Privacy Policy

Last updated 04/10/2026. This notice is written by Marking Therapy Ltd and explains, in plain words, what personal information the practice holds, why, and what your rights are.

Who we are

Marking Therapy Ltd provides counselling and therapy, hypnotherapy, clinical supervision and civil, commercial and community mediation, in South Shields and remotely across the United Kingdom. It is the data controller for the personal information described in this notice.

Registered in England and Wales, company number 14644277
Registered office: Stanhope Road, South Shields, NE33 4RB
Registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office as a data controller
Contact about anything in this notice: support@markingtherapy.com or +44 191 249 6127

What this notice covers

It covers everyone whose information Marking Therapy handles:

visitors to this website
people who get in touch
clients of every service
supervisees
therapists and counsellors who apply to join, or belong to, the free supervision group
parties to a mediation
subscribers to the Reflections letter

It explains what is collected, why, on what legal basis, who it is shared with, how long it is kept, and the rights you have. The Cookie Policy linked in the footer gives the full list of cookies.

The information Marking Therapy holds, and where it comes from

When you visit the website

Your IP address, the pages you request, your browser and device type, the time of your visit, and the choices you make in the cookie banner. This comes from your browser.
If you accept statistics cookies, Google Analytics also records which pages are viewed, on what kind of device, and a random identifier that is not your name.

When you use the contact form or email

Your name, email address, telephone number if you give it, and what you write. This comes from you.

When you book

Your name, email address and telephone number, the service, date and time you choose, and any notes you add.
Your answers to the short questions the booking form asks: any access needs or adjustments, and your agreement to the terms and to the session date.
The fuller questions about you, your health and what brings you are on the assessment form you complete before the first session. They are asked so that the first session can be planned safely.
A customer account is created for you so you can see and manage your bookings in the Client Area, and an email is sent so you can set a password.
The payment itself is taken by Stripe or PayPal on their own secure forms. Marking Therapy receives confirmation, the amount and a reference, never your card number.

When you become a client

The information you give at the first session: what has brought you, relevant history, medication and GP details if you choose to give them, the address you will usually attend remote sessions from, and someone to contact in an emergency.
Brief notes of each session, correspondence, the agreement you sign, and the scores from any questionnaire used in the work.
Much of this is health information, which the law treats as special category data. Marking Therapy holds it under a professional duty of confidentiality.

When you come through an insurer or an employer’s scheme

The referral details that organisation sends, and the attendance and invoicing information it requires.

When you take part in a mediation

Your name and contact details, the documents you and the other party provide, the Agreement to Mediate, notes of the process and any settlement agreement.

When you subscribe to Reflections

Your email address and, if you give it, your first name, together with the record of your confirmation and the basic delivery and engagement data the sending service records.

When you apply to join the free supervision group

Your name and email address, your professional role and professional body, your membership level and registration number, your qualification, where you practise, your answers about insurance and your own supervision, and anything you choose to add about what you hope to gain from the group, all of which you give on the application form so that Kingsley can confirm that you are a practising clinician; and, if you are accepted, your email address on the group’s mailing list.

When you telephone or message on WhatsApp

Your number and what you say or write. Calls are not recorded.
Sessions are never recorded and never transcribed, whether they are held by video, by telephone or in person.

Why the information is used, and the legal basis for each use

To answer your enquiry: legitimate interests (responding to someone who has written to the practice).
To make, confirm, remind you of and take payment for a booking, to run the Client Area, and to provide the service you have booked: performance of a contract with you.
To provide counselling, therapy, hypnotherapy or supervision safely and keep the professional record: Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR with Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018, the provision of health care by a practitioner who owes a duty of confidentiality.
Marking Therapy does not rely on your consent for that record, because it is one a therapist is required to keep, and you should not have to consent to being kept safe.
To run a mediation: performance of the Agreement to Mediate, and legitimate interests.
To consider an application to join the free supervision group, to check it against the professional body’s public register and to run the group’s mailing list: legitimate interests (keeping a free professional group open only to practising clinicians).
To keep records after the work ends, deal with complaints or claims, and meet the requirements of professional bodies and insurers: legal obligation and legitimate interests.
To keep accounts and file tax returns: legal obligation.
To keep the website and the practice’s systems safe: legitimate interests and, where the law now names them, recognised legitimate interests under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, which include safeguarding a vulnerable person and responding to an emergency.
To send the Reflections letter, to use statistics cookies, and to share anything about your work with a third party at your request: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
To protect you or someone else from serious harm: the safeguarding provisions of the Data Protection Act 2018 and, in an emergency, vital interests.

Who the information is shared with

Marking Therapy never sells, rents or trades personal information, and never shares it for anyone else’s marketing. It is shared only as set out here.

Service providers, which process it on Marking Therapy’s behalf under written terms

GoDaddy and Cloudflare: website hosting and protection
Microsoft 365: email, calendar, Teams video sessions and secure file storage
The booking system and its cloud payment service, with Stripe and PayPal taking payments
MailPoet and its sending service: the Reflections letter
Google: calendar synchronisation of appointment times, reCAPTCHA on the contact form and, only with your consent, Google Analytics
The practice’s telephone provider

Others, only in the circumstances described

The practitioner’s clinical supervisor, who hears about the work in a form that does not identify you, as BACP and NCPS require.
Your insurer or employer’s scheme, where you come through one: attendance and invoicing only, nothing about the content of sessions unless you ask in writing.
The other party to a mediation, as the parties agree in the Agreement to Mediate.
Your GP or another service, only with your written agreement, or without it where there is a risk of serious harm to you or someone else and the practitioner judges that the risk outweighs the duty of confidence, in line with the BACP Ethical Framework and the NCPS Code of Ethics.
The police, a court, a safeguarding authority, a professional body or the Information Commissioner, where the law requires it or there is a complaint or claim.
The company’s accountant and, if required, HMRC: invoicing and payment records.

Where the information is held, and transfers outside the United Kingdom

Client records are held in the company’s Microsoft 365 account, with access limited to the practitioner.
The booking system holds your booking details and the answers you give on the booking form, protected by the same access limits. The record of the work itself is not kept there or anywhere else on the website.
The website is hosted by GoDaddy, whose data centres for this hosting service are in the European Economic Area or the United States.
Where information leaves the United Kingdom it does so under the UK’s adequacy regulations for the EEA or the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and GoDaddy’s data processing addendum.
Stripe, PayPal, Google, Cloudflare and the MailPoet sending service process data in the United States. Each does so under the UK extension to the Data Privacy Framework or the International Data Transfer Agreement, with the safeguards the UK GDPR requires.
Sessions are for clients in the United Kingdom. Remote sessions, by video or telephone, are also open to clients living or temporarily abroad, where the practice has first confirmed that it can work with you there.

How long it is kept

Therapy, hypnotherapy and supervision client records, meaning your personal and contact details, the agreement you signed, and the dates and payments for your sessions: seven years from the last contact, then securely destroyed.
Session notes are not part of that record. They are brief notes written after a session so that the work can carry on from one meeting to the next, they carry no details that would identify you, and they are destroyed once the work has ended.
Mediation files: six years from the end of the mediation.
Bookings, customer accounts and correspondence with clients: for the life of the client record above; a customer account is closed on request.
Enquiries that do not lead to any work: deleted within twelve months.
Accounting records: six years from the end of the accounting year, as HMRC requires.
Reflections subscriptions: until you unsubscribe.
Applications to join the supervision group: deleted within twelve months of the decision. The group’s mailing list: an address is removed as soon as its member leaves the group.
Website server and security logs: short rolling periods set by the hosting and security providers.
Backups: the website is backed up daily and each backup is kept for a limited period before it is overwritten. Information deleted from the site therefore leaves the backups within that period.

Confidentiality, and its limits

What you say in a session stays between you and the practitioner, with these exceptions:

supervision, in a form that does not identify you
a risk of serious harm to you or another person
a legal requirement
your own written request to share something

These limits are explained at the start of the work and are written into the agreement you sign, so there are no surprises.

Your rights

You have the right:

to ask for a copy of the information held about you
to have it corrected
to have it deleted, where the law and the professional duty to keep a record allow
to restrict or object to how it is used
to receive information you provided in a form you can take elsewhere
to withdraw consent for anything that rests on consent, without affecting what was done before

To use any of these rights, email support@markingtherapy.com or write to the registered office. Marking Therapy responds within one month. It may ask for proof of identity and, where a request is unclear, for more detail, in which case the clock pauses until it arrives. There is no charge unless a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.

Cookies

The website uses cookies that are needed for it to work and, only if you accept them in the banner, statistics cookies that show how the site is used. There are no marketing cookies.

You can change your choice at any time from the Cookie Policy link in the footer, which also lists every cookie, what it does and how long it lasts.

Complaints

If you are unhappy with how your information has been handled, please tell Marking Therapy first at support@markingtherapy.com. Your complaint is acknowledged within 30 days and answered without undue delay.

You can also complain:

to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113
about the professional conduct of the practitioner, to BACP, NCPS or the Civil Mediation Council, whose details are on the About page

Children, automated decisions and links

Services are for adults aged 18 and over, and no information about children is knowingly collected.
No decision about you is made by automated means.
Links to other websites lead to their own privacy notices, which Marking Therapy does not control.

Changes to this notice

This notice is reviewed at least once a year and whenever the practice changes how it works. The date at the top shows the last change; significant changes are told to current clients directly.