Privacy policy
Last updated: 14/07/2026
1. Who we are
gazetted is a trading name of Public Notice Systems Ltd (company number 17066508), registered in England and Wales. We are the data controller for personal data processed through our platform.
Registered office: 4 Solon Road, London, SW2 5UY.
Registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), registration number ZC110158.
Contact: notices@gazetted.co.uk
2. What data we collect
We collect the following categories of personal data:
- •Account information: name, email address, company name, phone number, and password (stored in hashed form).
- •Order information: details you provide when placing a statutory notice, including applicant names, addresses, company details, deceased person details (for probate notices), and contact information.
- •Payment information: payment card details are processed by Stripe and are not stored on our servers. We retain transaction references and amounts.
- •Usage data: IP address, browser type, pages visited, timestamps, clicks, scrolling, and technical interaction events for security and, where you consent, analytics purposes. Optional session replay is limited to public pages as described in sections 5 and 11.
- •Cookies: we use essential cookies (session authentication, cookie consent preference) and optional analytics cookies. See section 11 below for details.
3. How we use your data
We process your personal data for the following purposes:
- •To provide our statutory notice placement service, including generating, placing, and certifying newspaper and Gazette notices.
- •To communicate with you about your orders, including sending proofs, confirmations, and certificates.
- •To process payments through our payment processor, Stripe.
- •To comply with legal obligations, including record-keeping requirements.
- •To improve our services and develop new features.
4. Legal basis for processing
We process your personal data on the following legal bases:
| Processing purpose | UK GDPR Art.6 lawful basis | Why this basis |
|---|---|---|
| Place statutory notices in newspapers and the London Gazette on your behalf | Art.6(1)(b) — contract | Necessary to perform the placement contract you signed up for. |
| Council users acting in discharge of statutory functions (e.g. LA 2003 s.17, HA 1980 s.116, TCPA 1990 s.69) | Art.6(1)(e) — public task | Council notice placement is the discharge of a public-law statutory duty. |
| Send order confirmations, proofs, certificates of publication, and service emails | Art.6(1)(b) — contract | Transactional emails are part of the placement service. |
| Process payments via Stripe (cards, invoices, purchase orders) | Art.6(1)(b) — contract | Necessary to take payment for the service requested. |
| Keep accounting and tax records (invoices, VAT, PO references) | Art.6(1)(c) — legal obligation | Companies Act 2006 s.388 + VAT Act 1994 Sch 11 para 6 require us to keep these. |
| Maintain order audit logs (status transitions, who placed / amended / cancelled) | Art.6(1)(c) — legal obligation | Statutory-notice integrity expectations + Companies Act record-keeping. |
| Detect, prevent, and investigate fraud / abuse / misuse of the platform | Art.6(1)(f) — legitimate interests | Our interest in protecting users, councils and newspapers from fraudulent placements. |
| Platform security: server logs, error monitoring (Sentry), rate-limiting | Art.6(1)(f) — legitimate interests | Necessary to keep the service available and secure; minimal privacy intrusion. |
| Improve the service using support feedback and de-identified operational statistics | Art.6(1)(f) — legitimate interests | Our interest in improving a service we deliver to you. You can object at any time. |
| Display the Trustpilot Review Collector and record widget impressions, views, and clicks | Art.6(1)(f) — legitimate interests | Our interest in collecting independent customer feedback transparently. The widget does not use cookies or similar technologies. |
| Marketing emails (product updates, sector commentary) | Art.6(1)(a) — consent | Opt-in. Withdraw at any time via unsubscribe link or by emailing us. |
| Optional analytics and conversion measurement (Google Analytics, Google Ads, Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights, and Contentsquare) | Art.6(1)(a) — consent | Loaded only after you accept analytics cookies. See §11. |
We do not rely on Art.6(1)(d) (vital interests). We do not process special-category data under Art.9 UK GDPR — probate notices contain personal data of the deceased and applicants, but no health, biometric, racial, religious or other Art.9 categories.
5. Who we share data with
We share personal data with the following categories of recipients:
- •Newspaper publishers: the notice text and applicant details necessary for publication.
- •The London Gazette: notice text and applicant details for Gazette publications.
- •Stripe: payment processing (Stripe's privacy policy applies to payment data).
- •Resend: email delivery service for transactional emails.
- •Supabase: database hosting (data stored in AWS eu-west-1, Ireland).
- •Vercel: application hosting and content delivery, plus optional query-free public-page analytics and Web Vitals after cookie consent. Vercel analytics does not load on authentication, account, order-builder, invitation, tracking, or order routes.
- •Google: optional query-free public-site analytics and advertising conversion measurement, only after cookie consent. Google Analytics does not load on account, order-builder, invitation, tracking, or authentication routes. A conversion-only Google Ads tag may load on signup and paid-order confirmation using a fixed, identifier-free page location; it does not configure Analytics or send a pageview. Ad-personalisation consent is denied.
- •Contentsquare: optional behavioural analytics, public-page heatmaps, and masked public-page session replay. The order builder is excluded from replay. It can still send content-masked interaction telemetry, fixed query-free step paths, and property-free milestone names for anonymous funnel analysis. Other private portal, invitation, and order-tracking routes do not load the tag.
- •Sentry: error monitoring (may capture IP addresses and technical context when errors occur).
- •Trustpilot: hosts the Review Collector on our homepage. Trustpilot receives normal technical connection data such as IP address and browser information, and records widget impressions, views, and clicks. The widget does not receive your Gazetted order details. Trustpilot's privacy policy applies.
- •Qmuli (AddFast): artwork delivery to newspaper publishers (UK).
- •OpenAI: AI-assisted proof-of-publication verification.
The Trustpilot Review Collector is a third-party iframe. According to Trustpilot's widget information, it records impressions, views, and clicks but does not use cookies or similar technologies.
We do not sell your personal data to third parties. We do not share your data for marketing purposes without your explicit consent.
6. Data retention
We keep personal data only as long as we need it. The table below sets out our standard retention periods. Where a longer period is required by law, the legal minimum applies.
| Data class | Retention period | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Account data (name, email, company, phone, hashed password) | For the life of the account, then 24 months after closure | Re-open / dispute window. Hashed passwords irreversibly deleted on closure. |
| Order data (notice text, applicant / deceased / company / premises / planning details, and consented campaign attribution) | 7 years from publication or order closure, whichever is later | Statutory-notice evidential value + Limitation Act 1980 s.5 (6-year contract claims) + 1-year buffer. |
| Order audit log (status transitions, actor, reason) | 7 years from order closure | Tied to the order it audits; deletion blocked at DB level (onDelete: Restrict). |
| Invoices, VAT records, PO references, payment-transaction references | 6 years from end of the relevant accounting period | Companies Act 2006 s.388(4)(b) + VAT Act 1994 Sch 11 para 6 + HMRC reg 31 VAT Regs 1995. |
| Payment-card data | Not stored by us at any time | Tokenised by Stripe; we hold only Stripe references and amounts. |
| Council department / spend-limit / RBAC records | For the life of the council account, then 24 months | Procurement-record continuity; mirrors account retention. |
| Saved notice templates | Until you delete the template, or 24 months after account closure | User-controlled; deleted with the parent account. |
| Support tickets and email correspondence | 3 years from ticket closure | Handles repeat-issue context without indefinite retention. |
| Server access logs, security logs, error reports (Sentry) | 90 days | Sufficient for incident response; minimises long-tail exposure. |
| Optional analytics and masked behavioural data | Per provider settings and plan. Contentsquare's DPA limits personal-data processing to 13 months unless otherwise agreed. | Used only with consent and minimised through replay route exclusions, persistent empty pageview queries, hidden page titles, fixed funnel paths, and content masking. |
| Webhook event log (idempotency) | 12 months | Long enough to defeat duplicate-delivery races; short enough to limit retention. |
| Inbound email parsing residue (unmatched emails) | Up to 90 days after match resolution; up to 180 days for unmatched records (admin escalation at 150 days) | UK GDPR Art.5(1)(e) storage limitation; Art.6(1)(f) legitimate interest in operational matching. Hard-deleted by automated daily purge. |
| Marketing-list membership and consent record | Until you unsubscribe, then 24 months (suppression-list only) | Suppression-list retention is the lawful basis for honouring your withdrawal of consent. |
| Cookies and session tokens | See §11 | Session 8h; consent preference stored in localStorage and a first-party cookie; CSRF session-only; marketing attribution only after “Accept all”. |
| Order-service sub-processor copies (Stripe, Resend, Vercel, Supabase, Sentry, Qmuli, OpenAI) | Per each sub-processor’s policy — see Data Processing Addendum | Each is contractually bound; we do not control their internal retention beyond the DPA terms. |
After a retention period ends, we delete or irreversibly anonymise the data, unless a longer period is required by law (Companies Act 2006, VAT Act 1994, Limitation Act 1980) or to defend a live legal claim. You may request earlier erasure under §7 — we will action requests except where statute requires retention.
7. Your rights
Under the UK GDPR, you have the right to:
- •Access your personal data
- •Rectify inaccurate personal data
- •Erase your personal data (subject to legal retention requirements)
- •Restrict processing of your personal data
- •Data portability
- •Object to processing based on legitimate interests
- •Withdraw consent at any time
- •Lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority — you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) at any time. (UK GDPR Art.77)
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at notices@gazetted.co.uk.
8. Data security
We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal data, including encryption in transit (TLS), hashed passwords, access controls, and regular security reviews.
9. Data Protection Officer
gazetted is not required to designate a Data Protection Officer under UK GDPR Article 37 (we do not perform large-scale systematic monitoring or large-scale processing of special-category data). Data protection queries should be directed to notices@gazetted.co.uk.
10. International transfers
Some of our service providers (such as Stripe, Resend, Google, Vercel, and Contentsquare) may process data outside the UK. Where this occurs, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, including Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Agreement. Our Data Processing Addendum lists the order-service sub-processors we use when acting as a processor for customer-submitted notice data. Optional website analytics are used by us as controller under the relevant provider terms and data processing agreements; they do not receive notice, draft, order, or payment content through this integration.
11. Cookies
We use the following cookies:
- •Session cookie (authjs.session-token): essential for keeping you signed in. Expires when you close your browser or after 8 hours.
- •Cookie consent preference (cookie-consent in localStorage and gazetted_consent as a first-party cookie): records whether you have chosen “Accept all” or “Reject all”. The cookie lasts up to 12 months so the server can avoid setting optional cookies unless you have accepted them.
- •Marketing attribution cookie (gazetted_utm): optional first-party cookie set only after you choose “Accept all” and visit with campaign parameters such as utm_source or utm_campaign, or an advertising click identifier such as gclid, gbraid or wbraid. It stores those campaign parameters, the landing path, and only the origin of an external referring site (never its path or query) for up to 12 months. If you start an order, those fields may be copied to the draft or order so we can understand which campaigns lead to completed orders; they then follow the order-data retention period in section 6. The cookie is cleared when you choose “Reject all”.
- •CSRF token (authjs.csrf-token): essential for form security. Session cookie.
- •Optional analytics and conversion cookies (including _ga, _gcl_*, and _cs_*): load only after “Accept all” for Google Analytics, Google Ads conversion measurement, Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights, and Contentsquare. See our Cookie Policy for purposes and lifetimes.
We do not sell personal data or use notice and payment details for advertising. Optional tags do not load after “Reject all”. Contentsquare replay is disabled throughout the portal, including the order builder. The builder can still contribute content-masked interaction telemetry, fixed query-free step pageviews, and property-free milestone names for aggregate funnel analysis; other sensitive account, invitation, and order-tracking routes do not load the tag. A persistent consent control lets you allow or withdraw optional analytics and conversion cookies in one step.
12. Changes to this policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time. We will notify registered users of material changes by email. The "last updated" date at the top of this page will be revised accordingly.
13. Contact and complaints
If you have questions about this privacy policy or wish to make a complaint, contact us at notices@gazetted.co.uk. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.