Business Terms & Conditions

These Business Terms are the standard terms which apply to the services we provide to you (known as the “Services”), by us, Dr. Katy Hill, Clinical Psychologist (trading name of Dr Katy Hill) whose business address is Office 105420, PO Box 4336, Manchester, M61 0BW (known as the “Practice”, also referred to as us/we/our).   

Professional Information: 

• Katy Hill has been working in mental health services since 2003 and qualified as a clinical psychologist in 2016. She is registered with the United Kingdom’s Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).  All Clinical Psychologists practising within the UK must be registered with the HCPC. In order to maintain their practising registration, all Clinical Psychologists must continue to demonstrate compliance with a range of HCPC minimum standards of conduct, performance and ethics. www.hcpc-uk.org.
• All services offered by the Practice are delivered under the regulations in law as specified by the HCPC in the United Kingdom.

Consultations and Appointments: 

• Consultations shall be by appointment only. Details of the consultation timings, length and fees shall be made available to you in advance of the consultation.

• Appointments are made through our online booking system (powered by Calendly) and fees are paid at the time of booking on that portal (via Stripe).

• If you know you are going to be late for an appointment, you should contact us to tell us. If you arrive later than 15 minutes after an appointment time, we will try to provide the service you have booked.  If we decide that we cannot provide a service with the time remaining then the appointment will be treated as cancelled without notice by you and you will not receive a refund of your fee. 

Online Sessions: 

• Sessions will be provided online via a pre-agreed livestream service (Zoom).

• When using a third-party supplier for online sessions your personal and special category data will be treated in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

• If we provide any of our Services as a livestream, then we will use reasonable endeavours to make it available and start it at the time it is scheduled to start, but the start may be delayed by circumstances beyond our control. We will not be liable for any such delay.

• In some limited circumstances, we may need to suspend the provision of an online session for one or more of the following reasons:
  • To fix technical problems or to make necessary minor technical changes;
  • In the event of illness or other circumstances beyond our control.

• In the event of any of the circumstances listed above occurring, then we will use reasonable endeavours to give as much notice as possible to you.
• We will not be liable to you for any costs or losses incurred by you as a result of using any third-party online provider for the purposes of attending a session virtually with us. You should make yourself familiar with such providers own terms and conditions and privacy policy.
• Ahead of your on-line session, we ask you to plan where in your location you will sit for the meeting. It is important that the connection to the internet is as strong as possible, that you cannot be seen or overheard and that your face is clearly visible. Please do not sit with your back to a window. Appropriate clothing is essential; wear what you would wear to an in person appointment.
• We will share with you some best practice tips for accessing our services via Zoom in an introductory email before our first session or verbally during our 15min free introductory call.
• It is important that you ensure the space is private and that you cannot be interrupted or overheard. You are strongly encouraged to make any necessary arrangements with anyone you may normally share the location with to ensure that your protected space can be achieved.
• Wearing earphones attached to the mobile, laptop or tablet device is helpful in blocking out “feedback” noise and ensuring extra privacy.

In-Person sessions:

• If sessions are held in person at a third party venue, you agree to comply at all times with that venue’s policies and rules about that venue (particularly fire safety and health and safety rules). 

• You are responsible for your own belongings that you take to a session and neither us nor any third party venue will be liable for any loss, damage, theft or destruction of any of your belongings.

Recording of sessions:

• You must not record the session without discussing and agreeing this first with us. It is not permitted, under any circumstances, that any agreed recording is shared with others or in any social media platform.

Cancellations: 

• You may cancel an appointment, and receive a refund, if you give us at least 48 hours in working days prior notice of the cancellation. For example, cancellations for appointments on Tuesdays have to be communicated to us on Fridays.  Alternatively, instead of a refund, you may wish to carry that payment forward to a future appointment booking.

• If, due to exceptional circumstances, you cancel an appointment without giving us at least 48 hours in working days prior notice we will consider the circumstances and, in our discretion, decide whether to refund your booking payment.

• We may cancel an appointment booked by you at any time before the time and date of that appointment in the following circumstances:
  • The required personnel and/or required materials necessary for the provision of the Services are not available; or
  • An event outside of our reasonable control occurs.
• If we cancel an appointment in such circumstances, we will refund to you in full any advance payment that you have made to us for that appointment.
• We will use all reasonable endeavours to start the appointment at the time you have booked but the start may be delayed by overrun of a previous appointment or by other circumstances. If a delay to the start is at least 20 minutes you may cancel the appointment and we will refund you in full the payment that you have made to us for that appointment.
• Bookings made via telephone/email/website. Where the contract we make with you is made over the telephone or via email/online booking, the law gives you the rights set out in this paragraph, and they will be in addition to the rights given to you by the above provisions of this section.  You may for any reason cancel an appointment made in this way during the 14 day period after we accept the booking.  However, if the appointment is on a date which is before the end of that 14 day period and if you have expressly requested us to provide Services at that appointment and we do so, you may not cancel that appointment and you must pay for it in accordance with these Business Terms. If you request that your appointment be cancelled, you must confirm this in any way convenient to you. If you cancel as allowed by this paragraph, and you have already made any payment(s) to us for the appointment, we will refund the payment(s) to you within 14 days of receiving your cancellation.

• If we are prevented from or delayed in performing our obligations by your act or omission or by any circumstance outside our control, we will not be liable to you for any costs, charges or losses sustained or incurred by you that arise directly or indirectly from such prevention or delay.

Fees & Payment: 

• Each 50min session costs £120, this is exclusive of VAT (which is not chargeable unless we notify you otherwise).

• Due to high demand and in order to most effectively manage our waiting list we are unable to hold an appointment slot without payment. Payment must be made at the time of booking in order to secure your appointment. Appointments are booked on our online calendar (powered by Calendly) and processed via Stripe.

• We increase our prices each year to account for inflation. We may alter our prices without prior notice but if the price of any Services increases between the time when you book an appointment and the date of the appointment, the price increase will not apply to your appointment for those Services on that date.

Confidentiality: 

• The information discussed in our consultations and appointments with you are of a confidential nature. We provide a safe place in which you can share your thoughts and feelings with us. 

• We will ensure that any confidential information you disclose to us shall not be disclosed to any person except as permitted in this section.
• We may disclose confidential information relating to you: (i) to our employees, advisers, other healthcare professionals or social agencies who need to know such information for the purposes of carrying out our services to you; (ii) as may be required by law, a court of competent jurisdiction or any governmental or regulatory authority; and (iii) if we believe that you are at risk of harming yourself or others, in which case we are entitled to report this to the relevant organisation. Where possible, any breach of confidentiality related to risk of harm will be discussed with you first.

• We shall not use your confidential information for any purpose other than to perform our obligations under these Business Terms.
• We shall ensure that any person to whom we disclose your confidential information to in this section also comply with these confidentiality obligations.

• It is a requirement for all psychological therapists to have regular clinical supervision sessions in which they discuss their work in a safe, confidential space with an equally or more experienced colleague. All work that is discussed in these sessions is completely anonymised. Supervisors are bound by the same professional and ethical regulations as practitioners and do not discuss clinical material outside of the supervisory context.

Referrals to other Professionals

• Sometimes we provide a referral service in which we may suggest one of our associate professionals provide certain therapy services for you.  In the event we refer you to another clinician, you should be aware that we are not responsible for the therapy services they provide.
• You will therefore need to also enter into terms and conditions regarding the provision of the services directly with the therapist who has been allocated to provide those therapy services to you.

• The therapist providing their therapy services to you will be fully responsible for the services they provide and nothing in these terms and conditions makes us liable in any way (including being clinically liable) for the therapy services provided by the other clinician.

• Please be assured that all the therapists that we refer clients to have been vetted and are of a high standard.

How We Use Your Personal Information (Data Protection)

• We will only use your personal information as set out in our Privacy Policy on our website. If you do not have access to the internet we can provide you with a printed version of our Privacy Policy. 

• We are registered as Data Controllers with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as required by the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations 2018.

Note keeping and Messaging 

• We will keep brief notes after each session in order to recall information and support our work together. We will also store your contact details. We do not keep paper copies of any documents.  Instead, notes and personal data are stored electronically in a secure and encrypted online practice management platform (WriteUpp).  Everything is stored securely according to the Data Protection Act (2018) and in accordance with the UK GDPR guidelines.

• We retain ownership of the notes but we are happy to discuss their contents with you and you also have a right to access them formally. Should you wish to do this, please contact us in accordance with the Your Rights section of our Privacy Policy.

• Katy Hill uses her professional Gmail account to converse with clients about initial appointments and have brief exchanges about between session issues. More sensitive, personal data is sent via secure messaging on WriteUpp.  Dr. Katy also uses encrypted email (ProtonMail) and WhatsApp for secure messaging.

Limitation of Liability: 

• We will be responsible for any foreseeable loss or damage that you may suffer as a result of our breach of these Business Terms or as a result of our negligence. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it is an obvious consequence of our breach or negligence or if it is contemplated by you and us when a contract with you is created. We will not be responsible for any loss or damage that is not foreseeable.

• We provide all Services only for your personal and private use/purposes. We will not be liable to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, interruption to business or for any loss of business opportunity.

• Nothing in these Business Terms is intended to or will exclude or limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

• Furthermore, if you are a “consumer” as defined by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, or a consumer for the purposes of any other consumer protection legislation, nothing in these Business Terms is intended to or will exclude, limit, prejudice, or otherwise affect any of our duties or obligations to you, or your rights or remedies, or our liability to you, under the Consumer Rights Act 2015; the Consumer Contracts (Information and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013; the Consumer Protection Act 1987; and any other consumer protection legislation.

• For more details of your legal rights, please refer to your local Citizens’ Advice Bureau or Trading Standard Office.

• The Practice does not recommend or make any representation about the efficacy, appropriateness or suitability or any treatments, services or opinions. We cannot guarantee any outcome nor promise to provide a diagnosis.

Changes to these Business Terms:  

• We may from time to time change these Business Terms without giving you notice, but we will use our reasonable endeavours to inform you as soon as is reasonably possible of any such change.

Complaints and Standards 

• We are committed to providing as helpful and compassionate a service as possible to meet the needs of all our clients.

• We always welcome feedback from our clients and, whilst we shall use all reasonable endeavours to provide a high standard of service, care and treatment to all clients and patients, we nevertheless want to hear from you if you have any cause for complaint. If you have any complaint about our Services or any other complaint about us, please raise the matter with Katy Hill who can be contacted at drkaty@drkatyhill.com.

• You may wish to raise your concern directly with the Health and Care Professions Council, should you feel you have encountered an issue of fitness to practise. This can be done by following this link: https://www.hcpc-uk.org/concerns/raising-concerns/

Crisis management and emergencies

• The type of psychological work offered is not suited to managing emergencies or crises. If you require urgent help between appointments then please contact your GP, use the NHS 111 service for advice, phone 999 or attend A&E. You can also contact the Samaritans’ anonymous helpline on 116 123.

Holidays 

• We will give you a minimum of 2 weeks’ notice of any of our planned holidays.

• We require, where possible, a minimum of 2 weeks’ notice of any planned holidays from you. 

General 

• We reserve the right, at any time, to withdraw therapy and our Services to you based on clinical judgement. In such circumstances, any advance payments will be refunded for any Services not provided.

• We will not undertake any procedure that is in conflict with any law in force, any voluntary or mandatory code or practice, or any similar rules, regulations or codes.

• We insist that we do not meet you face to face if you are experiencing symptoms of an infectious illness, e.g. coronavirus, chest infection. Online or telephone sessions can be arranged in lieu, should you be well enough.

• Appointment times or other queries can be clarified by contacting Katy Hill at drkaty@drkatyhill.com.

• If you need to contact us between appointments please do so by email to drkaty@drkatyhill.com. We do not provide therapeutic support outside of therapy sessions. Our working hours are 9:30-14:30 Monday to Friday.  We aim to respond to emails as soon as possible but strictly within these working days and hours only.

• We are required to ensure that certain information is given or made available to you as a Consumer before we make our contract with you except where that information is already apparent. We have included the information itself in this Business Terms or we will make it available to you before we accept a booking from you.  All of that information will be part of the terms of our contract with you.

• If you have any questions regarding these Business Terms, please do not hesitate to discuss with us, either in a session or by emailing drkaty@drkatyhill.com.

No Waiver

• No failure or delay by us or you in exercising any rights under this Business Terms means that we or you waived any right, and not waiver by us or you of a breach of any provision of this Business Terms means that we or you will waive any subsequent breach of the same or any other provision.

Severance 

• If any provision of these Business Terms is held by any competent authority to be invalid or unenforceable in whole or in part the validity of the other provisions of this Business Terms and the remainder of the provision in question shall not be affected.

Governing law and jurisdiction

• These Business Terms are subject to the laws of England & Wales and the jurisdiction of the English Courts.

• As a consumer, you will benefit from any mandatory provisions of the law in your country of residency.