GDPR Privacy Policy
Hope’s Therapy Dogs is a professional Animal Assisted Intervention Company.
Hope’s Therapy Dogs is committed to protecting your personal information and being transparent about the information we hold, whether you are an individual or organisation. The purpose of this policy is to provide a clear explanation about how Hope’s Therapy Dogs collect, hold, process, and store your information and the measures we have in place to keep it safe and secure, whether it is collected or provided online, by phone, email, in person, by letter or through social media.
1. Contacting Hope’s Therapy Dogs
For the purpose of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, 2018) the data controller is Hope’s Therapy Dogs. If you want to know what information we hold about you or if you have any other queries in relation to this Privacy Notice, our contact details are as follows: ali@hopestherapydogs.co.uk
2. Personal Information
Hope’s Therapy Dogs collects, holds and processes personal data from our employees, customers and clients. When we say personal data or personal information, we mean the details that you may provide about yourself and any information which identifies you, such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, country of residence or any photographs. We do hold some sensitive information when there is a clear reason for doing so, for example if you participate in our interventions, we may need to know about your health, wellbeing and family background. We may collect other information relevant to our work with your permission.
We may be required to collect information about gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, socio-economic background, or sexuality, which we may also collect anonymously from job applicants. We will keep this information securely in password-protected locations, only accessible to relevant staff members. We only retain this information for as long as required, before destroying/deleting. While holding this information, we will also anonymise it wherever possible.
3. Collecting your Information
Consent must be freely given, unambiguous, and on an opt-in, not opt-out basis.
We may collect personal information about you when you ask about our services, participate in interventions or events, volunteer for us, sign up for our newsletter, contact us online, by phone or in writing, or collaborate with us on any of our projects. Most of the personal information we hold is provided directly by the person themselves, but some data could be provided by third parties such as parents/guardians, fellow educators, social service organisations or charities.
We only use this information for the purposes of our business operation and never share the data with any other organisation or third party unless legally required to do so (e.g. in the interest of Safeguarding).
Hope’s Therapy Dogs have social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook. Depending on your settings or the privacy policies for these sites, by connecting with us on any of these channels you might give us permission to access your information on those accounts or services.
4. How we use your information
We treat information about you with great care and respect, and your information is only used if we have legal grounds to do so, which might be because:
you have provided consent
it is necessary to allow us to deal with your request,
we have a regulatory or legal obligation to do so
We require this information to understand your needs and provide you with a better service and in particular for the following reasons:
To remain legally compliant.
Internal record keeping.
To improve our services.
To provide you with information about our services.
For recruitment purposes.
To communicate with participants of our events.
To invite you to participate in surveys or research.
To develop aggregated data for analysis.
To analyse and improve the activities and content offered.
5. Additional information for job applicants, employees, and collaborators:
If you apply for a role with Hope’s Therapy Dogs, we will hold the personal information you provide to process your application and we may undertake monitoring of recruitment statistics as required by employment and data protection law.
If we want to disclose information to a third party, for example where we want to take a reference up or obtain “disclosure” from the Disclosure and Barring Service, we will not do so without asking you beforehand, unless the disclosure is required by law. If you apply to work with us we’ll only hold your data for the purposes of that application.
We won’t hold your personal information for any longer than is necessary for the purposes of that application, unless you give us permission to do so.
6. Security Measures
We take the security of your data seriously. All digital personal information has appropriate technical controls in place to protect your data; any sensitive information is kept encrypted or password-protected locations and personal information is deleted when no longer required for the original purpose. Hard copies of personal information are stored in locked locations with access limited to relevant staff only. Our computer systems are protected and routinely monitored for Malware. We regularly undertake reviews of who has access to what information to ensure that access to personal information is restricted and appropriate.
Where we use external companies that may process data on our behalf we will check that these companies comply with the law and our policy before working with them.
We will only share your data where we have your explicit and informed consent unless we are required to disclose your details to the police, regulatory bodies, or legal advisors on a lawful basis.
If Hope’s Therapy Dogs are responsible for personal data that is lost, stolen or hacked, we have a duty to report this breach to the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. If the breach is “high risk” and likely to have an impact on the individuals affected, we will inform them as soon as possible.
7. Retention of your data
We regularly review the length of time we keep personal data, and will only keep your information for as long as required to complete the original purpose of collection.
Unsuccessful job applicants will have their data deleted after six months after the appointment has been made. If a candidate was the second choice for a role, we may retain their information until the probation period has been completed by the candidate appointed. Intervention participants will have their data stored for a maximum of 12 months after their last session.
Hope’s Therapy Dogs maintains a retention schedule to track personal information held by the company and to ensure that information that is no longer required for its original purpose is securely deleted in a timely manner. This allows us to track documents that may need to be retained for longer; for example, HR documents for employees must be retained for six years after employment ends for legal reasons.
8. Your Right to Access Your Data
You have the right to request the information we hold about you at any time by submitting a written Data Subject Access Request. We will require proof of ID before releasing any information. We will provide you with a description or copies of your information held by Hope’s Therapy Dogs within 30 days, unless your request is particularly complex, in which case it may take up to 3 months.
9. Your Right to Correct Incorrect Information and Your Right to Be Forgotten
You have the right to keep your personal data accurate and up to date. If you have reason to believe that Hope’s Therapy Dogs holds incorrect or out-of-date information about you, please make a written request by contacting ali@hopestherapydogs.co.uk and we will respond within 30 days regarding your request to rectify, erase or destroy that data. You have the right to be forgotten.
If you would like your personal data held by Hope’s Therapy Dogs to be erased, please make a written request by contacting We will respond within 30 days.
We will erase the data as requested if it is no longer necessary for the purpose it was originally collected, or if you initially consented to us holding the information and have now withdrawn consent, if the information was collected and retained on a legitimate interest basis which no longer applies or we need to comply with a legal obligation.
The right to be forgotten does not apply when the information needs to be retained to perform a task in the public interest, comply with a legal obligation, or to exercise the right of freedom of expression and information, or for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims. The right will also not apply in cases where processing is required for public health purposes in the public interest. Other reasons why a request to be forgotten may be denied is if it is manifestly unfounded or excessive or if the request is repetitive in nature.
10. Your Right to Complain to the ICO
If a request is denied, we will inform you of this within 30 days and tell you the reasons we are not taking action. We will also inform you of your right to make a complaint to the ICO, and your ability to seek to enforce the request through legal action.
11. Privacy Notice Review
We regularly review this Privacy Notice to ensure that it is up to date and fit for purpose. We will notify you about any significant changes to the way we treat personal information by sending a notice to the primary contact you have provided or by placing a prominent notice on our website. Last reviewed December 2022.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about Our Company’s privacy policy or the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us. Email us at: ali@hopestherapydogs.co.uk