Privacy policy

This Policy clarifies:

  • How and why Pure counselling & Psychotherapy uses your personal information.
  • How we protect your privacy
  • Your rights and choices regarding this information
  • We promise to respect your personal information and to keep it safe.

We use the personal information you provide to deliver you the service you may have requested; and to inform the continual development of best practice. 

We refer to the organisation throughout this Policy collectively as “Pure Counselling & Psychotherapy”, “we”, “our” or “us”.

How & Why, We Collect Information About You

We collect information directly from you. You will be asked to provide your information to sign up for our services.

Pure Counselling and Psychotherapy will only use your information where we have a legal basis or obligation to do so. We will always respect your rights and gain consent where appropriate or contractually necessary.

Your information will be used for internal record keeping and ensuring our duty of care.

We may collect your information:

  • To respond to/fulfil any requests/complaints/queries you make.
    If you contact us directly, we will use the information you give to us to handle
    your enquiry or request. We may also keep brief records of contact to help us
    improve our services and handle queries more efficiently.

  • To provide you with information regarding your appointments & payment invoicing.
    We will send you a reminder about your appointment the day before your booking. Invoices and if necessary, reminders of payment due will also be sent using your contact details provided. We may send information and support to you by post, phone, mobile messaging, email, or any other channels for which you have provided your details.

  • To process any payments.
    Payments will be made through BACS however we keep records of all transactions made to Pure Counselling & Psychotherapy for auditing and legal purposes. Records are kept for six years. We may need to use your information to prevent fraud.

  • To manage your contact preferences.
    You can manage the way in which we contact you, by getting in touch with us, email: purecounselling@outlook.com . We will keep a record of any requests.

  • To make sure we communicate with you in way that is relevant to you.
    We try to ensure that our communications are as effective as possible. This
    means communicating with people in different ways, appropriate to them. On occasion, we will use information about how we have interacted with us previously, to support future communications with you.

We may analyse data from our database to understand our service users demographics. This will support better understanding of training and development needs to ensure our service is relevant and helpful to you.

If you would prefer your information wasn’t used in the ways listed above, then you have the right to tell us by emailing purecounselling@outlook.com  

How we care for your information:

Where you have provided information about your reason for support, such as bereavement, relevant information will be stored securely and used only to support and inform our work with you. You will be assigned a ‘client code’ which will further protect and anonymise any key notes. Client codes will only be linked to your personal details in a separate password protected database.

We may make brief notes following therapeutic session to act as a accurate and appropriate memory aid and inform best practice. These will again be anonymised using your client code.

We will never share your information with third parties for their own purposes. Relevant information may be shared when:

  • You give us your consent, for example in the case of referrals.
  • We have a legitimate interest to do so, for example sharing information with
    regulators to protect the rights, property and safety of you, us or others,

We are legally required to do so. For example, we receive a court order requiring us to share information.

When making payments you will be relying on the banks’ compliance with UK data
protection law. These safeguards will usually be contractual and/or the result of a European Union decision which allows the transfer (such as a US organization that is certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework).

We ensure that there are appropriate technical and organisational controls (including
physical, electronic, and managerial measures in place to protect your personal details. 

We will hold your information for only as long as is necessary from the end of your
relationship with Pure Counselling & Psychotherapy in accordance with our Data Retention Policy, 6 years. In the event of your therapist’s death, and clinical will is in place to ensure your data is handled and destroyed in an ethical manner, by named counsellor. If you are in active therapy at the time of your therapist’s death, they will contact you to support you with finding a new and appropriate therapist.

Our Cookies Policy
Cookies are tiny text files that are automatically placed onto your device via the browser (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer or Google Chrome). They improve the performance of websites, help to save different options such as your preferences, and store information on how websites are being used.

There are two broad types of cookies – ‘first party cookies’ and ‘third party cookies’:

  • First party cookies are cookies that are served straight from the website operator to your computer. They recognise your preferences as you browse the site.

  • Third party cookies are served on behalf of the website operator. These are normally used for web site analytics and advertising.

The cookies used by Pure Counselling & Psychotherapy are strictly necessary and functionality cookies which allow you to manoeuvre around the site helpfully.

We ourselves do not use targeting cookies or cookies used for advertising.

Our web domain is provided by Shopify, if you go on to a page on our website that contains embedded content, for example YouTube, you may be sent cookies from these websites.

We do not control the setting of these cookies, so we suggest you check the third-party website for more information about their Privacy policy and cookies and how to manage them.
Shopify Privacy Policy - Shopify UK
Shopify Cookie Policy - Shopify UK

How to manage your cookie settings
Your web browser’s menu toolbar, should have the option “Help” which will tell you how to change your browser’s cookie settings including:

  • how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie
  • how to disable cookies altogether. Below is some helpful guidance about how to make these changes.

More information can be found here: www.aboutcookies.org

Note: blocking cookies, can sometimes inhibit access to certain areas and functioning of websites.

Your Rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information ( “data subject access request”). If you want to access your information, send a description of the information you want to purecounselling@outlook.com
  • To ensure that we only provide personal data to the right person. We will provide a registered address for you to write to, with a detailed description of the information you want to see, and proof of your identity. We will endeavour to respond fully to all requests within one month of receipt of your written request. Under exceptional circumstances, if we are unable to do so we will contact you with reasons for the delay.
  • Ask us to correct personal information that we hold about you which is incorrect, incomplete or inaccurate.
  • Ask us to erase your personal information from our files and systems where there is no good reason for us continuing to hold it, for example you chose not to engage with therapy and clinical notes were therefore not required.
  • Ask us to restrict or suspend the use of your personal information, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or our reasons for using it.
  • Ask us to transfer your personal information to another person or organisation, for example in the case of referral. 

Email purecounselling@outlook.com if you have any concerns. If you have given your consent to us processing your personal information, you have the
right to withdraw your consent at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information and, subject to our Data Retention Policy, we will dispose of your data securely.


You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues.

Updates to the policy

This policy undergoes regular reviews, with a minimum frequency of every 18 months, and is updated as needed, at least once every 36 months. This Privacy Policy (Policy) follows the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, and the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679.

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please email purecounselling@outlook.com