Privacy

Draft, not yet in force. This describes what the app actually does today, written against the database rather than from memory. It has not had a legal review and should not be relied on as a final policy until it has.

Who we are

The Collective Local is run from Norfolk by one person. We decide what is collected and why, which makes us the controller of it. Everything here is answerable at hello@thecollectivelocal.co.uk, by a person rather than a form.

What we hold, why, and for how long

Your profileA first name — never a surname — a photo, and anything you choose to add: a line about yourself, how you work, what you are into, when you are usually about.Kept: While you have a profile. It goes when you delete it.
Your email addressIt is how you sign in. There is no password to remember, so a code goes to this address instead.Kept: While the account exists.
Where you areA postcode is turned into a point once, and the postcode is kept so you never have to retype it to change how far you are looking. Neither the postcode nor the point is ever sent to another member: they see a town and a rounded distance, such as “Norwich, about 2 miles”.Kept: While you have a profile.
Your verification photoA second photo, holding up a gesture we ask for, so we can see that you are the person on the profile. One person looks at it once.Kept: Deleted from storage the moment a decision is made. What remains is the decision itself and its date, with no photo attached.
Messages and eventsWhat you write in a conversation, who you are connected to, and what you host or join.Kept: While you have a profile.
Reports and blocksIf you report somebody or block them, we keep that, because a complaint that can be made to disappear is not a complaint.Kept: Reports outlive the account of whoever made them — see below. Blocks last as long as the account they protect.
An invitation you sendIf you email somebody about this place, we do not keep their address. We keep a fingerprint of it that we cannot read back, so that nobody is sent the same invitation twice.Kept: 180 days, then deleted. After that there is nothing left to say anybody was ever mentioned to us.
A message through the contact formYour name, your address and what you wrote, so somebody can reply. Alongside it, a fingerprint of the network address it came from — salted, so it cannot be turned back into an address — which is what stops the form being used as a mailer.Kept: 12 months, then deleted, whether or not it was answered.

Who can see what

Other members see your first name, your photo, your area, a rounded distance, and whatever you chose to put on your profile. They cannot see your surname, your exact location, your postcode, or your email address. Until you are verified, other members are shown to you without names or faces, and you to them the same way. The exact meeting point of an event is shown only to people who have joined it.

Venues and practitioners see no more than any other member. Being a business here buys a listing, not a view of anybody.

Where your data actually goes

We are a small operation standing on other people’s infrastructure, and you should know whose.

Supabase holds the database, the sign-in and the photographs. Vercel runs the app itself.
Resend sends the few emails we send: a business being approved, and an invitation somebody asked us to pass on.
postcodes.io turns a postcode into a point, and Photon finds a venue when you search for one. Both are asked by our server, not by your browser.
Open-Meteo tells us the weather where you are. It is asked by our server, and the coordinates are rounded first — to about a kilometre — so it is told roughly where you are and never precisely.
OpenStreetMap draws the maps. This one is different: the tiles are fetched by your browser, so OpenStreetMap can see your network address and which part of the map you are looking at, the same as visiting their site.

What we never do

We do not sell your data and we do not advertise to you. We do not put a map of members anywhere in this app: a pin, however imprecise, can be worked backwards, so it was never built. We do not use tracking cookies, and there is no analytics watching you move around — the cookie policy lists the two things we do store and why neither needs asking about.

If somebody invited you here

A member can ask us to send one email to one person. That is a single message, sent once, from us but on their behalf — replies go to them, not to us. We keep no record of your address, only the fingerprint described above, and we do not send a second. If you would rather we had not, write to hello@thecollectivelocal.co.uk and say so.

Leaving

There are three different things you might mean, and the app asks which:

Your personal profile. Your profile, photo, connections, messages and events go. Your sign-in stays, and so does your business if you have one. You can build a profile again later.
Your business. The business, its events and its offers go. Your own profile and your sign-in are untouched. A venue you had claimed is not deleted — it goes back to being unclaimed, so somebody else can take it on.
Everything. All of the above, and the sign-in with it. You could not sign in again with that address, because there would be nothing to sign in to.

None of these is a hidden flag on a row we keep. The rows are deleted and the photographs are removed from storage.

What outlives you leaving, and why

Reports you made about somebody else. Your name comes off them, but the report stays. Otherwise leaving would be a way to make a complaint about somebody disappear, which is a way to pressure the person who made it.
Blocks, if you kept your sign-in. Deleting your profile and starting a new one is not a way around somebody who blocked you.
Venues. A place is a place. It stays listed and becomes unclaimed.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and object to what we are doing with it. Deleting is built into the app and you do not need to ask. For anything else, write to hello@thecollectivelocal.co.uk — there is no form and no automated process, because there is no volume to justify one. We answer within a month.

If you are not happy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.

Questions

Email hello@thecollectivelocal.co.uk and a person will answer.