Privacy Notice — Clients

Last updated: 6 September 2026

This notice explains what we do with your personal information when you use Besttalk.

We know you may be reading this at a difficult time. We have tried to keep it short and honest.

Who we are

Besttalk Limited — company number 13861850, registered in England and Wales. Registered office: Mynshull House, 78 Churchgate, Stockport, Cheshire, SK1 1YJ.

We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, reference ZC215198.

For anything about your data, contact privacy@besttalk.co.uk.

An important point about who is responsible for your information

This depends on how you came to us, and it genuinely affects your rights — so it is worth a moment.

If you found Besttalk yourself — through a search engine, an advert, or by browsing — and we matched you with a psychologist, Besttalk is responsible for your information ("the controller", in legal terms). This notice covers that.

If your psychologist invited you to the platform, or you booked through a booking page on their own website, then your psychologist is responsible for your information and Besttalk simply processes it on their behalf. In that case, ask them for their privacy notice — theirs governs, not ours. We still handle your data securely and under a written agreement with them.

In both cases your psychologist is separately responsible for the clinical records they create about you.

If you are unsure which applies to you, email us and we will tell you.

What we collect, and why

Before you create an account

If you use our "find a psychologist" journey, we record the conditions you select, who the therapy is for, and anything you write in the free-text box. This is stored against an anonymous session identifier, not your name.

We ask for your consent before you answer any of these questions, because your answers tell us about your health. You do not have to answer them — you can browse psychologists without doing so.

If you do not go on to create an account, we delete this after 7 days.

When you have an account

We never see or store your card number. Payments are handled by Stripe. We keep only the card type, expiry month and year, and a reference token — enough to charge you again, not enough to use the card anywhere else.

Health information

Most of what we hold about you counts as health information, which the law protects more strictly. That includes the conditions you select and your questionnaire answers — but also simply the fact that you have booked a therapy session, which reveals something about your health on its own.

The rules we follow change depending on where you are in the journey, and it is worth being clear about which applies to you.

Before you have an account — your consent

While you are just looking, the only health information we hold is the conditions you select so we can suggest psychologists. We ask your permission first, and you can say no — you are free to browse psychologists without answering. If you never create an account, it is deleted after 7 days.

You can change your mind at any time, and nothing happens to you if you do.

Once you have booked — providing your care

From the point you have an account and have confirmed a booking with a psychologist, we handle your health information under Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR, which covers the provision of health care, together with paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This is the same basis a GP surgery or a hospital relies on. It applies because by then a psychologist has taken responsibility for your care, and it means the information supporting your therapy stays in place for as long as your care requires — your therapy will never be interrupted by a question about permissions.

The DASS-21 questionnaire sits here. We only ever offer it after your first booking is confirmed, never while you are browsing.

You keep your rights either way: you can see what we hold, correct it, object to how we use it, and ask us to delete it. See Your rights below, which explains the limits honestly.

Whichever applies, we treat this information as confidential and we do not use it for anything other than providing this service.

We do not use your health information for marketing, and we do not sell it. Ever.

Our legal bases

Who we share it with

Your psychologist. The one you choose sees the information you have provided so they can prepare for and deliver your sessions. Other psychologists on the platform cannot see your information.

Companies that help us run the service, each bound by contract to protect your data and to use it only on our instructions:

Google Analytics never receives your health information. It sees how pages are used, not what you have told us about yourself, and it does not run at all unless you accept analytics cookies. Our Cookie Notice explains this and lets you change your mind at any time.

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it for advertising.

Information going outside the UK

Your records are stored in the United Kingdom. Some of the companies above are based in the United States. Those transfers rely on the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, a UK Government arrangement recognising that certified US organisations provide adequate protection. We check each company's certification and re-check it annually.

How long we keep it

When you close your account we delete your information, except where we must keep it by law. Where we must keep financial records, we remove the details identifying you wherever the record still works without them.

Deleted information may remain in our encrypted backups for up to 7 days before being overwritten.

How we are matched — and whether a computer decides

When you complete our questionnaire we use the conditions you select to suggest psychologists who work in those areas. The suggestions are automated, but the choice is yours — nothing is decided about you automatically, and no computer decides whether you can access the service.

If the therapy is for someone else

If you book on behalf of a partner or a child, we will hold some information about them. Please tell them we have it and point them to this notice. They have the same rights as you, and we will honour a request from them or from someone acting for them.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

• Give you a copy of the information we hold about you
• Correct anything wrong
• Delete your information — though we may need to keep financial records by law
• Restrict or object to what we do with it
• Transfer it to another service
• Withdraw consent where you have given it — the questions you answered before creating an account, and analytics

Email privacy@besttalk.co.uk. We will respond within one month. It is free.

Where the limits are, stated plainly rather than left for you to discover:

• Payment and invoice records — we must keep these for 6 years because tax law requires it, and that applies even if you ask us to delete everything else
• Your psychologist's clinical notes — these belong to them under their professional obligations, not to us. Ask them directly; we cannot delete them on your behalf
• While you are in ongoing therapy, we need the information that supports it in order to provide the service at all. You can still object, ask us to restrict how we use it, or close your account and stop

We may ask you to confirm your identity first. That is not obstruction — it stops someone else obtaining your mental health information by pretending to be you.

If we are not the controller — because your psychologist invited you — we will pass your request to them straight away and help them answer it.

Complaints

Please tell us first, at privacy@besttalk.co.uk, so we can put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at any time: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint · 0303 123 1113.

Changes

If we change how we use your information we will update this notice and, where the change is significant, tell you directly.