Kim O’Brien (Strip) is registered as a data controller with the Independent Commissioners Office (ICO) (ICO registered number ZB527376).

The following information outlines the privacy policy of Strip. This policy is in place to ensure that information collected by Strip during your assessment and treatment plan is used in an appropriate and secure way.

Your privacy is very important to me and you can be confident that your personal information will be kept safe and secure and will only be used for the purpose it was given to me. I adhere to current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU/2016/679) (the GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.

The GDPR states that I must have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. There are different lawful bases depending on the stage at which I am processing your data. I will explain these clearly: If you have had therapy with me and it has now ended, I will use legitimate interest as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information. If you are currently having therapy or if you are in contact with me to consider therapy, I will process your personal data where it is necessary for the performance of our contract. The GDPR also makes sure that I look after any sensitive personal information that you may disclose to me appropriately. This type of information is called ‘special category personal information’. The lawful basis for me processing any special categories of personal information is consent initially. I will then retain any counselling records in case of the need to reference them in the future (the official legal basis is to defend against potential legal claims). When you contact me with an enquiry about my counselling services I will collect information to help me satisfy your enquiry. This will include your name, address, mobile number, email, date of birth, GP details.  Alternatively, your GP or other health professional may send me your details when making a referral or a trusted individual may give me your details when making an enquiry on your behalf. If you decide not to proceed I will ensure all your personal data is deleted within 14 working days. If you would like me to delete this information sooner, just let me know. Rest assured that everything you discuss with me is confidential. That confidentiality will only be broken if you disclose that you are going to hurt yourself or someone else. I will always try to speak to you about this first, unless there are safeguarding issues that prevent this. I will keep a record of your personal details to help the counselling sessions run smoothly. These details are kept securely and are encrypted electronically with passwords and are not shared with any third party. I will keep written notes of each session, these are kept in a locked filing cabinet. For security reasons I do not retain text messages for more than 24 hours. Email correspondence will be deleted after it is read if it is not important. If necessary I will attach this to your notes. Once counselling has ended your records will be kept for 7 years from the end of our contact with each other and then securely destroyed. If you want me to delete your information sooner than this, please tell me. You have a right to be forgotten. I try to be as open as I can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. You have a right to ask me to delete your personal information, to limit how I use your personal information, or to stop processing your personal information. You also have a right to ask for a copy of any information that I hold about you and to object to the use of your personal data in some circumstances. You can read more about your rights at https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/your-data-matters-blog/. If I do hold information about you I will give you a description of it and where it came from, tell you why I am holding it, tell you how long I will store your data and how I made this decision, tell you who it could be disclosed to, let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form. You can also ask me at any time to correct any mistakes there may be in the personal information I hold about you. To make a request for any personal information I may hold about you, please put the request in writing addressing it to kim@strip.london. If you have any complaint about how I handle your personal data please do not hesitate to get in touch with me by writing or emailing to the contact details given above. I would welcome any suggestions for improving my data protection procedures. If you want to make a formal complaint about the way I have processed your personal information you can contact the ICO which is the statutory body that oversees data protection law in the UK. For more information go to https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. I take the security of the data I hold about you very seriously and as such I take every effort to make sure it is kept secure. I use encrypted devices, protected passwords and locked filing cabinets. When someone visits my website, I collect a standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. I do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is only processed in a way that does not identify anyone. I use legitimate interests as my lawful basis for holding and using your personal information in this way when you visit my website. I use google analytics so that I can continually improve my service to you. Like most websites we use cookies to help the site work more efficiently. No user-specific data is collected by me or any third party. If you fill in a form on my website, that data will be temporarily stored on the web host before being sent to me.