Legal
Privacy policy
- Last updated
- Contents
About this policy
This policy explains what personal data is collected when you visit this website, why, and what your rights are. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Richard Le Peurian Cross, who runs this website and is the controller of your personal data under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. You can contact us about anything in this policy using the details in the Contact section below.
We keep the data we collect to a minimum. We do not sell personal data, we do not use it for advertising, and we do not make decisions about you by automated means.
What we collect and why
When you visit the site
Like any website, our hosting provider receives technical information when your browser requests a page: your IP address, browser and device type, the page requested, the referring page and the time of the request. This is used to deliver the site, keep it secure and diagnose faults.
Images and some page content are delivered by our content platform's network, which also receives your IP address and browser details in order to serve them. Fonts are served from this site, not from a third party.
When you contact us
If you use the contact form, we collect your name, email address, company and message. These are sent to our inbox by email so we can reply, and you receive a confirmation email. If you email us directly, we receive whatever you include in your email.
When you sign up to the newsletter
Signing up is optional and separate from contacting us. You can sign up on the home page, or by switching on the newsletter option in the contact form. Either way, we send a confirmation email with a link to the address you gave, and you are only added to the mailing list once you use that link. If you don't confirm within 7 days, the link expires and your address is not added. Once you confirm, we keep your email address and a record of your consent: when you confirmed, where on the site you signed up, and which version of the sign-up wording you saw. We use these only to send you the newsletter and to show that you agreed to receive it.
To stop the sign-up form being misused to send emails to people who didn't ask for them, we check that the email domain you enter can receive email and isn't a disposable-address service, and we ignore sign-ups that are sent automatically. These checks look only at the domain (the part after the @) and the form submission, and nothing from them is stored.
The newsletter is sent by our email provider. Every newsletter email has an unsubscribe link. We do not track whether you open newsletter emails or which links you click in them.
Analytics (only with your consent)
If you allow analytics cookies, we use Google Analytics 4 to understand how the site is used: which pages are viewed, how long people stay, how far they scroll, roughly where visitors are (country or city, derived from IP address), which site referred them and what kind of device and browser they use. Google Analytics 4 does not log or store full IP addresses. Advertising features, Google signals and ad personalisation are turned off.
Nothing is loaded from Google and no analytics cookies are set until you choose to allow them. If you reject or later withdraw consent, analytics stops and the analytics cookies are deleted.
Search and content reports
We review aggregated reports from Google Search Console and Google Analytics, such as page views and search impressions per article, to decide which articles to improve. These reports are about pages, not people, and do not identify individual visitors.
Our lawful bases
| Purpose | Data | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Delivering the site and keeping it secure | IP address, browser and request details | Legitimate interests: operating a secure, working website |
| Replying to enquiries | Name, email address, company, message | Legitimate interests: responding to people who contact us; or steps you ask us to take before entering into a contract |
| Understanding how the site is used | Analytics cookies and the usage data described above | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time |
| Remembering your cookie choice | Your choice and when you made it, stored in your browser | Legitimate interests and legal obligation (recording consent); exempt from cookie consent as strictly necessary |
| Confirming a newsletter sign-up and protecting the sign-up form from misuse | Email address | Legitimate interests: making sure only the owner of an email address can subscribe it, and preventing abuse of the form |
| Sending the newsletter | Email address and consent record (when, where and which wording) | Consent, which you can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing |
| Keeping a record of consent and unsubscribes | Email address, consent record and unsubscribe status | Legitimate interests: showing that we had consent and making sure we don't email people who have unsubscribed |
International transfers
Some of these providers process data outside the UK. Transfers to the European Economic Area (including Norway, Belgium and Ireland) are covered by UK adequacy regulations. Transfers to the USA are covered by the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified (Vercel, Resend and Google), and otherwise by the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the ICO's UK Addendum.
How long we keep it
- Server logs: kept by our hosting provider for up to 30 days for security and fault diagnosis.
- Enquiries and emails: up to 2 years after our last contact, unless they become part of an ongoing working relationship.
- Analytics data: Google Analytics keeps user-level data for 2 months, after which only aggregated reports remain.
- Your cookie choice: 12 months, after which we ask again.
- Newsletter: until you unsubscribe. After that, we keep your email address marked as unsubscribed, with your consent record, for up to 2 years so we don't email you again by mistake and can show what you agreed to. You can ask us to delete it sooner. If you sign up but don't confirm, your address is not added to the mailing list, and our email provider keeps the confirmation email in its sending logs for 30 days.
Security
The site is served only over HTTPS, access to the services above is restricted and protected, and we only collect what we need. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your data.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you
- ask us to correct data that is inaccurate or incomplete
- ask us to delete your data
- ask us to restrict how we use your data
- object to our use of your data where we rely on legitimate interests
- ask for your data in a portable format, where processing is based on consent or contract
- withdraw consent at any time, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it
These rights have some exceptions. We will respond within one month, and there is usually no charge. We may need to confirm your identity first.
You can unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time with the link in any newsletter email, or by contacting us.
You can also stop Google Analytics on every site you visit with Google's opt-out browser add-on.
Complaints
If you have a concern, please contact us first so we can try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or call 0303 123 1113.
Children
This site is not aimed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 13.
Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top of this page shows when it last changed. If we change how we use cookies, we will ask for your consent again.
Contact
To exercise your rights or ask a question about this policy, use the contact form on the home page or email us: