Effective Date: 28th March, 2025
Last Updated: 21st October, 2026
Privacy Policy
1. Who We Are
Men’s Counselling Service LTD (MCS) is a platform connecting individuals with registered counsellors. MCS operates as a directory service and does not provide counselling services directly.
Company No: 15886703 (Registered in England & Wales)
MCS is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.
Contact: contact@menscounsellingservice.com
2. Information We Collect
We collect and process the following data:
Enquiry Data: Information provided when contacting a counsellor (name, email, phone, and message). Enquiries may include health information. MCS does not read the contents of enquiries; they stay private between you and your chosen counsellor.
Counsellor Data: Professional credentials and registration details (including a copy of your professional membership certificate, provided for verification), profile content (name, photograph, biography, and any video or audio), contact details (including a phone number held for internal account use only), and payment information for membership.
Technical & Usage Data: Information about how you interact with our website, including IP addresses, browser types, and page interaction data.
Marketing & Analytics Data: Data collected via tracking technologies to understand user behaviour and measure the effectiveness of our outreach.
Prospective Data: Where we identify professionals who may wish to join or partner with MCS, we collect the professional contact details published on their website.
3. How We Use & Share Your Information
The Referral Process: To transmit enquiries to your chosen counsellor.
Independent Controllers: Once your enquiry is received by the counsellor or organisation you contacted, that counsellor or organisation becomes an Independent Data Controller responsible for your data. Where you have contacted an organisation or group practice, that organisation is responsible for ensuring your data is handled appropriately by anyone within their team who deals with your enquiry.
Optimisation & Outreach: We use analytics and advertising tools to improve our website and reach individuals who may benefit from our services.
Service Providers: We share data with trusted partners who support our operations, including website hosting, payment processing, business software, website analytics and advertising platforms. We also use AI tools under business and team licences to help with administrative tasks. These providers act as our data processors and do not use our data to train their models. Enquiries are never opened or processed by our AI tools, advertising platforms, payment processors or website analytics.
International Transfers: Some of our service providers may process data outside the UK, including in the United States. Where they do, we rely on safeguards permitted by UK law, such as a UK adequacy regulation, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, or Standard Contractual Clauses.
Our Legal Basis: Enquiries are sent directly to the counsellor you choose with your explicit consent, which you give by ticking the consent box when you submit an enquiry. We process counsellor data to perform our agreement with you and to meet our legal obligations. We keep business records, run analytics and contact professionals who may wish to join MCS on the basis of our legitimate interests in running and growing a directory that helps men find support.
4. Data Retention
We practice strict data minimisation to protect your privacy:
Client Enquiries: Personal data submitted via our contact forms is held only as long as necessary to ensure successful transmission to the counsellor. Enquiry data is retained for no longer than 7 days following successful transmission to the counsellor, as required by our email infrastructure, after which it is permanently deleted from MCS systems.
Business Records: Profile content (photograph, biography, video and audio) is removed from the public directory when membership ends and deleted within 24 months, so that you can return without rewriting your profile. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time. Professional membership certificates are deleted once your registration details have been verified; we keep a record of the details checked and the date of the check. Records we must keep by law, such as your agreement, billing, and any correspondence about a complaint or dispute, are kept for 6 years after membership ends, to meet tax requirements and the legal time limit for contract claims.
Prospective Data: If you don’t join MCS, we keep only your name, email address and website after our outreach ends, so that we never contact you again.
5. Cookies and Tracking Technologies
Our website uses cookies and similar tracking technologies (such as pixels and tags) in three categories:
Essential: these keep the website working and secure, and are always on because the site cannot function without them.
Analytics: we collect statistics about how our website is used, such as which pages are visited and how visitors move between them, so that we can improve it. This information is used for no other purpose, is not shared with advertisers or used to profile you, and our third-party partners process it only on our behalf. We never record what you type into our enquiry form. As UK law permits for this limited purpose, analytics is on by default, and you can switch it off at any time using ‘Cookie Settings’.
Advertising: tags from our advertising partners help us measure and improve our campaigns. These do not load unless you select ‘Accept’ on our cookie banner, and you can withdraw your consent at any time using ‘Cookie Settings’.
6. Data Security
We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data against unauthorised access or loss. While we strive for high security, no internet transmission is ever 100% secure.
7. Your Rights
Under UK data protection law, you have the right to access, correct, or request the deletion of your personal data. Enquiry data is retained for no longer than 7 days following transmission before permanent deletion. If your data has already been deleted in line with our retention policy, we will be unable to fulfil a request for access or deletion as the record no longer exists. You can also object to how we use your data or withdraw your consent at any time, and you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. For requests, contact: contact@menscounsellingservice.com.
8. Updates to This Policy
We may update this policy periodically to reflect changes in our services, technology, or legal obligations. The “Last Updated” date will always reflect the most recent version.