Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting Universal Home Care Service. We are committed to respecting your right to privacy and will protect it when you visit our website.

This privacy policy only explains our online information practices, including how we collect and use your personal information. It covers information collected on this website only. It does not apply to other sites you reach through our site. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of those other sites to learn how they collect and use information about you.

Definitions

Confidential – means private, personal, intended to be kept secret

Private – belonging to or for the use of one particular person or group of people

It is essential to make the above distinctions to understand our obligations in respect of confidentiality fully.

Why do we have a privacy policy

We want you to feel comfortable both using our website and with the privacy of your personal and confidential information that you may provide via the website.

What is covered ?

The Universal Home Care Service Privacy Policy covers the collection and use of personal information that we collect when you are on the company website.

Our promise to you

We will comply with data protection law when it comes to the processing of your data. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
Accurate and kept up to date.
Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
Kept securely

Who We Are

We are an independently owned and operated business. We operate under a licence, and Universal Home Care Service is our trading name. On our Contact Us page, you can access full details of whom we are, including our full company name, registered number and office address.

How to Contact Us

You can always contact us by email or telephone or complete our online enquiry form. All of these are available on the Contact Us page.

The information we collect and hold about you and why

The information we collect about you will depend on who you are. Sections below explain in detail what information we collect on each group of individuals with whom we work or whom we come in contact with.

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you, and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, but we will only do so where this is required or permitted by law.

Clients and client families

Suppose you are a client, prospective client or former client, or a client’s, prospective or former client’s family member. In that case, we may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, date of birth, gender, and any other information you feel may be relevant to provide you or your family with the service you require.
The personal data which we collect includes information concerning health and other medical and health information, which is considered to be a particular category of data. We need to collect and process this information to provide our services, and our lawful basis for doing so is that such processing is connected with the provision of social care.

Job Applicants

If you are applying for a job with us, we may collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

Your IP address
Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses
Date of birth, gender, marital status and dependants
Salary, annual leave, pension and benefits information
Recruitment information. This includes copies of right-to-work documentation, references and other information in a CV or cover letter.
Employment records, including job titles, work history, working hours, training records and professional memberships

We may also collect, store and use the following special categories of more sensitive personal information in order to meet our obligations under employment law:

Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation
Trade union membership
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
Information about criminal convictions and offences

How is your personal information collected?

We typically collect personal information directly from you or, if you are a job applicant, through the application and recruitment process, through your visit to our website or via the Contact Us forms. In addition, we may sometimes collect additional information from third parties, including former employers, credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.

How long do we keep your data

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

Clients & clients’ families

To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, we must retain your data for 7 years from the date of last entry. Once this period has expired, all of your personal data will be permanently deleted.

Job Applicants

If your application is successful, the retention of your personal information will be governed by the retention timescales applicable to our employees.

Suppose your application is unsuccessful in complying with our legal obligations. In that case, we may retain your personal information for up to 6 months. after we have notified you of the outcome of our recruitment decision unless you have given us your express explicit permission to retain your information for longer.

Your Duty to Inform us of changes

The personal information we hold about you must be accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your information changes during the application process.

Who has Access to Your Data?

Some of your information may be shared with:

The relevant members of our staff, including care workers, need to know this information to provide our services to you or your family. We will only share such of your information as our care workers need to know in order to carry out their job;
Our office personnel is involved in the management and administration of the care services which you or your family are receiving;
Other health and/or social care professionals and emergency services where appropriate.

Your Rights

Because the data we hold about you is your data, you have the following rights in respect of the personal data we hold about you:

Right to Access – this means you can ask us for a copy of all the personal data we hold about you.
Correction Right – if you believe any of the information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, you have the right to correct such information by providing us with the correct, up-to-date information. In addition, you can ask us to delete the incorrect or out-of-date information, and we will be happy to do so unless we are prevented by law or regulation.
Right to be Forgotten – you have the right to ask us to delete the personal data we hold about you where such data is used for direct marketing purposes or is processed as a result of you consenting to such processing. Please note that where we are obliged to keep your personal data because of a regulatory or legal requirement, we will not be able to delete that data and must continue to retain it.
Right to Restrict processing – in some limited circumstances, you have the right to restrict the processing of your data. See examples below:
1. if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
2. where our use of the data is unlawful, but you do not want us to erase it;
3. where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
4. you have objected to our use of your data, but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Right of Objection to Processing – you have the right to object to us using your data for direct marketing purposes and profiling. For example, if there is something about your situation which makes you want to object to the processing as you feel it impacts your fundamental rights and freedoms. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms.
Right of Data Portability – you have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you in a commonly used and machine-readable format. We can provide your data either to you or to such other third party as you specify in your request.
Automated Decision-Making Objection Right – automated decision-making is where a decision is made entirely by technological means without human intervention. We do not use or rely on automated decision-making.

Changes to this privacy policy

We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact our Privacy Champion.