Privacy Notice

1. Who We Are

Planning Intel Ltd ("we", "us", "our") is a UK-registered company providing planning application data services. We are the data controller for the personal information we collect through our website at planning-intel.co.uk and our related services.

If you have questions about this privacy notice or our data practices, contact us at: support@planning-intel.co.uk

2. Data We Collect

We collect and process the following categories of personal data:

Account Information

• Full name
• Email address
• Password (stored as a bcrypt hash, never in plain text)
• Company name (optional)

Billing Information

• Direct Debit mandate details (managed by GoCardless)
• Billing history and payment status

Usage Data

• Filter and suppression rule configurations
• Delivery preferences and history
• Login timestamps and IP addresses
• Pages visited and features used

Technical Data

• Browser type and version
• Device type and operating system
• Cookie identifiers

3. How We Use Your Data

We use your personal data to:

• Create and manage your account
• Process your subscription and payments
• Deliver planning application data according to your filters
• Send service-related emails (delivery confirmations, account alerts)
• Provide customer support
• Improve our service and fix issues
• Comply with legal obligations

We do not sell your personal data to third parties. We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling.

4. Legal Basis for Processing

Under the UK GDPR, we process your personal data on the following legal bases:

• Contract performance: Processing necessary to provide the service you have subscribed to (account management, data delivery, billing).
• Legitimate interests: Improving our service, preventing fraud, and ensuring security. We balance our interests against your rights and freedoms.
• Consent: For analytics cookies and optional marketing communications. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation: Where we are required to retain data for tax, accounting, or regulatory purposes.

5. Data Sharing

We share your personal data only with the following categories of recipients:

• GoCardless: Our payment processor, to manage Direct Debit mandates and collect payments.
• Email service provider: To send transactional and delivery emails on our behalf.
• Hosting provider: Our servers are hosted by Hetzner in the EU/EEA.

All third-party processors are bound by data processing agreements and process your data only on our instructions.

6. Data Retention

We retain your personal data as follows:

• Active accounts: Data is retained for the duration of your subscription.
• After cancellation: Account data is retained for 30 days to allow reactivation, then deleted.
• Billing records: Retained for 7 years as required by UK tax law.
• Server logs: Retained for 90 days for security and debugging purposes.

7. Cookies

We use the following types of cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies: Required for the website to function (authentication, session management, cookie consent preferences). These cannot be disabled.
• Analytics cookies: Help us understand how visitors use our website. These are only set with your consent and can be managed via the "Manage Cookies" option in the footer.

8. Your Rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the following rights:

• Right of access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Right to rectification: Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Right to erasure: Ask us to delete your personal data (subject to legal retention requirements).
• Right to restrict processing: Ask us to limit how we use your data.
• Right to data portability: Request your data in a machine-readable format.
• Right to object: Object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Right to withdraw consent: Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time.

To exercise any of these rights, contact us at support@planning-intel.co.uk. You can also export your data or delete your account directly from your dashboard settings.

9. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including:

• Encryption in transit (TLS/HTTPS)
• Password hashing with bcrypt
• JWT-based authentication with short-lived access tokens
• Rate limiting on all API endpoints
• Regular security reviews

10. Changes to This Notice

We may update this privacy notice from time to time. We will notify you of significant changes by email or by placing a prominent notice on our website. The "last updated" date at the top of this page indicates when this notice was last revised.

11. Contact and Complaints

If you have questions or concerns about our data practices, contact us at: support@planning-intel.co.uk

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) if you believe your data protection rights have been violated: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint