Your information

Who to write to

Whistle is the controller of the information described on this page. Write to privacy@thewhistleco.co.uk about anything here: to see what we hold, to correct it, to have it sent to you, to ask us to erase it, or to complain about how we have handled it.

If you would rather write a letter, the address is 95a Cardiff Rd, Caerphilly, CF83 1FQ.

We have to answer within one month. If your request is complicated we can take two further months, and if we do that we have to tell you why inside the first month. We do not charge for any of this.

What we store on your device

No advertising, no analytics, no third party scripts, and nothing that follows you between sites. There is no cookie banner on this site because there is nothing on it that needs your consent. What there is, is this:

• the signed in office user's id, access token, refresh token and expiry

  Stored by your own browser under the name whistle-office-session. Strictly necessary to automatically authenticate the user of a service they asked for. Without it the office signs you out on every page.

• the signed in cleaner's id, access token, refresh token and expiry

  Stored by your own browser under the name whistle-crew-session. Same authentication exception. A cleaner on a doorstep cannot sign in again per screen.

• the signed in customer's id, access token, refresh token and expiry

  Stored by your own browser under the name whistle-my-session. Same authentication exception.

• queued visit events and photographs taken on a job, until they reach the server

  Stored by your own browser under the name whistle-crew. Strictly necessary to maintain a record of information put into the site by the user. A cleaner in a house with no signal would otherwise lose the work.

Each of those is what the rules call strictly necessary: without it the thing you asked for does not work. Signing out removes the ones that hold a session, and clearing this site data in your browser removes all of them.

If we have cleaned for you, or you asked us for a price

Everything below exists because you asked us to do something, or because the law says we have to be able to show what we did.

a key to a home changing hands: whose home, who took it, which key, and when

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

a report generated for a visit, and the digest of the evidence it was made from

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

photographs taken inside a customer's home

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

that a key to a property exists and what it is labelled

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

that somebody asked to be forgotten, when, who answered, what was erased and what was kept

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

that somebody was unhappy with a clean, and what they said

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

the tasks on a job and whether each was done or skipped

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

a bill: its reference, who it is for, which property, the period and the total

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

a booking: whose, where, who was sent, and when

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

a price given to a named customer for a named property

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

an address, a postcode, and how many rooms it has

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

money given back, why, and who authorised it

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

money taken back off an invoice, why, and who authorised it

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

name and email

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

that a booking was called off, by whom and why

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

what a visit cost and when it was raised

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

which visits a bill covers and what each cost

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the end of the company financial year the record relates to. HMRC requires all money received and spent, all goods bought and sold, and who they were bought from and sold to.

how many stars somebody gave a visit

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept no retention duty. Erase on request.

a link to a customer's own booking calendar, and when it was last read

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept while we clean for this customer, then erased. No statutory duty reaches it and it stops being necessary when the service ends.

an alarm code or key safe code for a home, sealed, plus its label

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept while we clean for this customer, then erased. No statutory duty reaches it and it stops being necessary when the service ends.

an email address a report was sent to, a hashed link token and when it expires

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept while we clean for this customer, then erased. No statutory duty reaches it and it stops being necessary when the service ends.

that somebody asked to be booked in again

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept while we clean for this customer, then erased. No statutory duty reaches it and it stops being necessary when the service ends.

photographs taken inside a customer home as evidence that the work was done

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

If you clean for us

Employment carries its own duties, and most of what we hold about you is held because HMRC or employment law requires it rather than because we chose to.

a cleaner starting or finishing a job, with a location and its accuracy

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

the append only log of what happened on a job, from the cleaner device, including the location their phone reported when they arrived and left

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

what somebody was trained in and when it expires

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

which cleaner was shown which credential, for which visit, and when

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

a note, concern or warning about somebody's conduct, in free text

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept for the duration of the engagement, then the shorter duty above it. No longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected for.

a public key for a cleaner's device

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept for the duration of the engagement, then the shorter duty above it. No longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected for.

a quarterly review, who did it, and what was agreed

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept for the duration of the engagement, then the shorter duty above it. No longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected for.

a referee's name, their relationship to the person, and what they said

Held because we have a legitimate interest in it. Kept for the duration of the engagement, then the shorter duty above it. No longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected for.

name, email, phone, the dates somebody started and left, their contracted hours and holiday allowance, the dates of any criminal records check and when it expires, and the date their right to work expires

Held because the law requires us to. Kept for the duration of the engagement, then the shorter duty above it. No longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected for.

a day somebody was away and whether it was sick, holiday or other

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 3 years from the end of the tax year. Payroll, pay, deductions, and expressly employee leave and sickness absences.

days asked for, whether they were allowed, by whom, and any note

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 3 years from the end of the tax year. Payroll, pay, deductions, and expressly employee leave and sickness absences.

the hours somebody is contracted to work on each weekday

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 2 years from the date the record was made. Adequate records that working time limits were kept.

If you work in the office

Every authorisation in this system names the person who made it, which is what makes it an authorisation.

the name of somebody who works in the office

Held to carry out our agreement with you. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

If you complain to us about your information

This is held because the law requires us to hold it, and it is kept whether or not you have ever been a customer.

a data protection complaint: the name and email address of whoever made it, any telephone number they gave, what they told us, what we looked into and what we told them

Held because the law requires us to. Kept 6 years from the event. Kept in case a claim is made about what happened, which can be brought up to six years afterwards. Records like these are what answer one.

Who else sees it

Nobody buys this information and nobody is sent it for their own purposes. What follows is the companies that hold it on our behalf in order to run the thing, each of them under a contract that says they may only do what we tell them with it.

Supabase

everything in this register, because it is the database and the object storage. Held in the region the project is configured in, as a processor under a data processing agreement.

Resend

a customer name and email address, and the contents of the mail sent to them. Held in the vendor own infrastructure, as a processor under a data processing agreement.

Vercel

the request itself: an IP address and what was asked for, in ordinary server logs. Held in the region the deployment is configured in, as a processor under a data processing agreement.

If you ask us to erase you

We will, apart from the parts we are not allowed to. That is worth saying plainly rather than in the usual careful sentence, because the exceptions are real and you should know about them before you ask.

The codes that open your home, the link to your own calendar, the email address a report was sent to, and anything else with no duty behind it: all destroyed.

Your bookings, your invoices, what was charged, what was refunded and what was actually done in your house: kept. HMRC requires a company to keep its accounts for six years, including who it sold to, and the right to erasure does not apply where we have to keep something to meet a legal obligation or to defend a legal claim.

We do not disguise the ones we keep. Replacing your name with a code would leave us with records that are still about you and no longer valid as accounts, which helps nobody. When you ask, we tell you exactly what was erased, exactly what was kept, and the reason for each.

Your other rights

To see what we hold

Ask, and we send you a copy of your information within a month, free.

To correct it

If something is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

To take it with you

For the things you gave us to arrange your cleaning, we can send them in a format another company can read.

To object, and to restrict what we do

You can tell us to stop using your information for a particular purpose, and we have to stop unless we can show a reason that overrides yours.

Not to be subject to an automatic decision

Nothing here decides anything about you automatically. The price the form gives you is arithmetic on the answers you typed, and a person books every job.

If you want to complain

Use our complaint form, email privacy@thewhistleco.co.uk, or write to us at 95a Cardiff Rd, Caerphilly, CF83 1FQ. However a complaint reaches us we accept it. We have to acknowledge a complaint about how we have handled your information within 30 days, and then tell you the outcome.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner, at ico.org.uk, and you can go to them whether or not you come to us first. Nothing on this page takes away your right to do that, or your right to go to court.