2020VISIONUK LTD, trading as Home Opticians (company number 12617795)
Last updated: 13 October 2026
Contact: info@homeopticians.co.uk, 07598 443479
Data protection lead: Muhammad Patel, Clinical Director, info@homeopticians.co.uk
Confidentiality lead: Sabina Patel
ICO registration number: ZA762265

This policy explains how Home Opticians collects, uses and protects personal information, whether you are visiting our website, a patient at our practice, or the parent, carer or student involved in our NHS eye care service in special schools.

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1. Who we are

Home Opticians provides eye care, including an NHS-commissioned sight testing service for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), delivered in special schools. We are the data controller for the personal information described in this policy, except where stated otherwise.

2. What this policy covers

• Visitors to our website
• People who contact us or book an appointment as a general patient
• Parents, carers and pupils involved in our NHS-commissioned SEND sight testing service (section 5 applies to you)

3. Information we collect and how we use it

Website visitors

• Contact form or enquiry: name, email, phone number and your message, used to reply. Legal basis: your consent in sending it, or our legitimate interest in answering enquiries.
• Cookies and analytics: homeopticians.co.uk does not currently use cookies or analytics or tracking scripts. If that changes, this section will say what is used and why before it goes live.

General patients

• Contact details, appointment history and clinical records needed to give you eye care. Legal basis: performance of a contract with you or, for NHS-funded care, a public task, and for health data Article 9(2)(h) UK GDPR (provision of health care). Records are kept in line with NHS and professional requirements (a minimum of 10 years for adults).

4. How we keep information secure

We use measures suited to how sensitive the information is. They include: storage in the UK (Amazon Web Services, London); encryption when information is stored and when it is sent; access limited to the people who need it, with a second security step for our administrator; each school able to see only its own pupils; virus scanning of every uploaded file; and a permanent record of who accessed what and when.

5. If your child attends a school where we provide NHS eye care

This section is for parents and carers of children at a special school where Home Opticians provides the NHS-commissioned sight testing service through the Home Opticians SES Portal (portal.homeopticians.co.uk). It is also for young people aged 18 or over who give consent for themselves.

How it works. The school gives us your child's name, date of birth and class, and sometimes a note about how best to help them, so we can plan and prepare for a sight test. We then ask you for consent through a link from the school, on your phone or computer. You do not need an account. A school member of staff may also help you, or record your answer if you give it by phone or in person.

What we collect, and why

What	Why
Your child's name, date of birth and class	To identify your child and plan the visit
Your answer on consent; your name, relationship to your child, phone number and email	To check you can give consent, and to contact you
Your home address (we may ask again later, once, if it was not given when you first said yes)	To contact you, and because the NHS claim for your child's eye test needs it
Whether your child has had an eye test or eye check elsewhere (at an optician, orthoptist or hospital eye service), when, who saw them, and whether you are happy for us to contact them. Optional: eye, hospital, glasses and GP history	To prepare for the appointment, and to avoid your child being tested again when they do not need to be
Who you allow us to share the report with (for example your GP, paediatrician, hospital eye service or a qualified teacher for the visually impaired), and whether you would rather the report goes to you only and not to the school	To share the report only with the people you choose
Sight test results and recommendations	To record the outcome and tell you and the school

If you say no, we do not create a consent record. We keep a note that an answer was given, so the school is not asked to chase you.

Legal basis. We rely on Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR (a task in the public interest: delivering an NHS-commissioned service) and Article 9(2)(h) (provision of health care). Your consent to the sight test itself is a clinical consent, which our contract with NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board requires, and is separate from the legal basis for handling the information.

Who we share it with.

• You. You always receive your child's outcome report, and can download it at any time from the link the school sent you.
• The school. Staff can see whether consent is on file and the consent form for their own pupils. They also see the outcome report, unless you have asked that the report goes to you only. You can ask this when you give consent, or later by contacting us or the school. The school will then see that your child was tested, but not the report.
• The NHS, to pay for the test and check the service. The claim for your child's sight test, which includes your child's name, date of birth and home address, is submitted to the NHS for payment. The commissioner, NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board, may also ask to see records to check that the service is delivered properly, as our contract requires.
• People you choose. Your GP, paediatrician, hospital eye service, orthoptist or qualified teacher for the visually impaired, only where you have said we may.
• Your child's earlier eye care. If your child has already been seen by an orthoptist, an optician or a hospital eye service, and you say we may, we will contact them to ask whether your child has been seen recently, and they may tell us, so that your child is not tested again unnecessarily. If you say no, or do not answer, we will not contact them. Before we refer your child to an orthoptist, we will check with you first.
• Our suppliers, who act on our instructions. Amazon Web Services stores the information in the UK (London). We use an email service, Resend, only to send emails to school staff and to our own administrators (login links, password resets and reminders). These emails contain only a staff member's work email address and name, the school's name, and numbers such as how many pupils are waiting. They never contain your child's name or any information about you or your child, and your child's information is never sent outside the UK. Resend is a US company that sends from Ireland and keeps copies of these emails for 30 days; it is covered by UK-approved safeguards.

We do not sell this information or use it for marketing. We do not store your child's information outside the UK.

How long we keep it. The consent record in the Portal is kept while our contract with NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board covering your child's school continues, and then reviewed. Your child's clinical eye test record is kept separately in our clinical system under the NHS Records Management Code of Practice (ten years after your child was last seen, or until their 25th birthday, whichever is later).

Your rights. You can ask to see what we hold about your child, ask us to correct it, ask us to stop using it, or withdraw consent for future tests, by writing to info@homeopticians.co.uk or by asking the school to pass your request on. If you are not happy with our reply you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113).

Young people aged 18 or over can give consent for themselves. We then treat the information as theirs.

6. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to: see the personal data we hold about you; have wrong data corrected; ask us to delete data in some circumstances; restrict or object to some uses; and receive your data in a portable form where it applies. Contact info@homeopticians.co.uk. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) at any time.

7. Children's data

Where we use a child's information (section 5) we rely on the parent or carer to give consent on the child's behalf, as is normal for NHS care for children. We ask the child's school to help parents who need support to understand and answer.

8. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it was last changed. Changes that affect the SEND eye care service (section 5) will also be sent to the schools we work with.