Privacy policy

Lincolnshire Co-operative Ltd (Lincolnshire Co-op) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. This policy sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect will be processed by us. Please read this privacy policy carefully to understand our views and practices and your rights regarding your personal data. By visiting any of our websites or downloading our dividend card mobile app (hereafter referred to as ‘app’) you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

For the purpose of data protection legislation, the data controller is Lincolnshire Co-operative Ltd, except for the following, where it is one of our subsidiaries:

Pharmacy retail or pharmacy wholesale services: the data controller is Lincoln Co-operative Chemists Ltd;
Property owned by our property-owning subsidiaries: the data controller is Lincoln Corn Exchange and Markets (1991) Ltd, LCS Property Ltd, Greetwell Developments Ltd or LC Community Projects Ltd;
Post Offices: the data controller is LCS Retail Ltd;
Gadsby’s bakery: the data controller is Gadsby’s of Southwell Ltd;
South Lincolnshire Crematorium: the data controller is South Lincolnshire Crematorium Ltd;
Science Park: the data controller is Lincoln Science and Innovation Park Ltd.

This policy applies to information we collect about:

visitors to our websites and app;
people who register on our websites and app;
patients and other individuals who visit our pharmacies;
members, customers, suppliers and tenants

The information we collect about you

When you complete a form requesting information from the websites and app we may collect the following personal information from you:

name;
postal address, email address, telephone number, date of birth

Additionally, our websites may also collect the following personal information from you:

location and browsing history to serve content-relevant offers and events;

We may collect other information for specific purposes such as competitions notified to you at the time.

As part of providing a professional, safe and efficient pharmacy service, there is certain information that we record. This includes details of drugs and appliances dispensed against NHS prescriptions as well as significant advice given, and referrals made to other health professionals and any other relevant information. Information recorded may include:

basic details about you, such as address, date of birth, next of kin;
records of medicines you have been prescribed by your doctor or another qualified prescriber, and which have been supplied by the pharmacy;
details of medicines purchased from the pharmacy without a prescription (“over the counter medicines”);
other details and notes about your health and medical treatment;
information relevant to your continued care from other people who care for you

and know you well, such as other health professionals and relatives; and

any other services we provide to you, for example, a flu vaccination.

How we will use the information about you

We gather this information to allow us to provide the information or services requested. The relevant information is then used by us, our agents and sub-contractors to communicate with you on any matter relating to the provision of the information or services in general. If you agree, we may also contact you about other products and services we think may be of interest to you. We may also use information and statistics for promotion, blogs and a few purposes.

We may also use aggregate information and statistics for the purposes of monitoring websites and app usage in order to help us to develop those technologies and our services. We may also provide such aggregate information to third parties. These statistics will not include information that can be used to identify you^.

From time to time we may provide your information to our customer service agencies for research and analysis purposes so that we can monitor and improve the provision of information and services.

We process your personal data, which includes information related to prescriptions and any other pharmacy and health care services we provide to you (e.g., medicines reviews, vaccinations, stop smoking services etc.).

We share information with other organisations in the public interest when we carry out our tasks under the Pharmacy Order 2010 and other legislation. We also disclose information when required by other laws, for example, laws that apply to the work of other public authorities and NHS trusts.

We process your personal data for the purposes of:

Your care: providing pharmacy services and care to you and, as appropriate, receiving service and health records information if you have selected our pharmacy and sharing your information with your GP and others in the wider NHS;

Our payments: sharing your information with the NHS Business Services Authority, others in the wider NHS, and sometimes Local Authorities, and only limited information to those external to the NHS who negotiate and check the accuracy of our payments; and,

Management: sharing only limited information with the NHS Business Services Authority, NHS Digital and others in the wider NHS, and sometimes Local Authorities; as well as those external to the NHS who ensure we maintain appropriate professional and service standards and that your declarations and ours are accurate.

We process your personal data in the performance of a task in the public interest for the provision of healthcare and treatment. A pharmacist is responsible for the confidentiality of your information.

We may ask you whether you wish to choose our pharmacy to receive and process your future electronic prescriptions. If you choose to nominate our pharmacy you can still change or cancel your selection later by speaking to a pharmacy team member.

Our pharmacy professionals may consult relevant records to support your care, such as NHS summary care records or local shared care records. We align with NHS protocols for use of records. We may also ask you if, whilst you remain under our care, our pharmacy professionals can consult relevant records. If you allow us to see those health records this will help to ensure that relevant medical information is visible to our professionals. We or our agents and sub-contractors may contact you by post, email or telephone to ask you for your feedback and comments on our websites, information or services.

Freedom of information

Sometimes our pharmacy may need to disclose information under the laws covering access to information (usually the Freedom of Information Act 2000). We disclose identifiable personal information only where it is lawful, fair and in the public interest to do so.

Marketing

We and our group companies may also wish to provide you with information about special features of our websites or any other service or products we think may be of interest to you. If you would rather not receive this information, please send an email message to membership@lincolnshire.coop. If you agree to us providing you with marketing information, you can always opt out at a later date.

We will not sell share or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone. We will only send personally identifiable information about you to others when we need to for the purposes set out in this policy or when you have your consent or when required or permitted to do so in response to court orders or by law.

Our use of cookies and other information-gathering technologies

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard Internet log information and visitor behaviour information. The information is used to track visitor use of the websites and to compile statistical reports on website activity. For further information about cookies visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org. and please refer to our cookie policy. You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our websites features may not function if you remove cookies from your browser.

How we protect your information

We have put in place the following security procedures and technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal information: firewalls, browser certification technology, encryption, use of passwords. We will use all reasonable efforts to safeguard your personal information. However, you should be aware that the use of the Internet is not entirely secure and for this reason we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal information which is transferred from you or to you via the Internet.

Transferring your information outside the European Economic Area (EEA)

We may need to transfer your personal information outside of the EEA in order to provide you with the services and products you require or as necessary for our business. This will most likely occur when our third-party providers are based outside the EEA. Some of these countries may not have laws that protect privacy rights as extensively as in the EEA.

If we do transfer your personal information to other jurisdictions, we will take proper steps to ensure that your information is as equally protected as in the UK, such as entering into "standard data protection clauses" with the recipient. These are clauses that have been approved by the European Commission for such transfers

Access to your information and updating and correcting your information

You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. If you would like a copy of some or all of your personal information, please send an email to dataprotection@lincolnshire.coop or send a letter to the Data Protection Officer, Lincolnshire Co-op, 15-23 Tentercroft Street, Lincoln, LN5 7DB. You are normally not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. We have one month to respond to you.

We want to ensure that your personal information is accurate and up to date. If any of the information that you have provided to Lincolnshire Co-operative Ltd changes, for example if you change your email address, or if you wish to cancel your registration, please send an email to membership@lincolnshire.coop or send a letter to Membership Team, Lincolnshire Co-op, 15-23 Tentercroft Street, Lincoln, LN5 7DB. You may ask us, or we may ask you, to correct information you or we think is inaccurate, and you may also ask us to remove information which is inaccurate.

What information do we collect from you?

We will collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give us. You give us this by filling in forms in paper, on our website, app or by corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. This may include e.g. your name, address, date of birth, email address and phone number.
Information we collect from your use of our website. We will automatically collect information about the products, services, events and offers you click on in order to personalise your experience with products, services, events and offers relevant to you.
Information we collect throughout our relationship. This is information relating to products or services that you purchase, events you attend, dividend earned and redeemed, share deposits and withdrawals, offers and promotions you take part in.
Information we collect when you call us. If you call us we will collect instructions or information you provide.

Providing us with your details online. This is information you may choose to provide us with using our website, app and social media. It includes your name, address, telephone number, email address and preferences for receiving emails

Why do we collect this information?

We use this information in the following ways:

Information you give to us. We use this information:

- to assess whether we can enter into a contract with you and to perform our contract with you. This includes carrying out our obligations to you and providing you with our products and services;
- to perform our obligations to you as a member of Lincolnshire Co-op.
- to improve our service to you, to ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device;
- to deal with any legal queries relating to your use of our services;
- to provide you with service communications so that you receive a full and functional service and so we can perform our obligations to you. These may be sent by email or post or, if the circumstances require it, we may contact you by phone. These will include notifications about changes to our service;
- to provide you with marketing communications including, with your permission, information about other goods and services which are provided by our family of businesses, information about our events and activities and special offers negotiated with third parties;
- in our and third party’s legitimate interest of keeping customers up to date with good and services, to increase awareness of us and third parties within the market, making promotional offers and generating new business, building and maintaining loyalty or market share, corresponding with you as a member of Lincolnshire Co-op, Telling you about our events or those of third parties, telling you about our charity, community and sponsorship initiatives and obtaining your feedback on them.

Information we collect from your use of the website and app. We will use this information for the following purposes:

to administer our website, app and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;
to improve our website and app to ensure that content is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your device;
as part of our efforts to keep our website and app safe and secure;
to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we send to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;

Information we collect throughout our relationship. We will use this information to help us provide you with our services and to comply with our contractual obligations to you and our obligations to you as a member of Lincolnshire Co-op.
Information we receive from other sources. See the ‘Who might we share your information with?’ section below for details of how we use information in conjunction with our associated third parties.

How long do we keep hold of your information?

Subject to the further points below, we will keep information about you for a maximum of 7 years after the end of our relationship with you unless obligations to our regulators or the law requires otherwise, or we are required to remove such data from our records.

In other cases we'll store personal information for the periods needed for the purposes for which the information was collected. Sometimes we'll keep it for longer if we need to by law. Otherwise, we delete it in line with our retention policy and schedule.

Also, we hold information concerning the provision of pharmacy and related services for as long as advised by the NHS.

Who might we share your information with?

You agree that for the purposes set out in the ‘Why do we collect this information?’ section above, we have the right to share your personal information with:

Selected associated third parties, some of whom we appoint to provide services, including:
- business partners, advisors, agents, subsidiaries, affiliates, suppliers and sub-contractors for the performance of any contract we enter into with you;
- sub-contractors with whom we have entered into a contract to assist us with providing our membership services to you for example assisting us with our election processes.
- analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our website;
- customer survey providers in order to receive feedback and improve our services.

sharing your information with the NHS Business Services Authority, others in the wider NHS, and sometimes Local Authorities, and only limited information to those external to the NHS for the provision of healthcare and treatment and performance of a task in the public interest. Additionally, we will disclose your personal information to the relevant third party:

If we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer.
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data to comply with any legal obligation, to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our customers, our regulators, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection, prevention of money laundering and credit risk reduction.

How is your data stored and kept secure?

At Lincolnshire Co-op, we take your safety and security very seriously and we are committed to protecting your personal and financial information. All information kept by us is stored on secure servers or those of our service providers or in secure filing systems. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password or PIN that enables you to access certain parts of our services, you are responsible for keeping these confidential. We ask you not to share your password or PIN with anyone.

We may need to transfer your data outside the European Economic Area. We will only do so if adequate protection measures are in place in compliance with data protection legislation.

Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features designed to prevent unauthorised access.

What are your rights?

Where processing of your personal data is based on consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time.

You have the right:

to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing purposes;
to ask us not to process your personal data where it is processed on the basis of legitimate interests provided that there are no compelling reasons for that processing;
to ask us not to process your personal data for scientific or historical research purposes, where relevant, unless the processing is necessary in the public interest.
to request from us access to personal information held about you;
to ask for the information we hold about you to be rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
to ask for data to be erased, as long as data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, you withdraw consent (if the legal basis for processing is consent), you exercise your right to object, set out below, and there are no overriding legitimate grounds for processing, the data is unlawfully processed, the data needs to be erased to comply with a legal obligation or the data is children’s data and was collected in relation to an offer of information society services;
to ask for the processing of that information to be restricted if the accuracy of that data is contested, the processing is unlawful, the personal data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or you exercise your right to object (pending verification of whether there are legitimate grounds for processing);
to ask for data portability if the processing is carried out by automated means and the legal basis for processing is consent or contract.

All of our staff contracts of employment contain a requirement to keep patient information confidential.

You can exercise these rights at any time by contacting us by post at People and Performance, Lincolnshire Co-op, 15-23 Tentercroft Street, Lincoln, LN5 7DB or email: dataprotection@lincolnshire.coop

We also comply with the NHS Code of Practice on Confidential Information and pharmacists have an obligation under their professional standards to keep records about you confidential, secure and accurate.

You may choose to opt out of the NHS using your data for planning and research purposes – details are obtained by:

visiting the nhs.uk/yournhsdatamatters website portal; using the NHS App; or
writing by post using the instructions at the weblink above; or by calling the NHS Digital contact centre - 0300 303 5678 (open workdays Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm).

Should you have any issues, concerns or problems in relation to your data, or wish to notify us of data which is inaccurate, please let us know. If you are not satisfied with our processing of your personal data, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at any time. The ICO’s contact details are available here.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. If we change our privacy policy we will post the changes on this page, and place notices on other pages of the websites, so that you may be aware of the information we collect and how we use it at all times. This privacy policy was last updated 16^th May 2023.

Cookies

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users of the website and to maintain persistent information across pages (for example, your nearest store information). These cookies are required by the website in order to provide a wide range of features as described in our cookie policy.

Your consent

By submitting your personal information, you consent to the use of that information as set out in this policy.

Contact us and Data Protection Officer

We welcome your views about our websites, app and our privacy policy. If you would like to contact us with any queries or comments, please send an email to dataprotection@lincolnshire.coop or send a letter to Lincolnshire Co-op, 15-23 Tentercroft Street, Lincoln, LN5 7DB.