Recording and consent
Recording a session in the United Kingdom.
A person taking part in a British session may record it, and what actually governs the recording is data protection law rather than interception law. That is the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 and the Data Protection Act 2018, and the sentence a practitioner says out loud before recording is the same one in every country on this site.
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
01The sentence
Say this, out loud, before anything else is said.
I am going to record this session so I can write you a proper report afterwards. Is that all right with you?
It is the same sentence everywhere, because a specific disclosure followed by a direct question is what recording guidance favours over a vague notice, and because everybody in the session agreeing is safe in every jurisdiction on this site. What changes by place is who has to answer it.
02Who has to agree
In the United Kingdom the rule is one party, with a data law on top.
The statute the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 and the Data Protection Act 2018
The interception offence in the Investigatory Powers Act is aimed at intercepting a communication in the course of its transmission by a third party, and it does not reach a person recording a conversation they are part of. That leaves the real question, which is that the recording is personal data about the client the moment it is made. A practitioner is a controller of it, needs a lawful basis, and the Information Commissioner's Office has been consistent that the honest basis for this is consent asked for plainly rather than legitimate interests asserted afterwards.
Ask out loud, keep the answer, and tell the client how long the audio is kept and how to ask for it to go. A British client who complains goes to the Information Commissioner rather than to a court, and the first thing that office asks for is what the person was told at the time.
03A client under 18
What changes when the person in the session is a child.
The Data Protection Act sets 13 as the age at which a child can consent to an information society service in the United Kingdom, which is lower than most of Europe and is not the end of it. For a paid one to one session with somebody under 18 a practitioner should be asking the parent or guardian, recording that they asked, and telling the young person separately in words appropriate to their age. The Children's code is worth reading for anybody working with under 18s at any scale.
04The data law
The recording is personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Consent under the UK GDPR has to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous, and it has to be as easy to withdraw as it was to give. That is why the permission sentence is a question rather than a notice. Where a recording or a report touches health, the data is special category and needs an Article 9 condition as well as an Article 6 one, which is a real constraint for a health or nutrition practice.
05What Slide Practice does
The audio goes as soon as the report is written.
At upload the practitioner confirms on screen that everyone in the session agreed. That confirmation is stored, and the footer of the report prints the date it was given.
Session audio is deleted as soon as the write-up is made. The The text of what was said, written out from the recording. stays with the The written page a client receives after a session: what was covered, what went well, what they agreed to do, and what is next., on the client's own page, and both are kept until the account is closed. Closing an account starts a 30 day window, at the end of which everything is deleted rather than archived.
Nothing is drafted from a recording until the practitioner has confirmed that everyone agreed, and nothing reaches a client until a person has read it. The whole of what is kept, and for how long, is on the security page and in the privacy policy.
06Where this came from
Two primary sources, and neither of them is us.
- Investigatory Powers Act 2016, legislation.gov.uk
- Lawful basis and consent, Information Commissioner's Office
This is a plain summary, not legal advice. Laws change. If the answer matters to your business, check with a lawyer in your own country.
Nearby
- Recording a session in Ireland
- Recording a session in Canada
- Every jurisdiction, and how permission works in the product
- What the report itself looks like, practice by practice
Bring one recording you already have permission for, and read what comes back. No account and no card.