Begin Your Path to Self-Exploration with Lighthouse Therapy Group.
Your information
What we hold, why we hold it, and how we look after it.
This notice explains what information Lighthouse Therapy Group Ltd holds about you, why we hold it, where it is kept and who we share it with. We have tried to write it plainly. If anything is unclear, ask your counsellor or get in touch with us and we will talk it through.
Lighthouse Therapy Group Ltd is a counselling practice based at 2 Emmerson Terrace, Washington, Tyne and Wear, NE38 7LN. We are responsible for the information we hold about you (in data protection terms, we are the "data controller").
Phone: 0191 545 0885
Email: admin@lighthousetherapygroup.co.uk
Data protection questions: Mark Walsh, mark@lighthousetherapygroup.co.uk
We don’t ask you to sign forms before you start. Instead:
Either way, your counsellor will talk you through confidentiality and its limits at your first session, so you can ask anything you want before going further.
We collect this from you directly. If another organisation refers you to us, we may also receive information from them with your agreement.
Data protection law says we need a lawful reason to hold your information. Ours are:
Information about your health is treated with extra care under the law. We hold it for the purpose of providing health care, under the professional duty of confidentiality that every counsellor here works to. We do not rely on your consent as the legal basis, which is why we don’t need you to sign anything for us to hold your information.
Your counsellor’s session notes are kept on paper, in locked filing cabinets at our premises, separate from your contact details. Everything else is held on the following systems:
| System | What it holds | Why we use it |
|---|---|---|
| Acuity Scheduling | Your name, contact details and appointment times | Booking and appointment reminders |
| Google Workspace | Emails, our calendars and practice documents | Email and day-to-day running of the practice |
| Our practice system (hosted by Supabase in London and Vercel) | Your contact details, appointment and attendance history, and short admin notes. It does not hold therapy notes. | Keeping track of your sessions and our admin |
| Stripe | Payment details for sessions you pay for | Taking card payments securely. We never see or keep your full card number. |
| Xero | Invoices and payment records | Our accounts |
Each of these companies only uses your information to provide their service to us, under a written agreement with us. Some of them store data outside the UK, mainly in the US or EU. Where they do, the transfer is covered by safeguards approved under UK law.
What you tell us stays with us. We only share information in these situations:
We never sell your information or pass it to marketing companies. We will not tell your employer, family or friends anything about you, including whether you come here, unless you ask us to.
We email you about your appointments: confirmations, reminders and occasionally a short check-in from the Lighthouse team if we haven’t heard from you for a while. These come from admin@lighthousetherapygroup.co.uk. If you’d rather not receive check-ins, just tell us. We do not use your details for marketing.
If you send us a message through our website’s contact form, we use what you send only to reply to you, and we treat it with the same care as everything else in this notice. Our website uses cookies. Essential cookies keep it working; any others are only used if you agree to them through the cookie banner. Our Cookie Policy explains this in more detail.
After that, paper records are shredded and electronic records are permanently deleted. We sometimes have to keep records longer, for example if a complaint or legal process is still open.
Paper notes are kept locked away, and only your counsellor and, where needed, our Clinical Lead can see them. Our electronic systems are password protected and only people at Lighthouse who need your information for their role can get to it. Your contact details are kept apart from your therapy notes.
To use any of these rights, contact Mark Walsh at mark@lighthousetherapygroup.co.uk or at our address. We may ask you to confirm who you are first, to protect your information.
If you have a concern about how we have handled your information, please talk to us first and we will do our best to put it right. If you are still not satisfied, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF | 0303 123 1113 | ico.org.uk
We review this notice every year. The latest version is always on our website and available at the practice. If we make a significant change, we will let you know.
