Privacy Notice
Effective date: 29 October 2026
1. Who we are
Konnect Clinical Psychology Ltd ("Konnect", "we", "us") is a psychology practice. This notice explains how we use personal information about people who visit our website, contact us, use our services, or are connected with our clients (such as GPs, named contacts and funders). It is effective from 29 October 2026.
| Company | Konnect Clinical Psychology Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15402927 |
| Registered office | 3 Swan Road, Seaton, EX12 2US |
| ICO registration number | ZB676764 |
| Privacy lead | Dr Joseph Barker, Clinical Director |
| j.barker@konnectclinicalpsychology.co.uk | |
| Phone | 0330 043 8175 |
We are not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer. Dr Barker is responsible for data protection at Konnect, and you can contact him about anything in this notice.
2. Who is responsible for your information
Konnect holds every client's record on its own systems, and Konnect takes primary responsibility for it. Our Clinical Director, Dr Joseph Barker, sees clients himself. Our other psychologists are associates: independent, HCPC- or BPS-registered psychologists and clinical associate psychologists who work with Konnect clients as subcontractors.
When an associate works with you, Konnect and the associate are joint controllers of your personal information under UK data protection law. We have a written agreement that sets out who does what:
| Konnect | Your psychologist |
|---|---|
| Your main point of contact for anything about your information | Directs you to Konnect for requests and complaints about your information |
| Provides and secures the systems your record is kept on | Uses only Konnect's systems for your information |
| Keeps your record for the retention periods below, then destroys it securely | Writes accurate notes promptly and keeps no separate copies |
| Answers requests to see or correct your information, and handles complaints | Helps Konnect answer requests, including advising on health information |
| Deals with any data breach, including reporting to the ICO | Tells Konnect about any breach within 24 hours |
| Writes this notice and our client contract | Makes clinical decisions, including any decision to share information to keep you or someone else safe |
You can exercise your rights with either of us, but contacting Konnect is the quickest route.
3. Information we collect
If you contact us or book a free consultation: your name, email address and phone number, how you found us, and anything you choose to tell us about why you are seeking help. This may come through our website form, email, phone or a directory such as Psychology Today. We don't keep detailed notes of the free 15-minute consultation.
If you become a client:
- your contact details, date of birth, address and contact preferences
- your GP's details, and the details of any other professional or named person you ask us to be able to contact
- your insurer's or other funder's details, such as policy and authorisation numbers
- notes of your sessions, assessments, questionnaires, letters and reports
- emails between you and Konnect or your psychologist
- appointment, payment and invoice records
Much of this is health information, which the law treats as special category data which gives you extra protections. During therapy you may also tell us other sensitive information, for example about your religion, sexuality, ethnicity or legal matters. We record only what is relevant to your care.
If you are someone a client names (a GP, another professional, a named contact or a funder contact): your name, role and contact details.
If you visit our website: information collected through cookies, as described in section 10.
4. How we use your information and our legal basis
UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018) requires a legal basis for each use. For health information we also need a further condition. We do not rely on your consent as the legal basis for providing your care, although we always ask your permission before sharing your information in the ways your contract describes.
| What we do | Legal basis | Condition for health information |
|---|---|---|
| Reply to enquiries and arrange a free consultation | Taking steps you ask for before a contract; our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact us | Health or social care purposes (UK GDPR Art. 9(2)(h); DPA 2018 Sch. 1 para. 2) |
| Provide assessment, therapy, coaching, consultation, and supervision, and keep your clinical record | Performing our contract with you (Art. 6(1)(b)) | Health or social care purposes, by or under the responsibility of HCPC or BPS-registered health professionals bound by confidentiality |
| Take payment, invoice you or your funder, and agree with your funder what they receive | Contract; legal obligation to keep accounts (Art. 6(1)(c)) | Health or social care purposes (management of health services) |
| Share information to protect you or someone else from serious harm | Vital interests (Art. 6(1)(d)); legal obligation; our legitimate interest in protecting people from harm | Vital interests (Art. 9(2)(c)); safeguarding of children and individuals at risk (DPA 2018 Sch. 1 para. 18) |
| Handle complaints, claims, regulatory inquiries and requests about your information | Legal obligation; our legitimate interest in defending claims | Legal claims (Art. 9(2)(f)) |
| Run, secure and check our service, including backups and record audits | Legitimate interests in a safe, well-run service | Health or social care purposes |
| Count enquiries and how people found us, without names, to improve our service | Legitimate interests | Not needed: we use anonymised totals only |
We do not use your information for marketing, sell it, or make decisions about you by automated means alone.
5. Who can see your information
Within Konnect, your record can be seen by your psychologist; by Dr Joseph Barker, Clinical Director, or an administrator for administration, safety and quality, complaints, legal matters and requests about your information; and by any Konnect psychologist who takes over your care, with your agreement.
Konnect accesses an associate's Konnect email account or folders only for set purposes: answering a request about your information, a complaint or claim, a risk to safety, continuing your care, routine compliance checks, or when an associate leaves. Each access is logged. Routine checks look only at whether records exist (dates and senders), not what they say.
Outside Konnect, we share information only when needed:
- your GP and other professionals with your permission, or without it if there is a serious risk of harm
- a person or organisation you name in your contract: only what you agree
- your insurer, employer or other funder: only what we agree with you in advance, normally your name, date of birth, policy or authorisation numbers, session dates, invoices and any report the funder requires. We do not share what you discuss without your consent
- courts, regulators (such as the HCPC and the ICO), the police or safeguarding services: where the law requires it or to prevent serious harm
- our professional advisers and insurers (for example a solicitor), if needed for a complaint or claim
- a buyer or successor of the practice, who would be bound by the same confidentiality
If you contact us through a directory such as Psychology Today, that site is responsible for the information you give it; please read its own privacy notice.
6. Service providers and international transfers
These companies provide services to us. Most act only on our instructions, under contracts that require them to keep information secure; our bank and accountant are also responsible for it in their own right.
| Provider | What it does for us |
|---|---|
| Google (Google Workspace) | Our email, calendar and the secure storage of client records |
| Microsoft (Microsoft 365) | Our associate psychologists' Konnect email accounts, stored in the UK, and their video sessions on Microsoft Teams. Teams sessions are not recorded or transcribed. |
| Squarespace | Hosts our website and its enquiry form |
| Anthropic (Claude) | An AI assistant helps with business administrative tasks. No data is ever sent to Anthropic for training purposes and no data is used by any AI company to train any AI model. |
| Google (Google Meet) | Our clinical director's video sessions. Sessions are not recorded or transcribed except with your explicit consent. |
| Wispr (Wispr Flow) | Voice dictation software our clinical director may use to write emails, including emails to clients. It is set up so that nothing is stored on Wispr's servers or used to train AI. |
| Our bank and accountant | Payments, invoices and our company accounts |
Some providers may process information outside the UK, for example in the United States. When they do, we make sure it is protected by UK adequacy regulations (including the UK–US data bridge where the provider is certified) or by contract terms approved under UK law.
7. How long we keep your information
| Information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Enquiries from people who do not become clients | 12 months |
| Clinical records and emails: adults | 7 years after your last session |
| Clinical records and emails: clients first seen at 16 or 17 | Until your 25th birthday (26th if you were 17 when treatment ended), or 7 years after your last session, whichever is later |
| Invoices and payment records | 6 years after the end of the accounting period they relate to, as HMRC requires |
| Any record involved in a complaint, claim, request or court case | Until it is resolved, even if this is longer than above |
At the end of the period, records are reviewed and then securely destroyed. Our offline backups are replaced on a rolling basis, so deleted records leave the backups within three months.
8. How we keep your information secure
- Client records are kept only on Konnect's business systems (Google Workspace and Microsoft 365), never on personal accounts.
- Every account uses two-step sign-in, and each psychologist can see only their own clients' folders.
- Sharing is restricted to Konnect's own email domain, and automatic forwarding of email to outside addresses is blocked.
- Our psychologists use the Outlook app with message previews hidden and a screen lock on their devices.
- Records are backed up monthly to an encrypted drive kept offline, and we test that backups can be restored.
- Everyone who handles your information is bound by professional and contractual duties of confidentiality.
Email is vulnerable to human error and messages can go to the wrong address or be intercepted. Please don't use email for emergencies, and tell us if you would like us to limit what we put in emails.
9. Your rights
You have the right to:
- be informed about how we use your information (this notice)
- see your information and get a copy of your record, free of charge, normally within one month. We may withhold health information only if a health professional judges that seeing it would be likely to cause serious harm, and we may remove information about other people
- ask us to correct information that is wrong. Where you disagree with a clinical opinion, we will add your view to your record
- ask us to delete information, or to restrict or object to how we use it. These rights are limited for clinical records, which we must keep for the periods in section 7
- receive information you gave us in a portable format, where this applies
- withdraw your consent to any sharing that relies on it, at any time
To make a request, contact Dr Joseph Barker using the details in section 1. We may ask you to confirm your identity. Requests about a client who has died are handled under the Access to Health Records Act 1990.
10. Cookies
Our website is hosted by Squarespace, which uses cookies to make the site work. If you agree through the cookie banner, we also use Squarespace Analytics and Google Analytics to see how the site is used so we can improve it. Google processes this information on our behalf. You can change your choice at any time through the cookie banner or your browser settings.
11. Young people
We see clients aged 16 and over. If you are 16 or 17, you have the same rights over your information as an adult. Parents and carers do not have an automatic right to see your record; we will normally share information with them only with your permission, unless there is a risk of serious harm. Our website is not intended for children under 16. If we learn that we hold an enquiry from someone under 16 without a parent or carer involved, we will delete it.
12. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please contact Dr Joseph Barker first. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you the outcome without undue delay.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO): ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, 0303 123 1113, or Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.
13. Changes to this notice
We review this notice at least once a year and when our practices change. The effective date at the top shows when it was last updated. If we make a significant change, we will tell current clients.