PRIVACY POLICY
Alchemy is a trading name of Alchemy Mediation Limited. Alchemy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Alchemy gathers and process data in accordance with the prevailing data protection legislation including the Data Protection Act 2018.
This privacy policy explains how Alchemy uses or ‘processes’ the personal data you share with us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your data.
WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION IS INVOLVED?
The information we collect from you will vary depending on the nature of the service to be provided. Some of that information may have been volunteered by you when you make the initial contact with us. We will only collect data necessary to enable us to provide our services to you.
HOW AND WHY WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We will use your information to provide our services to you. In most cases you will have contacted us to enquire about our services. At the stage of initial contact and associated communications, legitimate interest is our lawful basis for processing your information.
Where mediation is concerned, your contact details may have been provided to us by someone else such as a solicitor or your former partner and we have a legitimate interest in using that information to contact you to establish whether you wish to attend an initial meeting or statutory MIAM (Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting) as outlined in s.10 of the Children and Families Act 2014.
From the time of your first meeting with us the lawful basis for processing your data is contract. We collect and process data while exploring with you whether working together is the best option. If we proceed to any service an appropriate agreement will be signed.
We also collect and process personal data during the provision of each service itself – including but not limited to personal financial and health data.
The data collected sometimes includes personal data about children over 13 but we consider that it is not proportionate to contact every child over 13 with a separate privacy notice about the limited information we hold about them. We also collect and process personal data during child-inclusive mediation sessions (during which we meet directly with young people). Our invitations to a child over the age of 13 do include an age-appropriate privacy notice.
WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH
We will never share your personal information with any organisation or third party for the purposes of direct or other marketing. We may share your information:
with the appropriate safeguarding agency if information shared with us gives us concern about harm to you or another person, particularly a child;
with the appropriate authorities where there is an over-riding obligation in law or regulation that requires us to disclose information, for example, the commission of an unlawful act or criminal offence;
with third parties such as solicitors, financial advisors etc. where we have your consent to do so;
with our Professional Practice Consultant or Clinical Supervisor for the purposes of professional and quality assurance standards, on a strictly controlled and confidential basis;
with the relevant complaints handling organisation in the event of a complaint;
with the Ministry of Justice chosen administrator of the mediation voucher scheme, with your express consent;
with another professional such as co-mediator, family consultant, therapist or similar third party involved in your mediation or family consultancy or therapy, with your express consent;
with external service providers such as our bank and accountants.
KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION SECURE
By submitting your personal data, you agree to its transfer, processing and storing. We take all steps reasonably possible to safeguard and secure your information from being used or accessed unlawfully.
HOW LONG YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WILL BE KEPT
We may keep some of your personal information after we have completed working with you – different retention periods apply for different types of data. Any agreement you sign will explain how long we keep your data for or you can ask us at any time for our current retention period that applies to your information.
YOUR RIGHTS
The data protection legislation gives you several rights. These rights include:
right to data erasure;
right to make a ‘subject access request’, which is a request for a copy of the data which we hold about you;
right of correction (or where appropriate erasure) of data which we hold about you where this is inaccurate;
right to data portability;
right to withdraw your future consent to our processing your personal data;
right to complain to the Office of the Information Commissioner.
If you would like to remove, check or amend any of the information held about you, or exercise any of your data subject rights, please send an email to info@alchemymediation.co.uk and we will take the necessary action within a reasonable time. Requests must be made in writing and may incur a small fee. Proof of identification will be required to protect your privacy.
If data contains information about another person, such information cannot be provided without that other person’s permission.
The rights above do not relate to any session records of the mediator/coach, which are a memory aid and belong to the practitioner.
CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY
We review this policy regularly and reserve the right to make updates to ensure it accurately reflects how we use your data.
HOW TO CONTACT US
We hope this policy helps you understand how we use your data. If you have any questions about this policy or seek to exercise any of your rights you can contact us at info@alchemymediation.co.uk or write to Alchemy, 63A Lower Green Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN4 8SR.