Kay
Parkinson | Place to Talk Therapies
Version
2.2 · Last reviewed: 25th October 2026 · Next review: 1st June 2027
This Privacy Notice explains how Place to
Talk Therapies and the therapists working within the practice collect, use,
store and protect your personal information, from your first enquiry through to
after therapy has ended. It also explains how we use your information if you
buy or download a resource from our online shop, or subscribe to our
newsletter. We hold your trust as something to be honoured, and protecting the
information you share with us is central to the way we work. Please read this
notice alongside your counselling agreement and the privacy information
provided by your therapist.
We process personal information in
accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data
Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations
2003. All therapists working with Place to Talk Therapies also adhere to the
ethical guidance on privacy and confidentiality set by their professional body,
including the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and,
where applicable, the Association of Christian Counsellors (ACC).
Place to Talk Therapies is a collective of
independent counsellors providing counselling, psychotherapy, EMDR, couples
counselling and clinical supervision.
Kay Parkinson is the founder of Place to
Talk Therapies and manages the website, enquiries and administrative processes.
Kay also runs the Place to Talk Therapies online resource shop and newsletter.
Contact:
Email: admin@place2talk.co.uk
Telephone: 07858 984519
ICO
registration (Place to Talk Therapies): ZB600929
If you contact us through our website, by
email or by telephone, Place to Talk Therapies initially acts as the data
controller for the personal information you provide. This enables us to respond
to your enquiry, manage the enquiry process and, where appropriate, help
identify the therapist whose experience, availability and way of working best
fit your needs.
Each therapist working with Place to Talk
Therapies is an independent sole trader, registered with the Information
Commissioner's Office (ICO), responsible for their own clinical records,
safeguarding, professional registration, insurance, clinical supervision and
data protection obligations.
If you begin therapy with one of our
therapists, they become the data controller for the personal information they
hold about you. Your therapist will provide you with their own privacy notice
before therapy begins.
If you buy from our online shop or
subscribe to our newsletter, Kay Parkinson, trading as Place to Talk Therapies,
is the data controller for that information.
To provide our services safely, ethically
and professionally, we may collect the following information:
· Your name, date of birth,
address, telephone number and email address.
· Emergency contact, next of kin
and GP details, where relevant.
· Health information relevant to
your therapy, including your mental and physical health history, medication and
any risk concerns.
· Brief clinical notes made by
your therapist, including themes discussed and the agreed focus of your work
together.
· Records of appointments,
attendance and payments.
· Details of your enquiry, such
as the type of support you are looking for, your availability and any fee
arrangements agreed with you.
Some of this information is classed as
special category data, meaning it receives additional protection under UK data
protection law because of its sensitive nature.
If you buy from our online shop or
subscribe to our newsletter, we collect a smaller amount of information, set
out under "Online resource shop" and "Newsletter
subscribers" below. We do not collect health information from shop customers
or newsletter subscribers.
Under UK GDPR, we must have a lawful basis
for processing your personal information. The lawful basis we rely on depends
on the stage of your relationship with Place to Talk Therapies and your
therapist.
Considering
or receiving therapy: We process your information
because it is necessary to respond to your enquiry, arrange, cancel or
rearrange appointments, and provide the therapy service you have requested.
After
therapy has ended: Your therapist relies on
legitimate interests to retain accurate records and to meet professional,
legal, insurance and regulatory obligations.
Legal
obligation: Information may be disclosed where
required by law, for example in response to a court order or certain
safeguarding duties. We also keep financial records, including shop purchase
records, because tax law requires it.
Buying
from our online shop: We process your information
because it is necessary to fulfil our contract with you.
Newsletter: We process your information because you have given your consent.
You can withdraw your consent at any time.
Where we process health information or
other special category data, we also rely on the lawful basis of providing
health treatment and, where appropriate, substantial public interest where
there is a serious risk of harm. On rare occasions, we may rely on your
explicit consent, and we will explain this clearly if it applies.
We will only use your personal information
for purposes connected with providing and administering the services offered by
Place to Talk Therapies. We retain your information only for as long as is
necessary, in accordance with guidance from the Information Commissioner's
Office (ICO) and our professional obligations.
When you contact Place to Talk Therapies,
we collect enough information to respond to your enquiry and, where
appropriate, help identify the therapist whose experience, availability and way
of working best fit your needs.
Your enquiry details are held securely in
our Microsoft 365 business systems. Enquiry records are deleted automatically
six months after your first contact, provided your enquiry has closed. An
enquiry still open at that point is deleted once it closes. Backup copies held
within our systems are removed automatically within a further six months.
Information may be kept for longer only where we are required to retain it for
legal or regulatory reasons.
Anyone who goes on to begin therapy has
their details transferred to the practice management system, and the retention
periods described under "After therapy has ended" then apply.
Your email address or telephone number will
be used to confirm appointments and, where you have agreed, to send you
information relevant to your therapy. We will not use your contact details for
marketing purposes. You will only receive our newsletter if you choose to sign
up to it separately.
Before your first appointment, your
therapist will ask you to complete a client intake form. This collects personal
information, including your name, address, date of birth, contact details and
GP details, together with other information that will help your therapist work
with you. The information is stored securely on the Kiku practice management
system (or a comparable UK GDPR-compliant alternative).
Your therapist will not routinely contact
your GP, as your attendance is confidential. To fulfil their duty of care while
maintaining your confidentiality, they will only contact your GP where it is
necessary and, wherever possible, will discuss this with you first.
Your therapist keeps brief clinical notes
to support your work together and maintain an accurate record of your therapy.
These notes are for your therapist's use only, do not contain personal details
that could identify you, and are stored securely in a password-protected file
that only they can access. Your session notes are kept separately from your
personal information held on the practice management system.
Counsellors are required to keep certain
records after therapy ends. Financial records are retained for as long as
legally required for tax and accounting purposes. Retaining your records also
means your therapist can continue to offer an efficient service should you
contact them again.
Your therapist retains your personal
details, together with your anonymised session notes and client reference
number, for seven years after therapy ends, in line with current professional
guidance. Where a client is under 18, records are retained until their 25th
birthday.
All records are stored securely, and your
anonymised session notes are kept separately from your personal identifying
information wherever possible.
Where you meet with your therapist online
or by telephone, they will use an agreed secure platform, such as Microsoft
Teams, Zoom or WhatsApp Video, where appropriate. These platforms provide
end-to-end encryption where available. Please be aware that no online platform
can be guaranteed to be entirely secure, and we ask that you take part from a
private space where you will not be overheard.
Sessions are not recorded unless this has
been agreed in writing beforehand by both you and your therapist. We also ask
that you do not record sessions unless this has been agreed for a specific
purpose.
We treat confidentiality as a matter of
professional honour and will not share your personal information without good
reason. There are limited circumstances where information may need to be
shared:
Clinical
supervision: Your therapist discusses their work in
clinical supervision, as required by their professional body. Wherever
possible, this is done without identifying you, and supervisors are bound by
the same duty of confidentiality.
Risk
of serious harm: If you disclose abuse or neglect
of a child or vulnerable adult, or information that suggests a serious risk of
harm to yourself or others, your therapist may need to share information to
help keep people safe. Wherever possible, this will be discussed with you first
unless safeguarding concerns prevent this.
Legal
requirements: Information may be disclosed where
required by law, for example in response to certain safeguarding duties,
terrorism legislation or a court order.
We also share a limited amount of personal
information with trusted third parties where necessary to provide our services
and meet our legal obligations.
All enquiries are initially managed through
Place to Talk Therapies. Where appropriate, the information you provide may be
shared with the therapist whose experience, availability and way of working
best fit your needs. Each therapist sees only the enquiries allocated to them,
through a secure record shared with them individually. Should your enquiry be
passed to a different therapist, it is removed from the previous therapist's
record automatically.
Each therapist working with Place to Talk
Therapies is an independent sole trader, registered with the Information
Commissioner's Office (ICO), and responsible for their own clinical records,
safeguarding, professional registration, insurance, clinical supervision and
data protection obligations.
Once you begin therapy with your chosen/allocated therapist, they become the data controller for the personal information they
hold about you and will provide you with their own privacy notice before
therapy begins.
Our accountant has access to invoices and
shop purchase records solely for tax and accounting purposes. Where we use
carefully selected suppliers to support the running of the practice, they are
required to process your personal information only for the agreed purpose and
in accordance with applicable data protection legislation.
If your therapy is arranged or funded by a
third party, such as, but not limited to, your employer or family memeber, only the information necessary for
administration or invoicing will be shared. The content of your therapy
sessions remains confidential unless you give your written consent or we are
legally required to disclose information.
We will never sell your personal
information or share it with third parties for sales, marketing or research
purposes.
We take the security of your personal
information seriously. Enquiry records are held in Microsoft 365, with access
restricted to Place to Talk Therapies and the individual therapist allocated to
each enquiry. Email accounts are password protected, and the devices used by
members of the Place to Talk Therapies team are protected by passwords,
encryption where available, and appropriate security software.
Personal information is retained only for
as long as necessary to provide our services and meet our professional, legal
and regulatory obligations. Where information needs to be retained, it is
stored securely with access restricted to the appropriate therapist or
authorised administrator.
Place to Talk Therapies may use AI-assisted
tools for general administrative and creative tasks that do not involve
personal information, such as drafting template letters or website content. AI
is never used to make decisions about you, to write or interpret therapy notes,
or to record or analyse therapy sessions, and your personal and clinical
information is not entered into AI tools. Further detail is set out in
"How we use artificial intelligence (AI)", available on our website.
This section explains how personal
information is collected and used when you visit the Place to Talk Therapies
website or contact us through it.
If you contact us using the website contact
form, the information you provide is not stored by the website itself or passed
to third-party data processors. Instead, it is collated into an email and sent
securely to Place to Talk Therapies using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
(SMTP). SMTP servers are protected by TLS (sometimes known as SSL), meaning the
content is encrypted before being sent across the internet and decrypted by the
receiving devices.
The website uses cookies and Google
Analytics. Further information is available in our Cookie Policy.
This section explains how we use your
information when you buy or download a resource from our online shop, including
Good Standing™ and the STAND™, MEND™ and GUARD™ models. Kay Parkinson, trading
as Place to Talk Therapies, is the data controller for this information.
What
we collect: your name, email address, what you
bought or downloaded, the date, the price paid and your country. We never see
or store your card or bank details. These are handled securely by the payment
providers.
Why
we use it: to deliver your purchase, send you any
corrected files, answer your questions and process refunds, and to keep
accounts and tax records.
Who we share it with:
· Payhip, which runs our online
shop and, for UK and EU sales, handles VAT as our reseller.
· Stripe and PayPal, which
process payments. They may process information outside the UK, using safeguards
required by UK data protection law.
· Our accountant, for tax and
accounting purposes.
What
we never receive: anything you type into a Good
Standing™ workbook, worksheet or template. Those files stay on your own device
or account, and we cannot see or access them at any time.
How
long we keep it: purchase and tax records are kept
for as long as HMRC requires, which is at least five years after the 31 January
submission deadline for that tax year.
Buying from our shop does not sign you up
to our newsletter. You will only receive it if you choose to subscribe.
If you sign up to our newsletter, whether
or not you have bought anything, we use Kit (kit.com) to store your details and
send you emails.
What
we collect: your email address, your first name if
you give it, the date and form you signed up through, and which emails you open
or links you click.
Why
we use it: to send you the newsletter you asked
for, and to understand which content is useful.
Your
choice: every email includes an unsubscribe link.
Once you unsubscribe, we will not email you again, and we will remove your
details within a reasonable time.
Kit is based in the United States, and
stores information there using safeguards required by UK data protection law.
You have rights over the personal
information held about you. These include the right to:
· Request access to your personal
information (a subject access request).
· Ask for inaccurate or
incomplete information to be corrected.
· Request the deletion of your
personal information, although some records may need to be retained for legal,
insurance, tax or professional reasons.
· Object to, or request the
restriction of, certain types of processing in some circumstances.
· Withdraw consent where consent
is the lawful basis for processing.
· Object to marketing at any
time, including by unsubscribing from our newsletter.
You can find further information about your
rights on the Information Commissioner's Office website:
https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters
To make a request, please contact us in
writing at admin@place2talk.co.uk. Where your request relates to records held
by your therapist, we may ask you to contact them directly, as they are the
data controller responsible for those records.
We will respond to your request within one
month, although there may be circumstances where we are unable to comply, for
example where we are legally required to retain certain records.
If you are unhappy with how your personal
information has been handled, please contact us first so we have the
opportunity to resolve your concerns. If your concern relates to records held
by your therapist, we may ask you to contact them directly in the first
instance.
If you remain dissatisfied, you have the
right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's
independent authority for data protection. Further information is available at
https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ or by calling 0303 123 1113.
Please note that concerns about your
counselling or therapy are dealt with under our separate Complaints Policy.
We review this Privacy Notice regularly to
ensure it remains accurate and reflects any changes to the way Place to Talk
Therapies and its therapists collect, use, store and protect personal
information. Where significant changes are made, this notice will be updated
accordingly.
Please check this page occasionally to
ensure you are familiar with the latest version.
Last
reviewed: 25 October 2026
Next
review: 1 June 2027
Version
2.1 · Last reviewed: 25 October 2026 · Next review: 1 June 2027
This Cookie Policy explains how Place to
Talk Therapies uses cookies and similar technologies when you visit our
website. It should be read alongside our Privacy Notice.
Cookies are small text files that are
placed on your device when you visit a website. They help websites function
correctly, remember your preferences and provide information about how visitors
use a website.
Some cookies are essential for the website
to work properly, while others help us understand how people use the site so we
can continue to improve it.
We use cookies to:
· Ensure the website functions
correctly.
· Remember certain preferences
where appropriate.
· Understand how visitors use our
website through anonymous analytics.
· Improve the information and
services we provide.
We do not use cookies to collect sensitive
personal information or to identify you personally.
These cookies are necessary for the website
to function properly. Without them, some parts of the website may not work as
intended.
We use Google Analytics to collect
anonymous information about how visitors use our website. This may include
information such as:
· Which pages are visited.
· How long visitors spend on the
website.
· How visitors found the website.
· General information about the
type of device and browser being used.
This information helps us understand how
the website is being used and identify ways to improve it. We do not use Google
Analytics to identify individual visitors.
Some parts of our website include content
provided by trusted third parties. These services may place their own cookies
or similar technologies on your device:
· Google Maps, which shows our
locations.
· Kit (kit.com), which provides
our newsletter sign-up form. If you sign up, Kit also records which of our
emails you open and which links you click, as explained in our Privacy Notice.
We do not control these cookies, and you
should refer to the relevant provider's own privacy and cookie information for
further details.
Our online resource shop is run on Payhip's
website, which uses its own cookies. Please see Payhip's privacy and cookie
information when you visit the shop.
When you first visit our website, you can
choose to accept or decline non-essential cookies. Most web browsers also allow
you to control or disable cookies through your browser settings. You can choose
to block or delete cookies at any time, although doing so may affect how some
parts of the website function.
You can also find more information about
managing cookies and Google Analytics here:
Google
Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on:http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Google
Privacy & Terms:https://myaccount.google.com/data-and-privacy
Information
about managing cookies:https://www.aboutcookies.org/
We review this Cookie Policy regularly to
ensure it remains accurate and reflects any changes to our website or the way
cookies are used.
The latest version will always be available
on this website.
Last
reviewed: 25 October 2026
Next
review: 1 June 2027
