Privacy

This site collects nothing about reading it. It collects only what you choose to send through the contact form, or the address you choose to give it for the weekly email, and this page says exactly what happens to both.

Who is responsible

The data controller for civic-scrutiny.co.uk is Unified Delivery People Ltd, company number 16767103, registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration ZC145483.

What the contact form collects

A submission stores: the category you choose, your message, an optional name, an optional reply contact if you want a response, a one-way cryptographic hash of your IP address (used only to limit abusive submission rates; the address itself is not stored), and your browser's user-agent string. Nothing else is collected, and nothing is collected at all if you do not submit the form.

Where it goes and where it stays

Submissions are written directly to a database in the United Kingdom (AWS eu-west-2, London) and stay there. They are not sent by email: the only email the system produces is a notification to the site's operator saying that a submission exists, carrying its category and reference number and no part of your message.

What it is used for

Corrections, tips, right-of-reply exchanges and formal complaints: reading them, acting on them, and keeping an honest record of what was received and what was done. Corrections outcomes are recorded in the public corrections log without identifying the person who reported the error, unless they ask to be credited.

How long it is kept

Correspondence that forms part of the editorial record (a correction request, a right-of-reply exchange, a legal complaint) is kept for as long as the article it concerns is published, because the record of how a claim was handled is part of the site's method. Other correspondence is deleted within twelve months.

The weekly email

If you subscribe to the weekly email, the system stores your email address, the time you subscribed, whether you confirmed it with the code we sent, and, if you later unsubscribe or an email to you bounces, the time and reason. Nothing else: no name, no IP address, no record of which emails you open or which links you follow. The address is stored in the same UK database (AWS eu-west-2, London) as contact-form submissions and is used for one thing, sending the weekly email you asked for.

Subscribing is double opt-in: an address that is entered but never confirmed with its code is never emailed again. Every email carries an unsubscribe link that works in one click and needs no login. An unsubscribed address is kept only as a suppression record, so it is not emailed again by mistake, and is deleted on request. The email is sent through Amazon Simple Email Service in the London region; no third-party newsletter platform is involved and no address is shared with anyone.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask what is held about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted (subject to the editorial-record exception above, which relies on the journalism exemption in the Data Protection Act 2018), and complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk. Use the contact form for any of these.

Everything else

No analytics, no tracking pixels, no third-party scripts, fonts or CDNs anywhere on the site. Cookies are covered on the cookies page: one essential cookie records your cookie choice, and that is all.