Privacy policy
You are about to send me a planning refusal, which is a document about your property and often about a dispute. This sets out exactly what happens to it. The short version: it is used to write your assessment and for nothing else, it is not sold or shared for marketing, and it is deleted after twelve months unless you ask otherwise.
Who is responsible
Mark Hicks, trading as Refusal Review, of Windmill Wood Cottage, Gumfreston, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, SA70 8RN, is the data controller. Contact: hello@refusalreview.co.uk.
I am registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office for the data protection fee.
What I collect
When you submit the form:
- Your name, email address and telephone number
- The local planning authority and the application reference
- Your description of what you applied for
- Your appeal deadline, if you give it
- The decision notice you upload, and any further documents you send
- A record that you accepted the terms and asked for work to begin early, with the time you did so
During the work I also gather material about your application from public sources — your council’s planning register, committee papers, statutory consultees’ published responses, appeal decisions, and public mapping. That material is already public. Bringing it together in one file about you makes it personal data in my hands, so it is covered by this policy too.
Card details. I never see them. Payment is handled entirely by Stripe, who tell me only that a payment succeeded and for how much.
Analytics. There are none. This site sets no cookies of its own and contains no tracking pixels, advertising tags or third-party analytics. Vercel, who host it, keep short-term server logs including IP addresses for security and to keep the site running.
Special category data. I do not ask for it. If your case involves health, disability or similar — a ground-floor bedroom for a disabled family member, say — and it is relevant to a reason for refusal, send it. It is then processed on the basis of Article 9(2)(f) UK GDPR, for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, and it stays inside your file.
Why, and on what legal basis
- To decide whether to take your case, and to write the assessment — performance of our contract, Article 6(1)(b) UK GDPR.
- To take payment and issue a receipt — performance of our contract.
- To keep accounting records — a legal obligation, Article 6(1)(c).
- To keep a record of what I advised and the consent you gave — my legitimate interests in being able to answer a later query or complaint, Article 6(1)(f), balanced against the limited retention below.
I do not send marketing. There is no mailing list. I will not email you about anything other than your own case unless you ask me to.
Who else sees it
Nobody, other than the services I need to run this. None of them are given your information for their own purposes, and none of them sell it.
- Vercel — hosts the website, and stores your uploaded documents in a private store located in the United Kingdom.
- Stripe — takes the payment. Stripe is the controller of your card data, under its own policy.
- Zapier — passes your submission from the website into my task list and email.
- Todoist — where the job sits while I do it.
- Google (Gmail) — email.
Your uploaded documents stay in the United Kingdom. Some of the other services above are based in the United States or process data there; those transfers rely on the UK extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or on the International Data Transfer Addendum to the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.
I will disclose information if the law requires it. I will not disclose anything to your local planning authority, to an objector, or to anyone else involved in your case, and I do not contact your council on your behalf.
How long it is kept
- Your documents and your file — twelve months after the assessment is delivered, then deleted. Ask me sooner and I will delete them sooner.
- The assessment itself and the record of your consent — six years, being the limitation period for a contract claim in England and Wales. Held in case either of us needs to refer back to it.
- Records required for tax — six years from the end of the tax year, as HMRC requires. These are transaction records, not your planning file.
- Declined cases — thirty days, then deleted, apart from the refund record.
Security
The site is served over HTTPS. Your uploaded documents are held in private storage in the United Kingdom — they have no public web address at all, and cannot be reached by anyone who has not been given a signed, time-limited link. Those links expire. Access to email, storage and my task list is protected by two-factor authentication. I do not put your documents on removable media, and I do not email them to anyone.
No system is perfect. If there were ever a breach likely to result in a risk to you, I would tell the ICO within 72 hours and tell you without undue delay.
Your rights
Under the UK GDPR you can ask me to:
- give you a copy of what I hold about you
- correct anything inaccurate
- delete it — though I may keep the minimum needed for tax and for a limitation-period record
- restrict or object to what I am doing with it
- give you your data in a portable form
Email hello@refusalreview.co.uk. It is free, and I will reply within one month. There is no automated decision-making and no profiling.
If you are unhappy with how I have handled your information you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. I would rather you told me first, but you do not have to.
The sample on this website
The sample assessment published on this site is a real one. It appears with the client’s express permission, and with the location, the authority, all dates, all names and every application and appeal reference removed, so that neither the client nor the case can be identified from it. I will never publish your case without asking you first, and never while it is live.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change materially affects work I am doing for you, I will email you.