Privacy Statement

1. General:

North East Essex CCG takes great care to safeguard personal data provided by its patients and processes such data fairly and lawfully in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

We do not capture and store any personal information about individuals who access this web site, except where you voluntarily choose to give us your personal details via email or an on-line form.

In these latter cases, the personal information you give us is used exclusively by us for providing you with current and future information about our services.

We do not pass any of your personal information to outside organisations and/or individuals, except with your express consent.

2. Personal Information:

You have a right to know about the personal information that we hold about you. You also have the right to have your data corrected or deleted. Please direct all requests and/or queries about our data protection policy to the PALS team – details as on the PALS pages (link)

3. Use of Cookies:

A cookie is a small piece of information sent from a web-site to your computer where it is stored on your hard drive. Most web-sites send cookies of some description.

Most browsers will allow you to disable cookies; you will still be able to move around the site as normal if you do decide to disable cookies.

Information on our use of cookies on this website can be found in our Cookie Policy.

What information do we collect?

We may collect, store and use the following kinds of personal information:

information about your computer and about your visits to and use of this website (including your IP address, geographical location, browser type and version, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views and website navigation)
information relating to any transactions carried out between you and us on or in relation to this website, see Online Applications & Comments / Suggestions form below
information that you provide to us for the purpose of subscribing to our website services, email notifications and/or newsletters
any other information that you choose to send to us;

5. Using your Personal Information:

Personal information submitted to us via this website will be used for the purposes specified in this privacy policy or in relevant parts of the website.

We may use your personal information to:

administer the website
enable your use of the services available on the website
send transaction confirmations by email
send you general (non-marketing) communications
send you email notifications which you have specifically requested
send to you our newsletter, where you have specifically agreed to this, by email or similar technology (you can inform us at any time if you no longer require these communications)
deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you relating to the website

We do not pass any of your personal information to outside organisations and/or individuals, except with your express consent.

6. Disclosures:

We may disclose information about you to any of our employees, officers, agents, suppliers or subcontractors insofar as reasonably necessary for the purposes as set out in this privacy policy.

In addition, we may disclose your personal information:

to the extent that we are required to do so by law
in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings
in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (including providing
information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk)
to any person who we reasonably believe may apply to a court or other competent authority for disclosure of that personal information where, in our reasonable opinion, such court or authority would be reasonably likely to order disclosure of that personal information.

Except as provided in this privacy policy, we will not provide your information to third parties.

7. Security of your Personal Information:

We will take reasonable technical and organisational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.
We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure (password and firewall protected) servers. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted using SSL technology (excluding our Comments & Suggestions form & Patient Forum).

Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

8. Contact / Comments & Suggestions Form:

This form sends a non-secure free-text email to us and should therefore not be used for any confidential purpose.

It has a similar security level as sending an unsecured email message from your email application (e.g. Outlook Express). You are under no obligation to use this form. If you do not want to use it, please post your comments and/or suggestions to our General Manager at our postal address.

9. Email List Subscription & Unsubscription Forms:

This facility allows us to store your email address. If you no longer wish us to keep your email address, please use our unsubscribe form. You are under no obligation to use this facility.

10. Policy Amendments:

We may update this privacy policy from time-to-time by posting a new version on our website. You should check this page occasionally to ensure you are happy with any changes.

11. Your Rights:

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you. Provision of such information will be subject to:

the supply of appropriate evidence of your identity (for this purpose, we will usually accept a photocopy of your passport certified by a solicitor or bank plus an original copy of a utility bill showing your current address).

We may withhold such personal information to the extent permitted by law. You may instruct us not to process your personal information for marketing purposes by email at any time. In practice, you will usually either expressly agree in advance to our use of your personal information for marketing purposes, or we will provide you with an opportunity to opt-out of the use of your personal information for marketing purposes.

12. Third Party Websites:

The website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies or practices of third party websites.

13. Updating Information:

Please let us know if the personal information which we hold about you needs to be corrected or updated.

14. Contact:

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or our treatment of your personal information, please write us at;

North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group

Aspen House

Stephenson Road

Severalls Business Park

Colchester

CO4 9QR