Data Retention Policy

We store your data as securely as is practical, respecting your privacy. It is stored in a few locations: our offices, some on mobiles with the treatment teams and some with our appointed third parties.

We store data for a minimum of 20 years after the point of last contact, after which it may be securely destroyed.

Due to the nature of our business we need to store data for a long time. We have relationships with farms that cover generations, and with pet owners, the lifetime of the pet and then subsequent pets.

This is complicated by the fact that an animal treated at an early age may not require further treatment for a long time.

If, for example, they are not vaccinated, or do not require boosters then we may not have any contact with them for 20 years.

For example, a farm cat that has been neutered at a young age, may live for 16 years, requiring no treatment at all, but they still remain our patients and the customer would expect us to retain their data.

So, unless the customer requests us to forget them, we retain data for a minimum of 20 years after last contact.

We believe that 20 years is a reasonable time scale, and after 20 years we review the customer and take decisions on data retention on an individual basis. We assess each patient and each customer on an individual basis and where appropriate we retain the data for an extended period.

When deemed appropriate data is securely deleted, and/or shredded at the end of the retention period.

A small amount of data – such as analytics data on our website – is stored permanently.

If you want to find out more email accounts@nantwichpetvets.co.uk.