Privacy notice

Who we are

The Soft Place is a website design service run by Kola Bilewu, a sole trader in England, of 45 Deckham Terrace, Gateshead, NE8 3UY, United Kingdom. For anything in this notice, write to kola@thesoftplace.co.uk.

What we collect

When you use the start form, email us, or reply to one of our emails, we may hold your name, business name, email address, phone number, website address, and whatever you tell us about the site you want.

Why we hold it, and on what basis

• To answer your enquiry and build your website — necessary to perform our contract with you, or to take steps at your request before a contract exists.
• To tell you about our service by email — our legitimate interest in finding businesses who may want a website, balanced against your right not to be contacted. We only write to business addresses, we say who we are, and every email tells you how to stop hearing from us.
• To keep records for tax and accounting — a legal obligation.

Where the addresses come from

We build prospect lists from publicly available business information: professional registers, business directories, and the contact details businesses publish on their own websites. We do not buy personal email addresses and we do not use scraped private data.

Who else sees it

Our email and file storage runs on Google Workspace, our website and application hosting is Vercel, and our database is hosted by Neon. They process data on our instructions. Where data is transferred outside the UK, it is covered by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.

How long we keep it

Enquiries that go nowhere: two years. Client records: six years after the final invoice, because HMRC requires it. Prospect data: deleted on request, or when we stop using the list.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to us using it. Email kola@thesoftplace.co.uk and we will respond within one month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled it you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies and runs no analytics or advertising trackers. If that changes, this notice changes first.

Marketing

Every email we send has a one-line way to stop. Reply "stop", or email kola@thesoftplace.co.uk, and you will not hear from us again. We honour that within ten business days, usually the same day.