Cancellations, Privacy
& Cookie Policy

What is the purpose of this privacy Statement and Cookie Policy?

This privacy notice aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website when you: sign up to our newsletter/purchase a product OR service.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

You must read this privacy notice together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy notice supplements the other notices and is not intended to override them.

Tongue-Tie North West is owned and run by Sharon Hollman and Laura Evans who are the data controllers registered with the Information Commissioners Office. As registered IBCLCs Sharon and Laura are required by the IBCLC Code of Conduct to respect people’s right to privacy and confidentiality so protecting your privacy is fundamental to our practice. We are also registered medical professionals and are required by the bodies we are qualified through to maintain professional standards in all areas of our practice which includes record keeping and safe storage of our documents and pictures we may take for documentation purposes. This notice explains what information we collect from you, why we collect this information, under what circumstance this information may be shared, how long it is stored and how you can access it.

Our email address is:

emailus@tonguetienorthwest.co.uk

Our postal address is:

Tongue-Tie North West Ltd
5 Oak Tree Rise,
Malpas,
SY14 7FA

Our website address is https://www.tonguetienorthwest.co.uk

If you are not happy with any aspect of how we collect and use your data, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would be grateful if you would contact us first if you do have a complaint so that we can try to resolve it for you.

Sensitive Data

During our contacts by phone, text, messenger, email, via the contact page on our website, via social media and face to face we will collect and record personal information about you and your baby. This information will include medical information relevant to the issue you are seeing us about. We may use your contact information to contact you at a later date for the purposes of follow up. Whilst we take steps to ensure your information is secure communications by text, email, messenger, social media and our website may not be secure so keep this in mind when using these methods.

We are required by IBCLC code of ethics to keep clear and accurate records relevant to our practice. This is to enable us to contact you and to provide safe and effective care for you and your baby. These records, which will contain your personal/medical information and that of your child, include summaries of our consultations and copies of emails and any other messages you’ve sent to us during our conversations together where necessary. They are stored on electronic devices which are password protected and have security software installed. We also store paperwork in a locked metal filing cabinet.

We require your explicit consent for processing sensitive data (medical information) and we will request this.

We may use your infant’s information, anonymised, without notice; for auditing or research purposes.

We may also use consultation data as case studies, anonymised, without notice for auditing or research or training purposes.

Before we enter a consultation situation we require a signed contract between you and us, in agreement of these topics.

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when legally permitted. The most common uses of your personal data are:

  • When we need to perform the contract between us.
  • For you to book in using our online booking system
  • Necessary for our legitimate interests.
  • Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

Purposes for processing your personal data

Set out below is a description of the ways we intend to use your personal data and the legal grounds on which we will process such data. We have also explained what our legitimate interests are where relevant.

We may process your personal data for more than one lawful ground, depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data.

For the purpose of fulfilling my contract with you i.e., when evaluating situation and proposing treatment plan, along with follow up care, payment processing we will use the following data Identity

  • Contact details
  • Financial details
  • Medical details.
  • Payment for services
  • For you to make an online booking

​Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site, we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymised string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service Privacy Policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Contact forms

This site uses a contact form for you to contact us.  The information is used to track back to your query and continue our communications.  It is not sold or passed on or used for advertising unless stated.

We will request information we need to provide our services effectively and safely. We retain email data shared over email for 3 months from our last contact, we consider a legitimate reason for keeping your data for that time frame being in case you come back to us weeks later so you do not have to repeat yourself. For consultations we will only request information that we need in order to provide my services effectively and safely. We will retain the record of the consult until your child is 28 years of age (10 years, post 18) as is required by our insurance providers.  At which time, the information will be destroyed securely. Your information will not be used for marketing purposes. The Data held about you will include name, age, address, email, your child’s name and date of birth, medical history, consultation notes, and may include a baby’s weight chart, care plan and a report to your GP. Information may be shared with your health professionals (see below).

We will not share any information with anyone except in the following circumstances

  • With your consent we may contact your midwife, GP, HV or other healthcare professionals involved in your care and share relevant information to enhance the care of you and your baby. For example, we may write to your GP to request a prescription for a nipple infection or phone your health visitor to discuss extra support.
  • Should we have a concern about the safety of your child then we have a legal and professional obligation to share relevant information with the relevant agencies and in this case your consent is not required.
  • Anonymised data may be used and shared for the purpose of internal and external audits/research.
  • In the event of a complaint or claim relevant information will be shared, with your consent, with our indemnity provider and legal team.
  • Photographs may be used to form part of our consultation record, for educational and publicity purposes but only with your consent.
  • Transaction and financial data may be shared with my accountant, bank, card payment machine provider and with HMRC in certain circumstances.

Data Security

  • We have put in place what we believe are appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, access to your personal data will be limited to ourselves or our administration staff only. Access to consultation records and emails which may include medical data will be restricted to Tongue Tie North West Practitioners only except in the circumstances listed above.
  • In the event of a personal data breach, we will notify you and any applicable regulator of the breach where we are legally required to do so.

 Data Retention

  • We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
  • To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
  • By law we have to keep basic information about our customers (including Contact, Identity, Financial and Transaction Data) for six years after they cease being customers for tax purposes.

​Your Legal Rights

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:

  • Request access to your personal data.
  • Request correction of your personal data.
  • Request erasure of your personal data.
  • Object to processing of your personal data.
  • Request restriction of processing your personal data.
  • Request transfer of your personal data.
  • Right to withdraw consent.
  • You can see more about these rights at:
  • If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please email
​No fee required – with some exceptions

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable admin fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

Time limit to respond

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Cancellations

Tongue-Tie North West reserve the right to charge the full fee in cases of non-attendance to booked appointments. Cancellations mean that other families who could have had this slot have to wait longer. If you cancel your appointment within 24 hours of the booked time, no refunds will be given and if you haven’t already paid you will be invoiced the full cost of the consultation, payable within 7 days.  In the unlikely event of you needing to cancel your appointment at any other time, a £25 admin charge will be charged, and the remaining balance refunded to you.

Changes to this notice and your duty to inform us of changes

This version was last updated on 826th July 2023

Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current

DISCLAIMER

Reliance on any information provided by Sharon Hollman or Laura Evans is solely at your own risk. Tongue-Tie North West does not make any representations or warranties, express or implied, regarding consulting services provided. Tongue-Tie North West’s liability (if any) is limited to the consulting fee paid by you to Tongue-Tie North West and in no event will Sharon Hollman or Laura Evans be liable to you for any other claim, losses or damages.

Industry regulatory disclosure requirements

We are IBCLC’s which is a registered profession with IBLCE our current certification is L-301430 (Sharon Hollman valid until Dec/31/2025), L-152068 (Laura Evans valid until Dec/31/2023) you can verify us here: https://iblce.useclarus.com/view/verify/

Cookie Policy for Tongue Tie North West

This is the Cookie Policy for Tongue-Tie North West, accessible from https://www.tonguetienorthwest.co.uk

What Are Cookies

As is common practice with almost all professional websites this site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your computer, to improve your experience. This page describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the site’s functionality.

How we Use Cookies

We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to this site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not in case, they are used to provide a service that you use.

Disabling Cookies

You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser Help for how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies will affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Disabling cookies will usually result in also disabling certain functionality and features of this site. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.

The Cookies that are Set

  • Surveys related cookies from time to time we offer user surveys and questionnaires to provide you with interesting insights, helpful tools, or to understand our user base more accurately. These surveys may use cookies to remember who has already taken part in a survey or to provide you with accurate results after you change pages.
  • Forms related cookies When you submit data to through a form such as those found on contact pages or comment forms cookies may be set to remember your user details for future correspondence.
  • Site preferences cookies in order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences, we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

  • This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.
  • Third party analytics are used to track and measure usage of this site so that we can continue to produce engaging content. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site or pages you visit which helps us to understand how we can improve the site for you.
  • From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features, these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.
  • This site uses an online booking system provided by Cliniko – (Their privacy policy)

More Information

Hopefully that has clarified things for you and as was previously mentioned if there is something that you aren’t sure whether you need or not it’s usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it does interact with one of the features you use on our site.

However, if you are still looking for more information then you can contact us through one of my preferred contact methods: