Privacy Policy
Last updated 24 October 2026
This policy explains what personal data heykettle.co.uk ("Kettle", "we", "us") collects, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and your rights. It applies under the UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
1. Who is responsible for your data
The data controller is Alexander Andronov, trading as Kettle. For anything about your data, email [email protected].
2. What we collect
When you use the site without an account
- What you search for — postcodes and the property you pick. We use them to answer your request. We do not keep them against you; analytics (below) only ever receives the first half of a postcode, such as "KT2".
- Technical data — IP address, browser and device type, pages requested and timestamps, recorded in server logs to keep the site running and secure.
- Daily free-report count — to keep the free checker fair, we count the reports each browser opens per day using a random identifier in a cookie, together with a one-way hash of your IP address salted with the date, so it cannot be linked across days. These counts are deleted after two days.
- Analytics — only if you accept analytics cookies: how you use the site, approximate location derived from your IP address, device and browser, collected through Google Analytics with a pseudonymous identifier.
When you create an account
- Email sign-in — your email address, and records of the sign-in codes and links sent to you.
- Sign in with Google — your name, email address, profile picture and Google account ID, as shared by Google with your permission. We do not receive your Google password or access to your Gmail, Drive or other Google data.
- Your company — the company's name and logo, its members and their roles, and the contact details and colour the company chooses to show on its reports (usually business phone, email and website).
- Your activity — the properties your company checks (address, postcode, rating), which member checked each one and when, the plan the company is on, and when you signed in.
When you pay
- Stripe collects your card details, billing name and address and any VAT number directly; we never see or store your full card number. We keep the Stripe customer and subscription identifiers for your company, the plan, the subscription status and the renewal date. Invoices and payment records are held by Stripe and available to us.
When you contact us
- Your messages and anything you choose to include in them.
3. Why we use it, and our legal basis
| Purpose | Legal basis |
|---|---|
| Answering your searches and showing results | Legitimate interests (providing the service you asked for); contract, if you have an account |
| Creating and running your account, signing you in | Contract |
| Taking payment, managing subscriptions, sending receipts | Contract |
| Keeping accounting and tax records | Legal obligation |
| Service emails (sign-in codes, receipts, payment problems, price-change notices, changes to terms) | Contract; legal obligation |
| Keeping your company's check history, reports and branding | Contract |
| Keeping the site secure, preventing fraud and abuse, enforcing our terms | Legitimate interests |
| Understanding how the site is used so we can improve it (Google Analytics) | Consent |
| Product news and offers by email | Consent, or for existing customers our legitimate interests (you can unsubscribe in every email) |
| Answering your questions and complaints | Legitimate interests |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have balanced them against your rights; you can ask us for details and object at any time (section 8).
4. Property data that is not about you
The certificates we show come from the public Energy Performance of Buildings Register, published by the government under the Open Government Licence. We do not collect them from you. If you own a property and want its certificate removed from public view, you can ask the register to opt it out at gov.uk/find-energy-certificate; we follow the register, so the change reaches our site as well.
Results describe properties, not people. We do not make decisions about you using automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects.
Addresses businesses check
When an installer or another business checks a property in its dashboard, the address and its rating are stored in that company's history. When a letting agent adds the properties it manages, we store the addresses and any landlord names and email addresses it provides. For any personal data in those records the company is the controller and we process it on its behalf, as our Terms (section 11) describe. If you think a business holds data about you this way, contact that business; we will help it respond.
Enquiries through an installer's widget
Some installers put our property check on their own website. If you send an enquiry through it, the name, email, phone number, address and message you give, and the property's energy rating, go to that installer, who is the controller of your enquiry. We store it and email it to them on their behalf, and we use Cloudflare Turnstile to check the form is not being sent by a bot. Contact the installer about how they use your details; you can also ask us to delete an enquiry.
Survey reviews
If you upload a home survey for a free review, we send the PDF to Anthropic, whose Claude AI reads it and writes the review. We do not keep the PDF. We keep the review, which describes the property but not its address or any names, for 30 days so you can come back to it, or for as long as the home stays in your purchase planner if you uploaded it there; anyone with its link can open it. The same daily count as the free checker (a cookie identifier and a dated hash of your IP address) limits how many reviews each browser can request. If you give your email address, we use it to send you the link and to tell you when the next step of the service is ready, and delete it with the review.
Purchase planner
If you use the purchase planner, we keep the homes you add with your notes, ratings, dates and any listing text you paste, and the figures you enter in your budget (incomes, deposit, monthly debts, number of dependants). We use them only to work out the figures you see; they are not shared with lenders or anyone else. When you ask us to check a listing, we send its text and the home's energy certificate details to Anthropic, whose Claude AI reads them, and keep the result with the home.
5. Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with providers who process it for us under contract:
| Provider | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Railway Corp. | Hosts the website, its servers and its database (company accounts and check history), and keeps short-lived server logs | United States |
| Clerk, Inc. | Runs sign-in and company accounts: email addresses, names, sign-in codes and sessions, company members | United States |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Routes traffic to the site, protects it from attacks and checks enquiry forms for bots (Turnstile); sees IP addresses and requests | Worldwide, including the United States |
| Google LLC / Google Ireland Ltd | Sign in with Google (if you choose it); Google Analytics (only if you accept analytics cookies) | United States and EU |
| Resend, Inc. | Delivers emails we send, such as enquiries from installers' website widgets | United States |
| Stripe Payments Europe Ltd / Stripe, Inc. | Takes card payments, stores card and billing details, calculates VAT, prevents fraud, issues receipts and invoices | EU, UK and United States |
| Anthropic, PBC | Reads home surveys you upload and listing text you paste into the purchase planner (Claude AI) and returns the review; does not use them to train its models | United States |
Stripe also acts as a separate controller for some purposes, such as fraud prevention and meeting its own legal obligations; see Stripe's privacy policy. When we look up a property we query the government's EPC service with a postcode or certificate number, and for homes in a purchase planner we look up the postcode's location (postcodes.io) and flood warning areas (Environment Agency); no information about you is sent with these.
We may also disclose data where the law requires it, to protect our rights or others' safety, or to a buyer if the service is sold, in which case this policy continues to apply.
6. International transfers
Some providers process data outside the UK, mainly in the United States and the EU. Where a country does not have a UK adequacy decision, transfers are protected by the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider is certified, or by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
7. How long we keep it
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Your sign-in account | While it is open, then deleted within 30 days of closure |
| Company details, branding and check history | While the company account is open, then deleted within 30 days of closure |
| Payment and invoice records | 6 years from the end of the financial year they relate to (tax law) |
| Server logs | Up to 30 days |
| Daily free-report counts | 2 days |
| Survey reviews, and the email address given with one | 30 days, or while the home is in your purchase planner; the uploaded PDF is not kept |
| Homes in your purchase planner, with your notes, and your budget figures | Until you remove them or close your account |
| Analytics data | 14 months |
| Support emails | 2 years after the conversation ends |
| Accounts with no sign-in for 3 years | Closed and deleted after an email warning |
8. Your rights
You have the right to:
- get a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
- have inaccurate data corrected;
- have your data deleted;
- restrict or object to how we use it, including objecting to direct marketing at any time;
- receive data you gave us in a portable format;
- withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on it — this does not affect what we did before.
Email [email protected] from the address on your account. We reply within one month, and there is no charge. You can delete your sign-in account yourself under "Manage account" in the account menu; to close a company and delete its history, email us from an admin's address.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
9. Cookies
We use strictly necessary cookies to run the site, and analytics cookies only if you accept them. You can change your choice at any time via "Cookie settings" at the bottom of every page.
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| __session, __client_uat, __client | Kettle via Clerk | Keep you signed in and protect sign-in. Strictly necessary; set only when you sign in. | While you stay signed in |
| gbc_visitor | Kettle | Random identifier used to count free reports per day. Strictly necessary to keep the free service fair. | 12 months |
| Cookie choice | Kettle | Remembers whether you accepted analytics. Strictly necessary. | 12 months |
| __stripe_mid, __stripe_sid | Stripe | Fraud prevention during payment. Strictly necessary. | 1 year / 30 minutes |
| _ga, _ga_* | Google Analytics | Distinguishes visitors to measure use of the site. Only with consent. | Up to 2 years |
10. Security
Data is encrypted in transit, access is limited to people who need it, and card details are handled only by Stripe. Sign-in links expire after a short time and work once. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you and poses a high risk, we will tell you.
11. Children
The service is not intended for anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their data.
12. Changes to this policy
We will post any changes on this page with a new date. If the changes are significant, we will email account holders before they take effect.