Last updated 25th May 2018

“You”, “Your”, “Patient” means a customer that has purchased hearing aids from us. And is the person whose personal information we collect, use and process. This will also include persons who contact us in connection with the products and services we provide or who interacts with us on our websites www.colwynbayhearingc.co.uk, or in our practice.

“Our”, “Us” means THE COLWYN BAY HEARING PRACTICE LIMITED.

“Review” means an article (may also include photographs, videos) or photograph voluntarily submitted by you.

Your Privacy

You have trusted us to take care of your hearing needs so hopefully you can completely trust us with your privacy and personal information. We are committed to the highest level of privacy standards and data protection. We only collect data that is necessary for us to deliver the best care and service possible, to ensure you are reminded about attending / and the importance of appointments or anything else related to your on-going care. This privacy policy provides information on when, how and why we collect your personal information, your privacy rights and how the law protects you. However, over and above this policy, we will still ask you for SPECIFIC PERMISSIONS on how we interact with you. This is sought at the point of you paying for hearing aids and associated services. This means you will be asked to tick 4 boxes. This is what our EXTRA LEVEL DATA PERMISSION FORM LOOKS LIKE:

“Please tick to accept the use and storing of your data (i.e. your audiogram, associated case history and service notes and the hearing aid receipt)

This will help COLWYN BAY HEARING PRACTICE LIMITED* look after you as a hearing aid user.

We will delete your data if we do not have contact with you for 6 years.

You can withdraw your consent by emailing STOP CONSENT to advice@colwynbayhearing.co.uk

I accept the use of data as above

Appointment Reminders: I accept you will text me appointment reminders

Quarterly News Letters: I accept you emailing me newsletters

Once annually, telephoning to book a hearing aid appointment: I accept you telephoning me”

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Furthermore, if you leave us a REVIEW, we will seek further SPECIFIC PERMISSIONS on the use of his review. You will be asked to tick and sign a document like this:

“Please tick to accept the use and storing of your review by COLWYN BAY HEARING PRACTICE LIMITED*

*This includes publishing on our associated Facebook, Twitter and Google Pages.

You can withdraw your consent by emailing STOP REVIEW to advice@colwynbayhearing.co.uk

I accept the publishing of my review as above.”

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We will not disclose your data / information to third parties EXCEPT to gain an opinion on your ear health or hearing loss and where strictly necessary or unavoidable – see below**.

Colwyn Bay Hearing Practice is the name used to describe the hearing aid companies owned wholly or partly by Adrian Dowling. At the point of writing, these are Colwyn Bay Hearing Practice Ltd. These are all registered individually with Companies House and with the Information Commissioner’s Office as data controllers. They all share the same encrypted diary system, AMS.

The personal information we may collect and process:

Your name, contact telephone number details (including mobile), your email and postal addresses and personal identifiers (such as date of birth and NHS number).

Your relevant current and previous general ear health history, your family medical history, and any relevant signs or symptoms of hearing loss or associated ear health issues you tell us about.

Details of hearing instruments prescribed for you.

Details of examinations and healthcare procedures, checks and treatments we provide, including ear wax removal, tympanometry, speech audiometry, pure tone audiometry, otoscopy, real ear measurements.

Your past and present employment, lifestyle & hobbies that are relevant to an audiologist, such as noisy activities.

Information relevant to your continued care from other people who care for you or know you well, such as other health professionals and relatives.

Your payment method, details, plan.

Information you provide by filling in contact forms on our websites.

Details of your visit to our websites and any transactions you carry out on our websites.

Any other information voluntarily provided by you.

This information is generally collected from you as you have voluntarily provided it to us. Where lawful to do so, we may also collect information from other sources such as the NHS, other health care providers, from individuals authorised to provide information (e.g. relatives, parents and legal guardians), financial institutions and government, tax or law enforcement agencies.

Why we collect and process your personal data and how is it used?

The information we collect about you is for the primary purpose of ensuring we provide you with the very best and appropriate hearing health care advice, products and services that you’ve ordered.

To confirm your identity and address.

To respond to queries from you.

To remind you when your next appointments are due and to book them.

To send / email you our newsletter (no more than quarterly).

To ask your feedback on the products and services we have provided in order to make continual improvements.

Banking, payment and order details to fulfil an order, deal with queries or refund request and collect regular payments for purchase.

To notify you about changes to our products and service.

To manage insurance claims.

To maintain records for legal, regulatory, tax and other corporate purposes.

We only use RELEVANT information in order to carry out our function as hearing aid audiologists.

Special category data for medical examination records and appointment reminders.

Meeting a legitimate interest to inform you of hearing health products and services which may be relevant to you.

Fulfilling our service contract obligation we have with you by endeavouring to have regular appointments with you.

Fulfilling a legal obligation to look after you and your hearing aids (re. our being members of The Health and Care Professions Council).

You having agreed to our specific communication methods at the point of purchase.

How long is your information kept for?

Your personal information will be retained by The Colwyn Bay Hearing Practice Ltd for as long as reasonably necessary (and as defined by health, legal and tax laws and regulations) for us to continue to provide you with products and services. We are also required to maintain records for legitimate purposes to satisfy tax and other legal requirements, to help us respond to queries or for other reasons (responding to requests from regulators and to protect and defend against claims). In any case, if we have had no contact from you for 6 years or more, we will delete all data held about you*.

How we hold and share your personal data

We process your personal data in the strictest confidence. We keep your personal data securely in our patient filing paper copy in each local branch, and on our secure, encrypted electronic system (AMS). Patient records are only accessible to the hearing healthcare professionals working with the required permissions (Registered hearing aid audiologists, Nurses, Data Controllers, Managers) and those under their supervision.

We will usually keep any personal data we hold about you for 6 years after our last contact with you before we delete it. If we collected the data when you were under 18 years of age, we will keep it until your 25th birthday. *In exceptional cases we may need to retain your personal data for a longer period, and will explain our reasons for doing so on request.

In the course of processing your personal data, in exceptional circumstances, we may SHARE it with:

**External healthcare professionals, where a professional opinion is sought, related to you (hearing loss, symptom, and photograph of ear canal / ear drum).

Your GP, NHS audiologist, NHS ENT consultant and other healthcare providers and commissioners, and suppliers of hearing appliances or similar products, in connection with your ongoing healthcare treatment.

Our IT manager and our AMS designer so that we can keep patient records up to date and secure.

The police, for the prevention and detection of fraud and criminal activities.

Our insurers in the event a claim is made or could be made against any business in The Colwyn Bay Hearing Practice Ltd.

Transferring your information overseas

We do not transfer your data to any agency or person overseas.

Use of Cookies on the website

A cookie is a small text file containing information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record-keeping purposes. A cookie cannot give us access to your computer or to your personal information, and will not identify you by name. However, it will use a numeric identifier which analyses navigation and use of the website. We use cookies ONLY for Google Analytics.

Most web browsers automatically accept cookies. Consult your browser’s manual or online help if you want information on restricting or disabling the browser’s handling of cookies. If you refuse or disable some or all cookies, you can still view the information on our website, but the functionality of certain areas may be reduced.

Our Privacy Policy is easily available on any of our websites.

Your Rights

You have certain legal rights under the UK Data Protection Legislation in respect of the personal data we hold about you. The rights that are most relevant to the way in which we use your personal data include:

The right to be informed about how we use personal data – this privacy policy gives you that information.

You have the right of access. If you ask us for the personal data we hold about you, we will provide it within 30 days, free of charge (unless we have already provided it to you, in which case we may have to charge you the administrative cost of providing it again).

The right to rectification – if you ask us to correct personal data about you that is inaccurate or incomplete, we will do so within 30 days. It is important to keep us up to date with your latest contact details.

The right to object – if you object to us processing your data for product information purposes, or for legitimate hearing healthcare interests (see ‘why we collect and process your personal data’, above), we will then stop doing so, unless we are processing the data in respect of a legal claim or can otherwise show that our legitimate interest in processing the data overrides your rights and interests.

The right to erasure, also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’. If you ask us to delete your personal data, we will do so if there is no compelling reason to continue processing that data. We will not usually delete healthcare data before our usual time limit of 6 years where we have a duty to keep accurate records – for example, to comply with a legal obligation, or in connection with a legal claim. If you ask us to delete such data we will discuss this with you.

Updating your contact details and preferences

To ensure we can continue to provide you with the best hearing healthcare, we are required to send you ‘clinically necessary’ information such as appointment reminders and notify you repaired hearing aids, consumables, and parts that are ready to collect.

You can easily update your contact details and personal preferences for communications from us by EMAILING US AT advice@colwynbayhearing.co.uk

Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We store a concise paper record in each branch and our SQL-based diary system backs up to a secure location every day. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those persons stated above who have a business-need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

Modern physical and electronic security systems are not entirely secure and we cannot guarantee the complete security of our database. The transmission of information through the internet is not completely secure. We will do our best to protect your personal data, but we cannot guarantee the security of your contact data transmitted to our websites through the internet. Any such transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use our strict procedures and security features to prevent unauthorised access.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Privacy Policy Updates

We reserve our right to make any changes and updates to this privacy policy without giving notice as and when we need to. Our up to date privacy policy is always available on our websites and is GDPR compliant.

Contacting us and the ICO about your personal data



Please speak to us first if you have any questions or concerns about the way in which we process personal data. You can contact / send a letter to us at: The Data Protection Manager, Colwyn Bay Hearing Practice, 30 Seaview Road, Colwyn Bay, Conwy, LL29 8DGor email advice@colwynbayhearing.co.uk, or by telephone: 01492 540000.

You can contact the ICO at: The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Web: ico.org.uk