who, for example, help us make our services available to you (see below). Those third party websites may also gather information about you in accordance with their own separate privacy policies. For privacy information relating to those third party websites, please consult their privacy policies as appropriate.

Please note, this website privacy policy does not relate to personal data collected from you during therapy or counselling sessions with Gillian Kearney, (although it does relate to information provided by you, for example, via the online form in anticipation of therapy or counselling with Gillian). A separate Client Privacy Policy will be provided to you on or before therapy or counselling starts. You may also ask for a copy of the Client Privacy Policy (please see 'How to contact us' below).

Personal data collected

The type of personal collected about you depends on the particular activities carried out by you on the Site. It may include information necessary to pick up and respond to your online enquiry, information about your interaction with this Site, information about your device.

The following personal data belonging to you may be collected:

Identity and contact information, such as:

your name, title, address and contact information, including email address and telephone number.

Technical information, such as:

version of web browser, IP address, time zone, language choice, cookie consent information, search terms, your contact history, how you interact with the website and what activities you undertake on it.

You can choose if you want to provide your personal information when you come to use the Site. You will be given the choice before you provide your personal data. For example, please see the Cookie Notice Bar (when you first visit the Site) which provides you with options of what cookies you would like the site to use. Please also see the Cookie Policy on the Site for further information. And see the Cookies section below.

We will also tell you whether declining to share that personal data will have any effect on your use of the Site or your ability to avail of the therapy/ counselling services on offer. For example, your ability to submit an online enquiry - you don’t have to give us your personal data but you will not be able to submit an enquiry via our online form unless you provide your contact details, and Gillian will not be able to respond to you and discuss your requirements and needs.

How your personal data is collected

Identity and contact information is collected directly, when you send us information, such as when you contact us/ submit a query via the online form on the Site; and
Technical information is collected indirectly/ automatically, when you visit and/ or browse this Site, by use of technologies explained in the Site’s Cookie Policy.

How and why we use your personal data

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal data if we have a proper reason, e.g:

where you have given consent
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, or
for our legitimate interests or those of a third party

A legitimate interest is when we have a business reason to use your personal data, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We will carry out an assessment when relying on legitimate interests, to balance our interests against your own. Your best interests are paramount to us.

The table below explains what we use your personal data for and why.

What we use your personal data for

Our reasons

To load this Site accurately for you.

For our legitimate business interests (ensure best customer experience / enhance customer experience)

To receive and consider an enquiry from you and to respond to your enquiry accordingly.

For our legitimate business interests, to ensure best customer service; to take steps prior to entering into a contract with you for delivery of therapy/ counselling services.

To optimise your experience on the Site by use of analytics.

For our legitimate business interests to help us understand how the Site is performing and ultimately provide the best user experience for you: the WIX platform which hosts the Site will (by default) track your use of the Site. This information will not be used for any marketing purposes.

We use cookies to collect certain information from you to provide the best overall experience for you on the Site.

For our legitimate business interests: the majority of cookies used are necessary for the Site to work and for you to have a good user experience on it. To see an overview of the cookies used on this site, please refer to the below links:

Conducting checks to identify you and verify your identity if necessary.

For our legitimate interests and to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

Initial contact with you/ responding to your enquiry about treatment.

For our legitimate interests in efficiently and compliantly managing and administering our business; to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations; to take steps at your request before entering a contract with you.

If necessary, enforcing legal rights or defend or undertake legal proceedings

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and for our legitimate interests, ie to protect our business interests and rights.

Disclosures and other activities necessary to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations that apply to our business eg to record and demonstrate evidence of your consents where relevant, to provide information on Subject Access Requests, requests for erasure of personal data. right to rectify or right to object.

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, and for our legitimate interests ie to protect our business interests and rights.

Marketing

We only market our services via this Site. We will never use your personal data to contact you directly to send you marketing communications.

We will always treat your personal data with the utmost respect and we will never sell it or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

Who we share your personal data with

As a matter of course, we share personal data with third parties that we use to help operate the I-Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling business and more specifically, to help us to run the Site. In order to provide this Site we use:

Website builder, web host and web support company: Wix. The Wix platform also provides plugins which we may use in order to extend the functionality of the Site.
Website general support providers: SharpFutures.
Google maps, to make the Site more helpful.
Google recaptcha, to help keep the Site safe.

The above mentioned third parties take appropriate measure to protect your personal data. They each have their own privacy policies which you can access on their websites or mobile applications as appropriate.

In certain circumstances it may be necessary for us (or the above third parties) to occasionally also share your personal data with:

Professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations.
Law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations

How long your personal data will be kept

If you contact us via the Site to discuss having therapy or counselling services with Gillian, but you do not proceed, then Gillian will delete your information within 1 month.

If you and Gillian enter into a contract for therapy/ counselling services, Gillian will keep your information for 7 years following the end of your treatment, following which it will deleted (please see the I-Thou Psychotherapy and Counselling Client Privacy Policy for more information, available on request).

Your technical information is retained for up to 12 months and is automatically deleted after that period.

Transferring your personal data out of the UK

We will never transfer your personal data outside of the UK, except where it is necessary in order for us to effectively run and manage our business including provision of the Site. For example, some of the third parties we use (WIX/ SharpFutures/ Google) are based in the UK but may use servers outside of the UK.

In those cases, we will comply with applicable UK laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.

Under UK GDPR, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK where:

in the case of transfers subject to UK data protection law, the UK government has decided the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy regulation’) further to Article 45 of the UK GDPR;
there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you; or
a specific exception applies under relevant data protection law.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file which is placed onto your device (eg computer, smartphone or other electronic device) when you use this Site. Cookies collect information from you automatically. We use cookies and other technologies on the Site. Please read this Site’s Cookie Policy for more information about the cookies and technologies used on this Site, the information collected from you and why, and how to change your cookie preferences.

Your rights

You generally have the following rights, which you can usually exercise free of charge:

Access to a copy of your information

The right to be provided with a copy of your information

Correction (also known as rectification)

The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your information

Erasure (also known as the right to be forgotten)

The right to require us to delete your information—in certain situations

Restriction of use

The right to require us to restrict use of your information in certain circumstances, eg if you contest the accuracy of the data

Data portability

The right to receive your information that you provided, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations

To object to use

The right to object at any time to your information being used for direct marketing purposes (please note that we do not carry out direct marketing) and in certain other situations to our continued use of your information, eg where we use your information for our legitimate interests unless there are compelling legitimate grounds for the processing to continue or the processing is required for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims

Not to be subject to decisions without human involvement

The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.

Please note that we do not make any such decisions about, based on data collected by this Site or otherwise.

The right to withdraw consents

If you have provided us with a consent to use your information, you have a right to withdraw that consent easily at any time by contacting us (see How to contact us below) or by any other method described in this privacy policy.

Withdrawing a consent will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your information in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn

You may also find it helpful to refer to the guidance from the UK's Information Commissioner on your rights under the UK GDPR.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please email, call or write to us (see ‘How to contact us’ below). Please provide enough information to identify yourself (e.g your full name, address, email address) and let me know which right(s) you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.

Keeping your personal data secure

We have in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully.

Gillian Kearney is the only person with access to the Site except for our third party web build and hosting provider, Google (maps and reCAPTCHA) and our website support providers who provide us with support on an as and when basis. All of these companies are bound by data protection obligations under the UK GDPR (please see ‘Who we share your personal data with’ above).

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your personal data and other information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

How to complain

Please contact us if you have any queries or concerns about our use of your personal data (see below ‘How to contact us’). We hope we will be able to resolve any issues you may have.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner.

The Information Commissioner may be contacted using the details here or by telephone: 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. When we make significant changes we will take steps to inform you, for example via the website or by email.

How to contact us

You can contact us by email or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you, to exercise a right under data protection law or to make a complaint.

Our contact details are:

Email: kearneygillian@yahoo.co.uk;
Mobile: 07871617740.

Policy date: July 2024