Privacy notice
Barnet Subsidence is a website about one problem: buildings that crack, lean or settle because the ground beneath them has moved. This notice explains what happens to the details you give us, and it covers the website at barnetsubsidence.co.uk and nothing else. The organisation making those decisions is Barnet Subsidence.
The controller, and the way to reach us
Responsibility for the information described below sits with the publisher of this site: Barnet Subsidence In the language of UK data protection law that makes us the controller, because we decide why an enquiry is collected and what becomes of it afterwards. Everything comes to us through the contact page on this site: a question about this notice, a correction, or a request about your own details. Please use that route rather than guessing at an address or a name, because the contact page is the one we watch.
What we end up holding, and how it got here
The larger part of it you typed in yourself. Our enquiry form asks for a name, an email address, a telephone number, and the postcode or address of the building in question, and it leaves you room to describe what you have noticed: when the cracks appeared, which walls or floors are affected, whether there are trees or drains nearby, what an insurer has said so far. You can attach photographs if you have them. Please do not send photographs that show people. If one does, we delete the photograph. Anything you write to us later, and anything we write back, joins the same file. Delivery of the form itself is handled by a third party service: Basin (usebasin.com) Separately from all of that, the network that serves these pages keeps technical logs of requests reaching it, including the requesting IP address, the time, the page asked for and the browser's own description of itself. Those logs exist so that the site stays up and abuse can be spotted; we do not use them to work out who you are.
Our purposes, and what makes each of them lawful
The main purpose, and the basis in law we rest it on, is set out here word for word: To answer your enquiry and pass it to one specialist covering your area, which is what you ask us to do when you send it. Our legitimate interest is in answering the people who contact us and in running the enquiry service, for which the specialist pays us. We have assessed that this does not override your interests, because you have asked us to pass your enquiry on and you can take your enquiry elsewhere at any time. What actually happens to the enquiry after it arrives is this: Your enquiry, with the details you gave, is passed to one specialist firm covering the area you told us about, so that they can contact you about it. They use it only to answer your enquiry and to arrange any visit or work you agree with them, and from that point they are responsible for how they handle it. We do not pass your details to anyone else for their own use. Beyond that there are three smaller purposes. We keep a record of what was asked and what was said, so that we can pick the thread up again if you come back to us or if a question arises later. We use the server logs to keep the site working and secure. And if the law requires us to produce or retain something, we comply with it. The first two rest on our legitimate interests in running a useful site honestly and keeping it safe; the third rests on legal obligation. There is no contract between you and us, so we never claim one as a basis. Four things we do not do: we run no marketing lists and will not add you to one, we do not profile you, no decision about you is made by software alone, and your details are not sold or rented to anybody.
Other companies with a hand in it
This site does not run on machinery we own from end to end, so a limited amount of handling happens elsewhere on our instructions. Basin delivers the enquiry form; Bunny serves the pages; Namecheap provides our email; and Google supplies the typefaces the pages are set in, so your browser requests those files from Google. Each of them handles it only to do that job for us. We would also give information to a regulator, the police or a court where the law required it, and to nobody else.
Whether any of it leaves the country
Our pages are held on a delivery network with servers in several regions, our email arrives at this site's own domain, and the typefaces are fetched from Google Fonts, so some of this information can sit on equipment outside the UK. The network that serves the pages holds its technical logs in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States. The form service operates from the United States and is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
When the file is deleted
The answer is a fixed rule, not a judgement we make enquiry by enquiry: We keep an enquiry for twelve months from the last contact about it, so that we can answer a later question about what was said and who it went to. After that it is deleted from the form service and from our email, and any backup copy is overwritten on the provider's normal cycle. You can ask us to delete it sooner at any time. The network that serves the pages keeps its technical logs for no more than 3 days.
Keeping it to the people who need it
Every page here, and every submission of the form, is carried over an encrypted connection, so what you type cannot be read by somebody watching the network in between. Once an enquiry reaches us, access is kept to the people who actually deal with it. Nobody else in the chain is given a copy for curiosity, and we do not keep enquiries lying about in shared folders or on removable drives.
What you are entitled to ask of us
Information about you comes with a set of rights attached: You have the right to ask what personal information we hold about you and to receive a copy; to have it corrected; to have it deleted; to restrict how we use it; to object to our using it; and to receive what you gave us in a form you can take elsewhere. Ask through the contact page and we answer within one month, without charge; we may ask you to confirm who you are. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113, though we would rather you told us first. The contact page is the place to start, and you do not need to give a reason or use any particular form of words. Tell us plainly what you want done and we will deal with it. If you complain to us about how we have handled your personal information, we acknowledge it within 30 days and reply as soon as we can.
Enquiries and age
Decisions about a cracking building belong to the owner, the landlord or, occasionally, the tenant, and everything written here is addressed to adults. We do not aim this site at anyone under eighteen and we do not knowingly take enquiries from children. If it turns out that a child has sent one, we delete it rather than pass it on, and we would rather hear from a parent or guardian instead.
No cookies and nothing watching you
This website sets no cookies of its own. No analytics package is installed, so nobody here is counting your visit, timing how long you read a page or recording which pages you looked at before you sent the form. There is no advertising code and no tracking pixel, and we build no profile of you from your browsing. The only thing your browser fetches from elsewhere while reading is the typefaces.
If this notice is rewritten
Should the way enquiries are dealt with change, or should one of the companies behind the site change, this notice will be brought up to date to match. Whatever appears on this page is the current version, and it is worth a glance if some time has passed since you last read it.