The short version
- BeingVITAL is run by one person. Russ Maher is the only person who routinely sees your information.
- Nothing detailed is collected until you choose to go further. The first-stage enquiry stays deliberately light.
- Health-related information is only processed if you sign a separate consent form, and you can withdraw it at any time.
- Your information is never sold, never used for advertising, and never shared for marketing.
- You can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and complain to the regulator if you are not satisfied.
- 1. Who is responsible
- 2. What is collected, and when
- 3. Why, and on what legal basis
- 4. Health-related information
- 5. Reports and records you share
- 6. Who else sees it
- 7. Information leaving the UK
- 8. How long it is kept
- 9. How it is protected
- 10. The website, forms and drafts
- 11. Your rights
- 12. Complaints
- 13. Age
- 14. Changes to this notice
1. Who is responsible for your information
BeingVITAL.Me is a trading brand of The WardWise, operated by Russ Maher as a sole trader in the United Kingdom. He is the data controller for the information described in this notice, which means he decides what is collected and why, and is answerable for how it is handled.
Postal / correspondence address
Lytchett House, 13 Freeland Park,
Wareham Road, Poole, Dorset,
BH16 6FA, United Kingdom
| Purpose | Contact |
|---|---|
| General enquiries, data questions, complaints | hello@beingvital.me |
| Intake documents and active private clients | apply@beingvital.me |
Neither inbox is monitored continuously. BeingVITAL is not an urgent or emergency service. If something about your health feels urgent, contact your GP, call NHS 111, or call 999 in an emergency — do not wait for a reply here.
BeingVITAL is a wellbeing coaching, education and structured self-observation service. It is not nursing or medical care, and does not involve clinical assessment, diagnosis, treatment or prescribing. Where Russ's clinical career is described anywhere on this site or in these documents, it is described as professional background.
2. What is collected, and when
How much is collected depends entirely on how far you choose to go. It builds in stages, and each stage is optional.
Stage one — enquiry
Your name, email address, the pathway you are interested in, your preferred next step, and the short note you write. The website form explicitly asks you not to send diagnoses, test results or detailed health information at this point.
Stage two — Clarity Conversation
A minimal administrative note: that the call happened, the outcome, and whether you asked for follow-up. Russ does not intentionally create a detailed health record from this conversation. If health information comes up naturally, detailed notes are not intentionally retained unless you later proceed and separately consent.
Stage three — Initial Consultation
Only after you have signed the separate health-data consent: your completed intake bundle, any health context you choose to share, notes made during the consultation, and the pre-contract confirmation you sign.
Stage four — private programme
Your engagement agreement, fee and payment records, session notes, Client Compass observations, your Personal Blueprint, and correspondence between you and Russ during the programme.
At every stage, what is collected is what you choose to provide. Declining any part of it is a legitimate choice; it simply limits what the service can do.
3. Why, and on what legal basis
| What it is used for | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Responding to your enquiry and deciding whether the service is a fit | Steps taken at your request before entering a contract |
| Delivering the consultation or programme you have paid for | Performance of our contract |
| Processing health-related information | Your separate explicit consent |
| Keeping financial and engagement records | Legal obligation, and legitimate interests in being able to answer a later query or claim |
| Protecting the service against misuse, and keeping records secure | Legitimate interests |
| Sending you occasional updates, if you have asked for them | Your consent, withdrawable at any time |
Where legitimate interests are relied on, the interest is the ordinary running of a small professional practice. That has been weighed against your privacy, and is limited to what is genuinely necessary.
What your information is never used for. It is never sold, never rented, never shared with advertisers, never used to build a profile of you for marketing, and never used to make an automated decision about you. There is no automated decision-making or profiling in this service at all.
4. Health-related information
Under UK data-protection law, information about your physical or mental health is special-category personal data and carries additional protection. BeingVITAL processes it only where you have given separate, specific, written explicit consent on the Explicit Consent to Process Health-Related Data form. It is not bundled into the Terms of Engagement and it is not a condition of making an enquiry.
This may include health history or diagnoses you disclose, symptoms and daily experiences you describe, medication and supplement information you choose to give, Client Compass observations about sleep, energy, digestion, recovery, mood and rhythm, and notes made during the consultation or programme that reveal something about your health.
It is used only to deliver the wellbeing service you have asked for: to understand your context, structure the conversation, put what you have provided in order, personalise coaching and education, and help you form better questions for your own clinicians.
It is not processed in order to diagnose you, to provide regulated medical or nursing care, to prescribe, or to market anything to you.
You may withdraw this consent at any time, without giving a reason, by emailing hello@beingvital.me or apply@beingvital.me. Withdrawal does not make earlier lawful processing unlawful, but it may mean parts of the service that objectively depend on that information can no longer be provided.
5. Reports and records you choose to share
Sharing previous reports, letters or correspondence is entirely optional and is never required to take part.
Where you do share them, they are placed in date order only. They are not read for clinical meaning, not interpreted, and not used to form any view about your health. That remains the work of your GP or other appropriately qualified clinicians.
Documents supplied for temporary reference are returned or deleted once the agreed purpose is complete, and are not retained as a routine part of your record.
Please send only what has been discussed and agreed as useful. There is no benefit to you in sending a full medical file.
6. Who else sees your information
Russ is the only person who routinely sees your BeingVITAL information. There are no employees and no associates with access to client records.
Some information is necessarily handled by the technology providers that run the practice. They act on BeingVITAL's instructions under contract, and may not use your information for their own purposes:
- the email provider that carries messages to and from hello@ and apply@;
- the website host that serves this site and its forms;
- the scheduling provider used to book consultations;
- the payment provider used to take fees, which handles your card details directly — BeingVITAL does not see or store full card numbers; and
- secure storage or backup providers.
Beyond that, your information is shared only where you specifically authorise it, or where the law requires it — for example a court order, or a genuine emergency where there is a serious risk to someone's life. You can ask for the current list of providers at any time.
7. Information leaving the UK
Some of the providers above operate servers outside the United Kingdom, including in the European Economic Area and the United States.
Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, BeingVITAL relies on the safeguards recognised under UK data-protection law — UK adequacy regulations where they apply, or the International Data Transfer Agreement or UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. You can ask which mechanism applies to a particular provider.
8. How long your information is kept
| Information | Normally kept for |
|---|---|
| Enquiry and first-stage fit notes, where you do not proceed | Reviewed for deletion within 90 days |
| Intake material and consultation notes, where you do not proceed past the Initial Consultation | Reviewed for deletion within 12 months |
| Engagement records where a private programme is completed | 6 years from the end of the engagement, reflecting the period in which a contractual claim could arise. Detailed health-related material is reviewed within that period and reduced to what remains necessary. |
| Financial and tax records | 6 years, as required by HMRC |
| Reports or correspondence supplied for temporary reference | Returned or deleted once the agreed purpose is complete |
| Signed consents and acknowledgements | Kept for as long as the related records are kept, so that it can be demonstrated what you agreed to and when |
You can ask for earlier deletion at any time, and it will be done unless there is a specific legal reason to keep something — in which case the reason will be explained to you plainly.
9. How your information is protected
- Accounts holding client information are protected with strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication.
- Devices used for BeingVITAL work are encrypted and password-protected.
- Intake documents are kept in a restricted location, not left in general email folders longer than necessary.
- Completed intake documents are not forwarded to anyone else unless you ask for it.
- Information is kept to the minimum needed at each stage, which is the most effective protection of all.
Email is convenient but not perfectly secure. If you would prefer not to send health information by email, say so and an alternative can be arranged. If a secure client portal is adopted in future, this notice and the return instructions in the intake documents will be updated.
10. The website, forms and saved drafts
The website
This site does not use advertising cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party analytics that identify you. Nothing you do here is used to build an advertising profile.
The enquiry form
The homepage application form sends what you type to hello@beingvital.me. It asks you to keep your note general and not to include detailed medical information at that stage.
Saved drafts in the intake documents
The intake and consent documents include an optional setting that saves your draft answers in your own browser, so a closed tab does not lose your work. It is switched off unless you turn it on. Anything saved stays on your own device, is not transmitted to BeingVITAL, and can be removed at any time with the Clear saved answers button in the document. On a shared or public computer, leave it switched off.
Links to other places
This site may link to external services such as the scheduling provider. Once you follow a link, that organisation's own privacy notice applies, not this one.
11. Your rights
You have the right to:
- be told what is held about you and why — that is what this notice is for;
- get a copy of your information, normally within one month and free of charge;
- have it corrected if it is wrong or incomplete;
- have it deleted, where there is no overriding reason to keep it;
- restrict how it is used while a concern is being resolved;
- object to processing based on legitimate interests;
- receive it in a portable format, where processing is based on consent or contract and is automated; and
- withdraw consent at any time, including the explicit consent for health-related data.
To exercise any of these, email hello@beingvital.me. There is no form to complete and no charge. Identity may need to be confirmed before information is released, which protects you rather than BeingVITAL.
12. If you are unhappy
Please raise it with Russ first, at hello@beingvital.me. Concerns are acknowledged within 5 working days and answered substantively within 20 working days. Most things are resolved quickly and directly.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at any time, and you do not have to come to Russ first:
- Online: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
- Helpline: 0303 123 1113
- Post: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
13. Age
BeingVITAL is a service for adults. It is not offered to, and information is not knowingly collected from, anyone under 18. If you believe a young person has submitted information through this site, please tell Russ so that it can be deleted.
14. Changes to this notice
This notice will be updated if the service, the technology behind it, or the law changes. The version and date are shown below. Where a change materially affects how your information is handled, current clients will be told directly rather than expected to notice an updated page.
Related documents: Terms of Engagement · Cancellation & Refunds · Scope & Important Information · Explicit Consent to Process Health-Related Data.
Version 1.0 · 20 August 2026 · BeingVITAL.Me · United Kingdom