Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT?

Aveley Lodge Care Home is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your working relationship with us, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

It applies to all service users and relatives. Aveley Lodge Care Home is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you.

We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

This notice applies to current and former service users and their relatives. This notice does not form part of any contract to provide services.

We may update this notice at any time but if we do so, we will provide you with an updated copy of this notice as soon as reasonably practical.

It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the data protection legislation.

THE LAWFUL BASIS UNDER WHICH WE PROCESS YOUR DATA

The General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018 requires Aveley Lodge Care Home to have a legal basis before we process information about others.

DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
Accurate and kept up to date.
Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
Kept securely

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU – SERVICE USERS

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
Date of birth.
Marital status and dependants.
Next of kin and emergency contact information.
National Insurance number.
Your financial details e.g. details of how you pay us for your care or your funding arrangements.
Pension and benefits information.
CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means.
Information about your use of our information and communications systems.
Photographs and videos
Results of HMRC employment status check, details of your interest in and connection with the intermediary through which your services are supplied. We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:
Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions.
Trade union membership.
Information about your health, including any medical condition, dental history, vaccination history, health and sickness records
Equal opportunities monitoring information including information about your ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health and religion or belief.
Compliments, Complaints & Grievances including annual Satisfaction Surveys results.
Information required by our Regulators

Special Categories of Personal Data

There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

Previously known as sensitive personal data, this means data about an individual which is more sensitive, so requires more protection. This type of data could create more significant risks to a person’s fundamental rights and freedoms, for example by putting them at risk of unlawful discrimination. The special categories include information about an individual’s:

race
ethnic origin
politics
religion
trade union membership
genetics
biometrics (where used for ID purposes)
sexual orientation
Health and social care data about you, which might include both your physical and mental health data.

In most cases where we process special categories of personal data, we will require the data subject’s explicit consent to do this unless exceptional circumstances apply, or we are required to do this by law (e.g. to comply with legal obligations to ensure health and safety at work). Any such consent will need to clearly identify what the relevant data is, why it is being processed and to whom it will be disclosed.

The condition for processing special categories of personal data must comply with the law. If we do not have a lawful basis for processing special categories of data that processing activity must cease.

WHY DO WE HAVE THIS DATA?

We need this data so that we can provide high-quality care and support. By law, we need to have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. See Section 2 above.

We process your data because:

We have a legal obligation to do so – generally under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 or Mental Capacity Act 2005.

We process your special category data because:

It is necessary due to social security and social protection law (generally this would be in safeguarding instances);
It is necessary for us to provide and manage social care services;
We are required to provide data to our regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), as part of our public interest obligations.

We may also process your data with your consent. If we need to ask for your permission, we will offer you a clear choice and ask that you confirm to us that you consent. We will also explain clearly to you what we need the data for and how you can withdraw your consent at any time.

COMMON LAW DUTY OF CONFIDENTIALITY

In our use of health and care information, we satisfy the common law duty of confidentiality because:

You have provided us with your consent (either implicitly to provide you with care, or explicitly for other uses)
We have a legal requirement to collect, share and use the data
The public interest to collect, share and use the data overrides the public interest served by protecting the duty of confidentiality (for example sharing information with the police to support the detection or prevention of serious crime)

WHERE DO WE PROCESS YOUR DATA?

So that we can provide you with high quality care and support we need specific data. This is collected from or shared with:

You or your legal representative(s);
Third parties.

We do this face to face, via phone, via email, via our website, via post and via application forms

Third parties are organisations we might lawfully share your data with. These include:

Other parts of the health and care system such as local hospitals, the GP, the pharmacy, social workers, clinical commissioning groups, and other health and care professionals;
The Local Authority;
Your family or friends – with your permission;
Organisations we have a legal obligation to share information with i.e. for safeguarding, the CQC;
The police or other law enforcement agencies if we have to by law or court order.

NATIONAL DATA OPT OUT

We are applying the national data opt-out because we are using confidential patient information for purposes beyond individual care.

The information collected about you when you use health and care services can also be used and provided to other organisations for purposes beyond your individual care, for instance to help with:

improving the quality and standards of care provided
research into the development of new treatments
preventing illness and diseases
monitoring safety
planning services

This may only take place when there is a clear legal basis to use this information. All these uses help to provide better health and care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential patient information about your health and care is only used like this when allowed by law.

Most of the time, the data used for research and planning is anonymised, so that you cannot be identified and your confidential patient information is not accessed.

You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. If you are happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. If you do choose to opt out your confidential patient information will still be used to support your individual care.

To find out more or to register your choice to opt out, please visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters.

You can change your mind about your choice at any time.

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU – FRIENDS & RELATIVES

As part of our work providing high-quality care and support, it might be necessary that we hold the following information on you:

Your basic details and contact information e.g. your name and address.

WHY DO WE HAVE THIS DATA?

By law, we need to have a lawful basis for processing your personal data. We process your data because we have a legitimate business interest in holding next of kin and lasting power of attorney information about the individuals who use our service and keeping emergency contact details for our staff.

WHERE DO WE PROCESS THIS DATA?

So that we can provide high quality care and support we need specific data. This is collected from or shared with:

You or your legal representative(s);
Third parties.

We do this face to face, via phone, via email, via our website, via post and via application forms.

Third parties are organisations we have a legal reason to share your data with. These may include:

Other parts of the health and care system such as local hospitals, the GP, the pharmacy, social workers, and other health and care professionals;
The Local Authority;
The police or other law enforcement agencies if we have to by law or court order.

HOW WE WILL USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU

We will only use your personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal information in the following circumstances:

Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you.
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
To ensure we continue to provide the best care to our Service User
As part of our Quality Assurance process
To prevent crime & uphold safety for all

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

Situations in which we will use your personal information

We need all the categories of information in the list above (see section 4 or 9 above) primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you and to enable us to comply with legal obligations. In some cases, we may use your personal information to pursue legitimate interests of our own or those of third parties, provided your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.

The situations in which we will process your personal information are listed below.

Making a decision about your admittance to the Home.
Determining the terms on which you live with us.
Checking you are legally entitled to live in the UK.
Administering the contract we have entered into with you.
Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing.
Conducting audits
Making decisions about compensation.
Gathering evidence for possible complaints.
Making decisions about your continued living arrangements with us.
Making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship.
Staff Education, training and development requirements.
Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other service users, our employees, workers and contractors, including accidents at work.
Complying with health and safety obligations.
To prevent fraud.
To monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with our IT policies.
To ensure network and information security, including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution.
To conduct data analytics studies to review and better understand employee retention and attrition rates.
Equal opportunities monitoring. Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as providing a benefit), or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workers).

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.

If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION

” Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We have in place an appropriate policy document and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances:

In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent.
Where we need to carry out our legal obligations or exercise rights in connection with employment.
Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring or in relation to our occupational pension scheme.

Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public.

INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our obligations and provided we do so in line with our data protection policy.

Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions where it is necessary in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We envisage that we will hold information about criminal convictions.

We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of the role and where we are legally able to do so.

We have in place an appropriate policy and safeguards which we are required by law to maintain when processing such data.

AUTOMATED DECISION-MAKING

Automated decision-making takes place when an electronic system uses personal information to make a decision without human intervention.

We are allowed to use automated decision-making in the following circumstances:

Where we have notified you of the decision and given you 21 days to request a reconsideration.
Where it is necessary to perform the contract with you and appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights.
In limited circumstances, with your explicit written consent and where appropriate measures are in place to safeguard your rights. If we make an automated decision on the basis of any particularly sensitive personal information, we must have either your explicit written consent or it must be justified in the public interest, and we must also put in place appropriate measures to safeguard your rights.

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision making, unless we have a lawful basis for doing so and we have notified you.

Our Website

In order to provide you with the best experience while using our website, we process some data about you.

By using the Website, you consent to such processing, and you warrant that all data provided by you is accurate.

The Company is committed to protecting your privacy and observing its obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998.

By making an enquiry via email, or via any of our contact forms, or by submitting an online review, you may provide personal information such as your name and email address or other personal information to third parties without your consent except to its authorized service provider or unless it is in the public interest to do so. The Company will take all reasonable measures to collect, record and store your personal information timely accurately and securely.

The Company currently does not use technology to track the behavioural patterns of visitors to this website. The Company may decide that to serve you better it will in the future. This can include using a “cookie” which would be stored on your browser. You can usually modify your browser to prevent this happening. Information collected in this way can be used to identify you unless you modify your browser settings.

DATA SECURITY

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information. Details of these measures are available upon request. Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed.

In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions, and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

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

DATA RETENTION

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

Once you are no longer a service user of the company or your relative is no longer a service user of the company, we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with our data retention policy.

For further information please see the Company’s Data Retention, Storage & Destruction Policy.

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your time / relationship with us.

Your individual rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected. Please speak to the RCHM.
Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of your personal information to another party. If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal information, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact the Data Protection Officer in writing.

Please note that not all of these rights apply in all circumstances.

Further information on your data rights can be found in our Company’s Data Protection Compliance (GDPR) policy.

A copy of this policy is available in alternative formats. Please speak to the RCHM or email registeredmanager@parmentercare.co.uk

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

RIGHT TO WITHDRAW CONSENT

In the limited circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal information for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time.

To withdraw your consent, please contact the Data Protection Officer. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. The DPO is currently the Registered Care Home Manager. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the RCHM.

Likewise, if you have any comments or queries about this Privacy Notice, or wish you exercise your ‘individual rights’ please contact the Registered Care Home Manager:

Email: registeredmanager@parmentercare.co.uk
Address: Aveley Lodge Care Home, Abberton road, Fingringhoe, Colchester, Essex CO5 7AS
Phone: 01206 729304

THE RIGHT TO LODGE A COMPLAINT WITH A SUPERVISORY AUTHORITY

If you have contacted us but continue to have concerns about the use of your personal data, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority. You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the ICO for data protection issues.

The ICO is the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights. The ICO can be contacted:

Website: www.ico.org.uk

Address: The Information Commissioner, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

Helpline: 0303 123 1113

CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information, please refer to the following Company Policies:

Data Breach Policy
Data Retention, Storage & Destruction Policy
Data Protection Compliance (GDPR) Policy
Privacy Policy
Disclosure & Barring Service Checks (DBS) Policy
Cyber Security Policy
IT Security Policy

[This Notice was updated & correct as of 19 July 2024]