Privacy Policy

Introduction

This website (the “Somerset Care website”) is operated by Somerset Care Ltd (“Somerset Care”, “we”, or “us”). Somerset Care complies with its obligations under the EU General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 1998 by keeping personal data up to date; by storing and destroying it securely; by not collecting or retaining excessive amounts of data; and by protecting personal data from loss, misuse, unauthorised access and disclosure.

This privacy notice sets out our commitment to respecting your privacy and providing a secure website so your personal information is protected. You can be assured that any information you provide us will be used strictly in accordance with the terms laid out in this notice.

Our full Privacy Notice for customers can be found here.
Our full Privacy Notice for employees can be found here.

Collecting, sharing and using your information

We collect personal information from visitors of the Somerset Care website through the use of online forms, information from phone calls, and when you email us your details, or apply for a job. This personal information will only be used for the following purposes:

  • Dealing, responding, and following-up your enquiries and requests;
  • Processing of your job application;
  • Sending you our newsletter, if you request this; and
  • Informing you of additional products or services which may be of interest to you.

We will only look to request and collect necessary information from you in line with the above. If you are an employee or customer of Somerset Care, further detail of how we process your personal information can be found in our Approved Uses of Personal Data document, which can be provided to you upon request.

The information we hold will be, to the best of our knowledge, accurate and up to date. If, however, you find errors or inaccuracies in your personal information, please let us know and we will erase, complete, or amend that information as far as it is possible to do so, upon request.

Personal information is treated as confidential and we conduct periodic reviews of the appropriateness of security systems to prevent unauthorised access. We are committed to providing an appropriate level of security to protect personal information and as our organisation evolves, so will our levels of security.

When you visit the Somerset Care website and provide personal information, you will be sharing this information with the Somerset Care Group alone, unless stated and you are informed otherwise.

NHS Test and Trace – COVID19

The NHS Test and Trace service requests that all care home providers keep a temporary record of current and previous residents, visitors and staff. The following information may be requested about residents, visitors and staff at short notice;

For residents:

Name and contact details of current residents.

If a resident moves out of the care home, the care home should continue to keep a record of the resident, including:

  • Name
  • Contact telephone number
  • Date of admission (if this took place within 21 days of their departure)
  • Date of departure/ move to another setting

For visitors:

  • Name
  • Date of visit
  • Arrival time and departure time, where possible

For staff:

  • The names of staff who work at the premises
  • Contact number for each member of staff
  • Dates and times that staff are working

NHS Test and Trace will ask for these records only where it is necesary.

Outside of this, we would like to bring your attention to our obligations to disclose information in the following exceptional circumstances permitted by law: where you have given permission to disclose information, where we are legally obliged to disclose information, where there is a duty to the public to disclose information, or where we have to disclose information to protect our interests.

You have the right to object to certain processing of your information and to refuse or withdraw consent to information sharing with any specified parties at any time.

National Data Opt-Out

At this time, we do not share any data for planning or research purposes for which the national data opt-out would apply. We review this on an annual basis and for any new processing.

Access to your information

You can write to us at any time to ascertain whether we hold any information about you, and to obtain details of the information we hold about you. Please write to:

Data Protection Officer
Somerset Care Group
Acacia House
Blackbrook Park Avenue
Taunton
Somerset
TA1 2PX

Please provide us with your name, postal address, and email address along with the details of your requirement. We will then take reasonable steps to confirm your identity before providing you with details of any personal information we may hold about you. Therefore, please provide us with two forms of identification such as a copy of your valid passport or driving license, and a copy of a recent utility bill to confirm your address.

Further detail is provided in our Rights of Access to Information Policy and Data Protection Policy, both of which are available on request.

Further processing

If we wish to use your personal data collected through the Somerset Care website for a new purpose not covered by this privacy notice, then we will provide you with a new notice explaining this before we use your data for the new purpose. Where necessary, we will seek your prior consent to the new processing.

How long do we keep your personal data?

We only keep your personal data for the amount of time necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was collected. For the retention periods of specific types of personal information, please refer to our Rights of Access to Information Policy, which can be provided to you upon request.

What happens when you link to another site?

The Somerset Care website may contain links to other websites which are outside of our control and are not covered by this Privacy Notice. If you access other sites using the links provided, the operators of these sites may collect information from you which will be used by them in accordance with their Privacy Policies, which may differ from ours. We therefore do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies and it is your responsibility to check these policies before submitting any personal information to these websites.

Use of cookies by this website

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site. Any cookies that may be used by this website are used either solely on a per session basis or to maintain user preferences. Cookies are not shared with any third parties.

Update cookies preferences

Strictly necessary cookies

PHPSESSID
Cookie generated by applications based on the PHP language. This is a general purpose identifier used to maintain user session variables. It is normally a random generated number, how it is used can be specific to the site, but a good example is maintaining a logged-in status for a user between pages.

cookie_consent_level
Cookie generated by our cookie control plugin in order to control your cookie preference.

cookie_consent_user_accepted
Cookie generated by our cookie control plugin in order to control your cookie preference.

cookie_consent_user_consent_token
Cookie generated by our cookie control plugin in order to control your cookie preference.

incap_ses_*
Used by the Cloudflare network. Preserves user’s states across page requests to improve performance of the website. Incapsula DDoS Protection and Web Application Firewall cookie. Used to ensure requests by a client are sent to the same origin server.

Tracking cookies

_gid
Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website’s performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.

Last updated May 2022.