Privacy policy
The personal details Best Birmingham collects and why, the companies behind the site, retention periods and the requests you can make under UK law.
Who is responsible
The personal information collected through the site and listed below is looked after by Best Birmingham (bestbirmingham.uk). British data protection law applies, built on the UK GDPR and the 2018 Data Protection Act. If you have a question, write to info@bestbirmingham.uk.
What we collect, and why
Visits: IP addresses, browser details and the pages that are viewed, held for security and for the site’s upkeep. Lawful basis: legitimate interests, meaning protection of the site and its readers.
Emails and forms: whatever you write, and the sender’s address, used only to answer. Lawful basis: legitimate interests, since we need to read and reply.
Owner accounts: the login email, any changes to a listing and, if a business subscribes to Pro or Top, its billing history. Lawful bases: performance of the contract with that business, and legal record keeping.
No adverts, no tracking cookies
No adverts appear on Best Birmingham, there is no AdSense, and no cookie serves advertising or analytics. Cloudflare counts visits and leaves nothing on your device. The site’s only cookie keeps owners logged in to their business area. Because that cookie is essential for logging in, PECR, the UK cookie law, needs no consent for it and no cookie banner is shown.
Who helps us
Cloudflare provides hosting, security, visit counts and our email, and uses its Turnstile check to keep bots away from the forms. Stripe processes payment for the paid plans and holds the card data itself, out of our reach. Readers pay nothing. Some data is processed in the United States, covered by transfer safeguards that UK law recognises.
How long we keep data
Server logs are kept briefly, to deal with abuse. We hold emails until the enquiry is closed, business accounts until the owner deletes them, and billing history for the period tax rules demand.
Your rights
You may ask to see your data, have mistakes put right, have it deleted, limit what we do with it, object to it and, if it is relevant, take a portable copy with you. Email info@bestbirmingham.uk with your request and expect an answer inside a month.
Complaints
Not satisfied with how your data has been handled? Raise it with us first and we will investigate. The regulator for data protection in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), also takes complaints, and its website is ico.org.uk.
Changes
This page will be rewritten if we start collecting different personal information or using it in new ways, and the newest wording applies.