PRIVACY POLICY | Eyewear Studio

William J Wilkinson Ltd. Privacy Policy

Thank you for trusting us to take care of your eyewear and eyecare. You can also trust us with your personal details. Our Privacy Policy means that we respect any personal information that you provide us with, or that we ascertain from your eye test or screening, or from any purchase of our products and services or any other interactions with us.

Who we are and our contact details:

William J Wilkinson Ltd, The Upstairs Office, 90 High Street, Tonbridge, Kent, TN9 1AP.

W J Wilkinson Ltd is a Data Controller as per UK Data Protection Regulations.

In this Privacy Policy, references to “you” means the person whose personal information we collect, use and process. This includes anyone who contacts us in connection with the products and services we provide or otherwise interacts with us including, for example, via our websites (the website) or in dealings with any store.

Collection of your Personal Information

We may collect and process information about you including:

Your name
Your date of birth
Your contact telephone numbers (including mobile)
Your email and postal address
Your relevant health details including (a) current and past eye/hearing health/conditions, general health condition and spectacles, contact lens or hearing prescriptions; (b) current medication details; and (c) correspondence between optometrist and your GP/Ophthalmologist
Your examination and test results
Your payment details
Your employment/lifestyle/driving information
Details of any prescription supplied to you by your healthcare professional or medical practitioner
Information that you provide by filling in forms on our websites
Details of your visit to the website and any transactions you carry out on the website
Any other information voluntarily provided to us by you from time to time

This information will primarily be collected from you as voluntarily provided to us, but we may also collect it from other sources where it is lawful to do so, including but not limited to, the NHS or other health care providers, institutions or individuals you have authorised to provide information on your behalf (eg parents or guardians), third party service providers, government, tax or law enforcement agencies, and other third parties. Such information can also be combined with information from public sources.

How we use this information:

The information we collect about you is used to ensure we provide you with the best and most appropriate products and services. In addition to your ongoing eye care, we will remind you when appointments are due and suggest relevant products or services that we believe would be of interest.
We use your contact information to respond to queries from you, and where appropriate your bank details to collect Direct Debit payments as agreed.
We may occasionally contact you to ask for your feedback on services we have provided and to offer the opportunity to trial new products.
To comply with laws or regulations applicable to Willaim J Wilkinson Ltd, including prevention and/or detection of non-compliance.
Maintaining records for tax, compliance with laws, defence of claims and other corporate purposes. Managing and administrating insurance claims.

In order to provide you with the products and services described above, we hold copies of your personal information at the relevant W J Wilkinson Ltd store for products and services provided to you in store.

If you do not register as a customer in store but contact us through the website (and/or by email or web enquiry) you will be providing us with personal information about yourself, including your email address, name and contact details. This may also include medical information, where volunteered by you.

You may also be required to supply personal information (but not medical information) by entering a competition on our website. We will only use such information for the purposes of providing a reply, reviewing any feedback or improving the website.

If you are simply browsing our website we will not collect any information which will identify you by name. However, we may collect information using cookies and/or traffic data which uses IP addresses or other numeric identifiers, which analyse navigation and use of the website.

More information on cookies use is set out in the section below.

How long we’ll keep your data?

Your data will be kept in line with General Optical Council regulations and College Optometrists best guidance for storage of clinical records and contact data. Suggested lengths of time for retaining records are:

Adult patients – 10 years, even if the patient has subsequently died
Children and young people – 10 years after they were last seen or until the patient’s 25th birthday if later. If the child or young person has died, keep the records for 10 years after they were last seen
Data will be kept confidential and secure. There is also an obligation to satisfy ourselves that there is no further need of the record before destroying it.

If your personal data will be shared with anyone else:

We may disclose your personal information to other members of William J Wilkinson Ltd for any of the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy.

We may from time to time disclose your personal information to third parties, including in the following circumstances:

We may disclose personal information to health authorities and professionals, including NHS or national equivalent bodies.
We may pass personal information to external agencies and organisations, including the police and other law enforcement agencies, for the prevention and detection of fraud (including fraudulent transactions) and criminal activity. These external agencies may check the information we give them against public and private databases and may keep a record of such checks to use in future security checks.
We may pass personal information to our insurers in the event that a claim is made or could be made against us or other members of William J Wilkinson Ltd.
In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose personal information about customers to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets
If we or substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party (or subject to a reorganisation within our corporate group), personal information held by us about customers will be one of the transferred assets.
We may pass certain personal information to your employer, where you have been referred to us as a corporate eyecare customer
We may pass your personal information to third parties in order to comply with any legal obligation (including court orders)

How is personal information processed?

We always take reasonable steps to ensure that your personal information is adequately protected in accordance with the requirements of the UK data protection law.

Use of Cookies:

A cookie is a small text file containing information that a web site 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. 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 disable cookies, you can still view the information on our web site, but the functionality of certain areas may be reduced.

How to update or amend personal information:

You can update or amend your personal information at your local William J Wilkinson store, using our contact page or by notifying mark.wilkinson@wjwopticians.com

Your rights with respect to the Personal Information we hold:

You are entitled to access the personal information that we hold on you; any such request should be made using our contact details below. If any data we hold is inaccurate, this will be corrected promptly on request. In certain circumstances you can request that we erase your data which we will do where this would not prevent us meeting our legal and regulatory obligations.

Applicants acting on behalf of a patient, can access their data for the length of time that we will keep the records. Applicant must prove that they have a right to see the data, either because they have written authority from the patient or because they have Power of Attorney. Access to the record will be given within the time limit set out in the Act.

We will try to assist you to understand your record by explaining its content and abbreviations.

Updating your communication preferences:

You may ask that we do not send you communications using any of the contact details we hold on our records, this may include your email, SMS, telephone and postal information. You may also request we restrict our communications to clinically necessary messages. Your personal preferences can be changed at any time by using our contact details below.

Protecting personal information:

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal information from unauthorised access and use.

As effective as modern security practices are, no physical or electronic security system is entirely secure. We cannot guarantee the complete security of our database, nor can we guarantee that information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to us over the internet. Any transmission is at your own risk. In the event that there is an interception of your personal information or unauthorised access or use of our database, we will not be liable or responsible for any resulting misuse of your personal information.

We have no control over the contents of third party sites or resources which may be linked to our website and we accept no responsibility or liability for them or the privacy practices they use or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such websites or resources.

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

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, or you would like to change any of the preferences you have selected in store or online, contact ayshah@edneyandedney.com or write to Ayshah Edney, William J Wilkinson Ltd, The Upstairs Office, 90 High Street, Tonbridge, Kent, TN9 1AP.

Last updated January 2023