2020VISIONUK LTD, trading as Home Opticians
Last updated: 20 September 2026
Contact: info@homeopticians.co.uk, 07598 443479
Data protection lead: Clinical Director, info@homeopticians.co.uk
ICO registration number: ZA762265
This policy explains how Home Opticians collects, uses, and protects personal information, whether you're visiting our website, a patient at our practice, or the parent or carer of a child we provide NHS-commissioned eye care to through a special educational setting.
Home Opticians provides eye care services, including an NHS-commissioned sight testing service for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), delivered in special educational settings ("special schools"). We are the data controller for the personal information described in this policy, except where stated otherwise.
This policy applies to:
We use industry-standard technical and organisational measures appropriate to the sensitivity of the data involved. These include encryption of data at rest and in transit, access controls limiting who can see what, multi-factor authentication for staff with the broadest access, malware scanning of uploaded files, and a permanent audit trail of who accessed what and when. Where data is held in a digital system, such as the Home Opticians SES Portal described below, it is hosted exclusively in UK data centres.
This section applies to parents and carers of children at a special educational setting where Home Opticians delivers the NHS-commissioned sight testing service, via the Home Opticians SES Portal (portal.homeopticians.co.uk).
How this works: the school your child attends provides us with your child's name, date of birth, year group or class, and (where relevant) SEND or additional needs notes, so we can arrange and prepare for a sight test appointment. We ask for your consent, and some further information about your child's health, optician history and communication needs, before any sight test takes place. This is done either directly (via a link the school or we send you) or via the school on your behalf, matching how this process worked when it was paper-based.
What we collect, and why:
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your child's name, date of birth, year group or class | Identifying your child for the appointment |
| Your consent, and your relationship to your child | Confirming you have parental responsibility to consent on your child's behalf |
| Health and optician history, communication needs, GP details | Preparing appropriately for the appointment (this is the same information the paper consent form has always asked for) |
| Sight test results and recommendations | Recording the clinical outcome, and informing you and the school of the result |
Legal basis: we rely on Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR (performance of a task carried out in the public interest, that is, delivering an NHS-commissioned service) and, for the health information involved, Article 9(2)(h) (provision of health care), together with your explicit consent to the sight test itself.
Who we share this with: the school (so it knows which pupils have consent on file, and receives the outcome report), and our hosting and technical providers (Amazon Web Services, UK region only, and Resend for email where used), who act under contract to us. We do not sell this data or share it for marketing purposes, and it is not shared outside the UK.
How long we keep it: the consent and questionnaire record held in the portal is kept for as long as our NHS contract covering your child's school continues, and is reviewed at each contract renewal. Your child's clinical eye test record is held separately, in our practice management system, under the standard NHS retention period (10 years after your child was last seen, or until their 25th birthday, whichever is later).
Your rights: you can ask to see what information we hold about your child, ask us to correct it, or raise a concern, by contacting us at info@homeopticians.co.uk or by asking the school to pass your query to us. If you're not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Under UK GDPR, you have the right to: access the personal data we hold about you; have inaccurate data corrected; ask us to delete data in certain circumstances; restrict or object to certain processing; and receive your data in a portable format where applicable. To exercise any of these rights, contact us at info@homeopticians.co.uk. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) at any time.
Where we process a child's personal data (Section 5), we rely on the parent or carer, or the school (acting in the child's interest, per their own safeguarding responsibilities), to consent on the child's behalf, consistent with how consent for NHS care for children is normally obtained.
We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. Material changes affecting the SEND eye care service (Section 5) will also be notified to the schools we work with.
