Privacy Notice

We give the best possible care to animals and the same goes for your information. We bring our own pets to the practice too, so we appreciate how important data protection is.

For services in our practices, the data controller — the company responsible for protecting your information — is CVS (Australia) Limited.

How we use your information

Your personal information is used for a number of different reasons depending on what it is. We only collect what is necessary in order to provide our service to you and often this is provided directly to us by your home veterinary practice. The tables below sets out what information is collected, our purpose for collecting it and our lawful basis (why we need to collect it) in line with data protection legislation.

Your personal details, such as your name, date of birth, address, email address, phone number and insurance policy number.

What we do and why

Our lawful basis

Identify who you are when you visit the practice so we can ensure it’s your pet, and our records are accurate. As part of our contract with you.
Send you appointment reminders so you know when to bring your pet in to see us. As part of our contract with you.
Communicate with your insurance provider if applicable so that any claims can be submitted efficiently. This is a legal requirement and part of our contract with you.
Send you service updates such as changes to our T&Cs or practice disruptions to inform you of any changes to the service we provide. This is a legal requirement and part of our contract with you.
We sometimes ask for your feedback about our overall service. More often than not, they are anonymised but we may want to respond to you directly, if you’re unhappy with something. Only if you decide to provide feedback, it requires your consent.

Your payment information

This is information provided when you are required to pay directly for any practice services. We don’t store your card details, WorldPay are our payment services provider.

What we do and why

Our lawful basis

Take payments for the service we provide and give refunds where necessary as some of our services require direct payment. It’s part of our contract with you.
Keeping a record of financial transactions so we know what you’ve paid for. It’s a legal requirement.

Your contact history with us

This covers things you’ve said, whether that be via email, telephone or the ‘Contact Us’ page on our website. Calls made to our practice may be recorded.

What we do and why

Our lawful basis

Provide customer service and support. It’s up to you whether you contact us via the methods above so it depends on the nature of your query. It could be part of our contract with you.
Improve our support services to ensure our customer service is the best it can be. It’s important to keep our team trained to the highest standard

Preventing and detecting fraud

We are also legally and contractually required to use any of the information above for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraud, against either you or us. Whilst it’s an unfortunate part of our service it is essential that we protect you and ourselves from fraud.

Personal information is also used for things like testing out IT systems, research, data analysis, improving our site and developing new products and services. Don’t worry though, this is all anonymised and aggregated so you aren’t identifiable.

Sharing your information

You have trusted us with your information, therefore the first thing we want to assure you of is that we do not, and will not, sell any of your personal data to any third party. In almost all cases, your personal data is shared with us by your home veterinary practice in order to treat your pet.

However, we share your data with the following categories of companies as an essential part of being able to provide our services to you:

  • Companies in the CVS group, as sometimes different parts of our group are responsible for different activities
  • Laboratories and Animal Crematoria, so that we can arrange tests, treatments and services and obtain results on your behalf
  • Your insurer, so that we can obtain permission to perform certain investigations and treatments at their expense. Also, to arrange payment for investigations and treatments provided
  • Banks and payment service providers, so that we can deal with payments and refunds where necessary
  • Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies, so that we can obtain information about you and help to detect and prevent fraud
  • Debt collection agencies if you fall behind with payments for the services we provide
  • Email providers, printers and mailing houses, so we can send you reminders and administrative information relating to the way we provide services to you
  • Law enforcement agencies if we receive a request from them to assist with any investigations
  • The veterinary practice that referred you to us after we have treated your pet

If you would like to know more about the companies we may share personal data with, or how to find out more on how they will use your data, please contact us at the details below.

Marketing messages

We do not send any marketing messages to you. However, please note that we will send you ‘service messages’ such as appointment reminders/relevant practice information such as changes to opening hours or closure via email/SMS.

Where your data is stored

All of the personal information we process is stored within the European Economic Area (EEA). Therefore, we can guarantee that your data will be handled in accordance with the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation. It’s important for us to be transparent with you so if this were ever to change, we would let you know in advance.

How long we keep your information

We will keep your data for as long as your pet is treated at our site and for as long as we are required to retain it to ensure we meet our legal obligations.

You can contact us if you no longer wish for us to hold your information and ask that we deactivate your account. However, we have a legal requirement to keep some of your personal data even after you have asked us to remove it. We will only keep what we absolutely need to, and only to make sure we can meet our legal or regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce our Terms & Conditions.

Your rights

You have a number of rights relating to your personal information, which are as follows:

  • The right to be informed about how your personal information is used, most of which is within this notice
  • The right to access personal information we hold about you
  • The right to rectify personal information we hold about you if it is inaccurate or incomplete We ask that you speak to a member of our practice team if any of your contact details have changed
  • The right to request that we delete your data, stop processing it or collecting it in some circumstances
  • The right to stop marketing messages, further information of which is above in the ‘Marketing’ section
  • The right to portability where we would port or transfer elements of your personal information to you or another practice

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or have any questions, please contact us via the contact details at the end of this notice.

Changes to this notice

We will keep this notice under regular review and publish any updates in practice or on this website. Any significant changes will be communicated with you directly so you are kept up to date on how your data is handled.

This privacy notice was last updated on 6 October 2021.

How to contact us

Client feedback is essential in ensuring that we provide the best possible service to you. If you have any questions about this notice, want us to stop using your information or exercise any of your rights then please don’t hesitate to contact us via the following methods:

Post

Data Protection Officer
CVS Vets (Australia) Proprietary Limited (care of BDO Services Pty Ltd)
Level 10
12 Creek Street
BRISBANE
QLD
4000

Email

dataprotection@cvsvets.com

Complaints

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us via the contact details above.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have used your data. Our ICO Registration number is Z7208449.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office
CVS Vets (Australia) Proprietary Limited (care of BDO Services Pty Ltd)
Level 10
12 Creek Street
BRISBANE
QLD
4000

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Website: www.ico.org.uk