privacy policy

The Eating Clinic holds some information about you. This document outlines how that information is used, who we may share that information with and how we keep it secure. This notice does not provide exhaustive detail. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to the hello@theeatingclinic.com.  We keep our Privacy Notice under regular review. This Privacy Notice was last reviewed in June 2024.

1. What We Do

The Eating Clinic provides nutritional therapy, psychological and coaching services to clients to improve their health through diet and lifestyle interventions.  We focus on preventative healthcare, the optimisation of physical and mental health and chronic health conditions.  Through consultations, dietary and lifestyle analysis and biochemical testing, we aim to understand the underlying causes of your health issues which we will seek to address through personalised dietary therapy, nutraceutical prescription (supplements) and lifestyle advice. We also offer support in behaviour change, health promotion and relationship with food using applied psychological principles.

We also offer group nutrition and lifestyle information and educational services via workshops, seminars and lectures.

2. How We Obtain Your Personal Data

Information provided by you

You provide us with personal data in the following ways:

  • By completing an intake questionnaire

  • By signing a terms of engagement form

  • During a private consultation

  • Through email, over the telephone, by post, contact form on-line, via website, text, social media messaging, social media posting or any other communication you send to us.

  • By taking credit card and online payment

This may include the following information:

  • Basic details such as name, address and contact details

  • Details of contact we have had with you such as referrals and appointment requests

  • Health information including your previous medical history, dietary, lifestyle, supplement and medicine details, biochemical test results, clinic notes and health improvement plans

  • Your GP or other healthcare professional contact information

  • Bank details

We use this information to provide you with direct healthcare.  This means that the legal basis of our holding your personal data is for legitimate interest.

Following completion of your healthcare we retain your personal data for the period defined by our professional association BANT and registrant body, CNHC.  This enables us to process any complaint you may make.  In this case the legal basis of our holding your personal data is for contract administration.

Information we get from other sources

We may obtain sensitive medical information in the form of test results from biochemical testing companies.  We use this information in order to provide you with direct healthcare.  This means that the legal basis of our holding your personal data is for legitimate interest.

We may obtain sensitive information from other healthcare providers.  The provision of this information is subject to you giving us your express consent. If we do not receive this consent from you, we will not be able to coordinate your healthcare with that provided by other providers which means the healthcare provided by us may be less effective.

3. How we use your personal data

We act as a data controller for use of your personal data to provide direct healthcare.  We also act as a controller and processor in regard to the processing of your data from third parties such as testing companies and other healthcare providers.  We act as a data controller and processor in regard to the processing of credit card and online payments.

We undertake at all times to protect your personal data, including any health and contact details, in a manner which is consistent with our duty of professional confidence and the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) concerning data protection.  We will also take reasonable security measures to protect your personal data storage.

We may use your personal data where there is an overriding public interest in using the information e.g. in order to safeguard an individual, or to prevent a serious crime.  Also where there is a legal requirement such as a formal court order. We may use your data for marketing purposes such as newsletters but this would be subject to you giving us your express consent.

4. Do you share my information with other organisations?

We will keep information about you confidential.  We will only disclose your information with other third parties with your express consent with the exception of the following categories of third parties:

  • Our registrant body, CNHC and our professional association, BANT, for the processing of a complaint made by you

  • Any contractors and advisors that provide a service to us or act as our agents on the understanding that they keep the information confidential

  • Anyone to whom we may transfer our rights and duties under any agreement we have with you

  • Any legal or crime prevention agencies and/or to satisfy any regulatory request (eg, CNHC) if we have a duty to do so or if the law allows us to do so

We may share your information with supplement companies and biochemical testing companies as part of providing you with direct healthcare.  We will not include any sensitive information.

We will seek your express consent before sharing your information with your GP or other healthcare providers.  However if we believe that your life is in danger then we may pass your information on to an appropriate authority (such as the police, social services in the case of a child or vulnerable adult, or GP in case of self-harm) using the legal basis of vital interests.

We may share your case history in an anonymised form with our peers for the purpose of professional development.  This may be at clinical supervision meetings, conferences, online forums, training events and through publishing in medical journals, trade magazines or online professional sites.  We will seek your explicit consent before processing your data in this way.

4. Transfer of Personal Data Outside of the EEA

We are subject to the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulations that protect your personal data. Countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) do not always offer the same levels of protection to your personal data, so European law has prohibited transfers of personal data outside of the EEA unless the transfer meets certain criteria.

Many of our third parties service providers are based outside the European Economic Area (EEA) so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we do our best to ensure a similar degree of security of data by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is in place:

  • We will only transfer your personal data to countries that the European Commission have approved as providing an adequate level of protection for personal data by; or

  • Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts or codes of conduct or certification mechanisms approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe; or

  • If we use US-based providers that are part of EU-US Privacy Shield, we may transfer data to them, as they have equivalent safeguards in place.

If none of the above safeguards is available, we may request your explicit consent to the specific transfer. You will have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

5. What are your rights? 

Every individual has the right to see, amend, delete or have a copy, of data held that can identify you, with some exceptions. You do not need to give a reason to see your data.

If you want to access your data you must make a subject access request in writing to hello@theeatingclinic.com.  Under special circumstances, some information may be withheld.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive or refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We will try to respond within 20 working days from the point of receiving the request and all necessary information from you.  Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests, in this case, we will notify you.

Our response will include the details of the personal data we hold on you including:

  • Sources from which we acquired the information

  • The purposes of processing the information

  • Persons or entities with whom we are sharing the information

You have the right, subject to exemptions, to ask to:

  • Have your information deleted

  • Have your information corrected or updated where it is no longer accurate

  • Ask us to stop processing information about you where we are not required to do so by law or in accordance with the BANT and CNHC guidelines.

  • Receive a copy of your personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine readable format and have the right to transmit that data to another controller, without hindrance from us.

  • Object at any time to the processing of personal data concerning you

We do not carry out any automated processing, which may lead to automated decision based on your personal data.

If you would like to invoke any of the above rights then please write to the Data Controller at The Eating Clinic or email hello@theeatingclinic.com

6. What safeguards are in place to ensure data that identifies me is secure? 

We only use information that may identify you in accordance with GDPR. This requires us to process personal data only if there is a legitimate basis for doing so and that any processing must be fair and lawful.

Within the health sector, we also have to follow the common law duty of confidence, which means that where identifiable information about you has been given in confidence, it should be treated as confidential and only shared for the purpose of providing direct healthcare. We will protect your information, inform you of how your information will be used, and allow you to decide if and how your information can be shared.

We have put in place security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, altered, disclosed, or accessed without authorisation.

We ensure external data processors that support us are legally and contractually bound to operate and prove security arrangements are in place where data that could or does identify a person are processed.

The Eating Clinic is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a data controller and collects data for a variety of purposes. A copy of the registration is available through the ICO website (search by business name).

7. How long do you hold confidential information for? 

All records held by the The Eating Clinic will be kept for the duration specified by guidance from our professional association BANT.

8. Website technical details 

Forms  – We do use electronic forms on our website making use of an available ‘forms module’ which has a number of built-in features to help ensure privacy. We also aim to use secure forms where appropriate.

Cookies – We may automatically collect certain data from you as you use our website by using cookies and similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy for more details about this.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.allaboutcookies.org

Advanced areas of this site may use cookies to store your presentation preferences in a purely technical fashion with no individually identifiable information. Note also our statement on analytics software below – as analytics software also uses cookies to function.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

9. Analytics 

Like most websites, we make use of analytics software in order to help us understand the trends in popularity of our website and of different sections. We make no use of personally identifiable information in any of the statistical reports we use from this package. We use an analytics package called Google Analytics who provide details of their privacy policy on the Google website.

10. Complaints

If you have a complaint regarding the use of your personal data then please contact us by emailing hello@theeatingclinic.com and we will do our best to help you.

If your complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction and you wish to make a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), you can contact them on 01625 545745 or 0303 1231113.