Dear Horse owner, we are continuing to use email as our main method of communication since the pandemic started.  If you have any concerns re GDPR and your personal data please see below*.

Otherwise if we will be visiting your yard/you have an appointment at the clinic, you will receive an email with these details.

If consent is required for your horse’s treatment please respond to the attached form too.

We will phone as usual on the morning of the visit with a time slot.

Please reply to this email to say that you have received and understood.

Just to remind you we are continuing with our Covid-secure way of working, so please remember…

• let us know if you (or the person handling your horse) have any symptoms so we can ensure we take extra precautions or can postpone the visit
• try to keep 2m away from the vet team, unless you are asked to help
• we politely request you wear a mask
• please don’t touch the vet’s equipment, unless asked to do so, and we suggest you sanitise any items the team touches that belong to you.

Many thanks

Deben Valley Equine Team

*Data Protection and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Client confidentiality is of the utmost importance to us. We will not intentionally pass any of your personal identifiable details to third parties without your permission, unless required to do so by law or in the interests of animal welfare.

We will regularly ask you to confirm your details to ensure we maintain the latest information on our database and ask that you, the client, contact us should any of your details change. This will allow us to provide efficient equine health care services to you. The information we require will include your name, postal address, contact phone numbers and email address as well as details of your horse/pony/donkey and case history details from any veterinary surgeon who has previously looked after them. The purpose of holding this data is for the provision of equine health care (both emergency and preventative), including processing insurance claims and sending tests to external laboratories, under the legal basis of contractual fulfilment.

Customer data will be stored securely on our central server and accessed via Robovet 5 veterinary software. Email addresses will also be stored in the address book of our email system, however, no other personal data will be attached.

Emails will be used to send invoices, statements, newsletter (if opted in) and sometimes notifications of special offers, client evenings etc. You can opt out of email communications at any time by contacting the office. We will never pass on your email address to a third party without your consent.

You have a right of access, under data protection legislation, to the personal data that we hold about you. We confirm that when processing data on your behalf that we will comply with the provisions of the latest data protection legislation.

The GDPR states that you may request for your data to be removed, however, as a veterinary practice we must legally keep details of treatment, but we can mark your entry as dormant and will remove it once our legal deadline for keeping information is reached.