Privacy Notice

1. Who is responsible for your data

For data-protection purposes, the controller is Michael Wilde trading as Approved Tradesman.

You can contact us at Suite 740, 80A Ruskin Ave, Welling, London DA16 3QQ, by email at info@approvedtradesman.com, or through our contact page.

2. Who this notice covers

This notice covers people who use Approved Tradesman to search for and view records, people who run or work for a trade business that holds or is building a record, and anyone who contacts our support team.

3. What we collect

Depending on how you use the platform, we may hold:

• Account and contact data: name, email address, phone number where given, sign-in and security data, and membership status.
• Business data: business name, trading name, addresses, service areas, trades and services, description, contact details and public-facing record content.
• Verification documents and check data: documents and reference numbers supplied for checking (for example insurance certificates, qualification certificates, registration numbers) and the outcome, date and status of each check.
• Identity data: identity documents and identity-check results where an identity check forms part of a record.
• Customer search data: search terms and locations you enter, and — only if you choose to share it — your approximate device location.
• Support communications: messages, enquiry details, case references and our replies.
• Technical data: IP address, device and browser information, and server or security logs. See the Cookie Notice for browser storage.
• Records obtained from trusted public and official sources: for example company registers, trade-body or scheme registers and other publicly available business information used to confirm what we publish.

4. Why we use it

We use personal data to:

• Operate the platform, provide accounts, search and records.
• Carry out and record checks on submitted items, and confirm information against trusted sources.
• Monitor records over time so published information stays accurate, including expiry and lapse handling.
• Provide customer and business support, and handle reports about record accuracy.
• Prevent, detect and investigate fraud, misuse and security incidents, and protect the platform and its users.
• Meet legal, regulatory, accounting and tax obligations, and establish or defend legal claims.
• Send optional marketing or platform updates where we are permitted to do so; you can opt out at any time.

5. What becomes public, and what stays private

A live Verification Record is a public page. It is designed to show the outcome of checks, not the paperwork behind them.

Published on a live record: business name and trading name, general location and service areas, trades and services, business description, the business's chosen public contact details, which items have been checked, their status, and relevant dates such as when a check was confirmed or is due for renewal.

Never published: verification documents and their images or files, personal identity documents, document reference numbers where publishing them would create risk, private notes, internal check notes, support messages, account credentials, and any contact details a business has not chosen to publish.

A business controls what optional information it adds to its record. Until a record is activated, it stays visible only to the business.

6. Who we share data with

We share personal data only where there is a reason to:

• Service providers acting as our processors — for example hosting, database and storage, email delivery, mapping and location lookup, and support tooling. They act on our instructions under a contract.
• Verification sources and issuing bodies — for example insurers, brokers, awarding organisations, trade bodies, schemes and official registers — to confirm that an item is genuine and current.
• Legal advisers, auditors, insurers, regulators, law enforcement or courts where we are required to do so by law or where we need to establish or defend legal claims.

7. We do not sell your data

We do not sell personal data, and we do not sell customer enquiries or contact details as leads. Records are published for people to read, not for bulk extraction; automated scraping is prohibited under our Terms of Use.

8. How long we keep it

We keep personal data only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this notice, including legal, accounting and dispute-resolution requirements. We then delete or anonymise it.

9. How we protect it

Access to accounts and records is controlled, documents supplied for checking are held in private storage rather than on public pages, and access is limited to people who need it to do their job. No system can be guaranteed completely secure, so we also ask you to keep your sign-in details safe.

10. Your rights

Subject to the conditions in data protection law, you have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Ask us to delete data where there is no continuing reason for us to keep it.
• Ask us to restrict processing, or object to processing based on legitimate interests.
• Ask for portability of data you gave us, where that right applies.
• Withdraw consent at any time where we rely on consent, including for marketing.

11. Complaints

Please contact us first at info@approvedtradesman.com so we can put things right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority, at ico.org.uk.

12. Changes to this notice

We will update this notice when our processing changes. The date at the top shows when it was last revised, and we will highlight significant changes.