Privacy Policy

1. Who is responsible for your information?

Southport Trades is the data controller for personal information collected directly through this website, including customer enquiries, contact messages and business membership applications.

For privacy questions or requests, email hello@southporttrades.co.uk or use the contact page.

2. Information we collect

Customer enquiries

When you ask participating businesses to contact you, we collect the information you enter into the enquiry form. This normally includes your name, email address, telephone number, postcode, selected trade, a short description of the work and any additional details you provide.

Business applications and member profiles

When a business applies to join, we may collect a contact name, business or trading name, email address, telephone number, business postcode or base, website, trade categories, service areas, services, business description, accreditations, experience, availability, logo, work photographs and an optional WhatsApp number.

Contact and technical information

We collect information you send through the Southport Trades contact form. Our hosting platform may also process standard technical information such as IP addresses, timestamps, browser information and server logs for security, abuse prevention and troubleshooting. Forms use security controls including nonces, honeypots, timing checks and rate limiting.

3. Why we use personal information

• To send a customer enquiry to participating businesses in the selected trade.
• To allow those businesses to respond directly to the customer.
• To administer business applications, profiles, trial periods and memberships.
• To send transactional email and, where a business has opted in and the service is enabled, WhatsApp lead alerts.
• To answer contact messages and provide support.
• To protect the website from spam, abuse, fraud and technical problems.
• To maintain lead-delivery and membership records needed to operate and improve the service.
• To comply with legal, regulatory or accounting obligations where applicable.

Our lawful bases may include taking steps at your request, performance of our service arrangements, legitimate interests in operating and securing Southport Trades, and legal obligations. Where we specifically ask for consent for an optional activity, such as WhatsApp alerts or non-essential cookies, you can withdraw that consent.

4. Sharing customer enquiries with local businesses

The core Southport Trades service involves sharing a customer enquiry with active participating businesses in the trade selected by the customer. The enquiry form tells you this before submission and requires a positive confirmation.

The businesses receiving the enquiry may include your name, email address, telephone number, postcode and job details. Once a participating business receives an enquiry and uses the information to decide whether or how to respond, that business is responsible for its own handling of the information it receives. Southport Trades does not permit businesses to sell or redistribute customer lead data.

If no participating business is available in the selected category, the website is designed not to store or distribute the submitted customer enquiry.

5. Other organisations that may process information

We may use service providers needed to operate the website, including website hosting, domain/email infrastructure, security and backup services. These providers process information only as needed to provide their services.

If WhatsApp lead alerts are enabled, message and delivery information may be processed through providers used to connect Southport Trades to WhatsApp, including Twilio and Meta/WhatsApp. Those providers may process information outside the UK under their own international data-transfer safeguards.

We may also disclose information where required by law, a court order, a regulator or law-enforcement authority.

Southport Trades does not sell personal information to advertisers.

6. How long we keep information

Customer lead content is normally retained for up to 90 days, after which the customer-identifying lead details are deleted in line with the website's automated retention process.

Limited lead-delivery and audit information used to show when a member received a lead may be retained for up to 730 days. These longer-term records are intended to support membership administration and do not need to retain the full customer enquiry content.

Business application and member information is kept while an application or membership is being administered and for a reasonable period afterwards where needed for records, disputes, accounting or legal obligations. Contact messages and technical logs are retained only as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose for which they were collected.

7. Your data-protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, you may have rights to ask for access to your personal information, correction of inaccurate information, deletion, restriction, portability or objection to certain processing. Where processing relies on consent, you can withdraw that consent.

To make a request, contact hello@southporttrades.co.uk. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

If you are unhappy with how we handle personal information, you can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

8. Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect information, including HTTPS, restricted administration access, form security controls and limited-retention lead records. No internet service can guarantee absolute security, so please avoid including unnecessary sensitive information in an enquiry.

9. Cookies

Our use of cookies and similar technologies is explained in the Cookie Policy.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as Southport Trades develops, particularly if we add analytics, messaging providers or other new functionality. The current version will always be published on this page with its last-updated date.