Privacy and cookie policy

Who we are

Elk & Squirrel is the trading name used by Jamie Elkins and Kelly Revell. We design, build and look after websites for small businesses, working from Hampshire and Surrey. We are not a registered company. For anything in this policy, Jamie and Kelly are jointly responsible for your personal data.

You can reach us at [email protected].

What we collect and why

When you fill in the contact form or ask for a free website audit. We collect your name, your email address, your website address if you give one, and whatever you write in the message box. We use this to reply to you, to review your website if you asked us to, and to send you the report. That is the only reason we collect it.

When you email, call or message us directly. We keep the conversation so that we can answer you and so that we have a record of what was agreed if you become a client.

When you become a client. We hold the details we need to do the work and to invoice you: contact details, the logins you choose to share with us for your website and related accounts, and our correspondence. We will tell you how we store shared logins before you send them.

We do not buy data about you, we do not sell or rent your details to anyone, and we do not use your details for advertising.

The legal basis

Under UK data protection law we need a reason for using your data. When you contact us, the reason is that you have asked us to respond: this is our legitimate interest in answering an enquiry, and for a free audit it is the step you take before deciding whether to work with us. When you are a client, the reason is the contract between us. Where the law requires us to keep records, for example for tax, that is a legal obligation.

How long we keep it

Enquiries that do not lead to work are deleted within twelve months of our last message to each other. Client records are kept for the length of the work and for six years afterwards, which is the period HMRC asks us to keep financial records for. You can ask us to delete your details earlier at any time, and we will unless the law says we have to keep them.

Who else sees it

Only the two of us read your messages. We use a small number of services to run the business, and your details pass through them as part of normal use:

• Cloudflare, which serves this website and handles form submissions. Cloudflare processes data in the UK, the EU and the United States under the UK's international data transfer rules.
• Our email provider, which stores the messages you send us.
• Our accounting software, which holds invoice details for clients.

We will name the specific providers here once the site is live. None of them is allowed to use your data for their own purposes.

[Provisional: the contact and audit forms are not yet connected. This section will be updated with the exact storage and retention details when the form handler is built.]

Cookies

This website does not set any cookies of its own and does not run analytics or tracking scripts. There is no cookie banner because there is nothing to consent to.

Cloudflare, which delivers the site, may set a short-lived security cookie to protect against automated abuse. That cookie does not identify you and is not used for tracking. If we ever add analytics, we will choose a tool that does not use cookies, and we will update this page first.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, or object to how we are using it. Email us and we will reply within one working day and act on the request within a month. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data, we will update this page and change the date at the top. We will not make a change that affects data we already hold without telling the people it concerns.