Privacy policy

AcoustaPLOT is a trading name of ACOUSTAPLOT LTD, registered in England and Wales (company number 17389299). We are the data controller for the personal data described here. We comply with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Registered office: 81 Howarth Road, Wimborne, BH21 2FG · Data protection contact: noise@acoustaplot.com

The short version

We only collect what we need to run a noise assessment and deliver your report. We don't sell your data, and we don't share your address with anyone for their own marketing. We never see or store your card details — Stripe handles payment. You can ask us to delete your personal data at any time.

What we collect & why

When you check an address (before buying). We store the address (or map location) you entered and the screening result against a temporary record, so you can come back to it, pay for a fuller report against the same check, or get support if something goes wrong — the same 90-day retention as a paid order (see below). We do not currently track where you came from or an analytics session identifier for a free check; if you don't go on to buy anything, no name, email or payment detail is ever attached to the record.

When you buy a report. We keep an order record: your email, the property address, the report tier, the headline noise result, and the Stripe payment reference. Your report is not stored as a separate PDF file — it is generated from this order record whenever you (or we, for support) open your report link. This is the record we use to answer any support query.

Payment. Card payments are processed directly by Stripe. We never receive or store your card details — only a payment reference and confirmation of success. The checkout also asks for your email through Stripe's own "Link" field: this lets Stripe recognise you if you've saved payment details with Link before (at any merchant that uses it, not just us) and offer a faster one-click checkout. That recognition and any saved details are held by Stripe under its own privacy policy, separately from the order record described above — we only ever receive the email itself and the payment reference.

If you opt in to marketing. On the address check and at checkout there is a separate, optional box. It is unticked by default, you do not need to tick it to use the site or buy a report, and it is never bundled into our terms or the cancellation confirmation. If you tick it, we record: your email address; the exact wording you agreed to and its version (currently mkt-v1); the date and time, taken from our server rather than your device; where you opted in (address check or checkout); and a hashed (one-way scrambled) version of your IP address — never the IP address itself. That record is our evidence of your consent.

The checklist form. The guide 10 noise questions to ask before you buy a home has an optional form to get the checklist as a one-page PDF. It works the same way: the box is unticked by default and you do not need it to read the questions. It has its own wording (version mkt-v2) and we record the same details, with the source shown as the checklist form. We then email you a link to confirm your address; you join our mailing list only when you click it, and the PDF is offered once you have confirmed.

Withdrawing marketing consent. You can withdraw at any time, as easily as you gave it: use the unsubscribe link in any marketing email (it opens our unsubscribe page), or email noise@acoustaplot.com. When you withdraw, we keep a short record that you did (your email address and the date) so that we do not email you again. If you would rather we erased that too, tell us and we will, or use the "Delete my marketing record" button that appears on the unsubscribe page once you have unsubscribed. That deletes your marketing record only; order records follow the retention periods set out below.

Analytics. With your cookie consent we use Google Analytics 4. Without consent, no analytics cookies are set. See our cookie policy.

If you take out a Trade Licence. We keep your company name, work email, the plan you hold, and the Stripe subscription reference, for as long as your subscription is active plus a reasonable period afterwards for accounting and dispute purposes.

Lawful bases

How long we keep it

Retention periods below reflect our own judgement under the storage-limitation principle (Article 5(1)(e) UK GDPR) — there is no fixed statutory number for how long this kind of record must be kept.

Order records, in the system that actually serves your report link: 90 days after your last activity on the order (for a straightforward purchase, that means 90 days after purchase; if you come back later to refine your result, the 90 days restarts from that visit, so an order stays available at least as long as we said, often longer). If you need your report or order details beyond that window: the confirmation email we send at purchase is your durable record of the contract itself (order reference, price, product and your cancellation rights), but it does not include the report's own figures — if you want to keep the actual noise-level results and recommendation, save or print your report from its link before the window above elapses, since we may not be able to retrieve it from our system afterwards. Free address checks you never purchase follow the same 90-day window. Trade Licence account details: for as long as your subscription is active plus a reasonable period afterwards. Marketing consent records: until you withdraw consent; after that, only the short withdrawal record described above, so we do not contact you again. Deletion runs automatically on a schedule. Evidence of your own consent (for example, the record of agreeing to start your report immediately and waive the standard cancellation period) is kept on the same order record, so it shares that order's 90-day window rather than being kept for longer — if a dispute could arise, we recommend keeping your own copy of the confirmation email referred to above, since we may not be able to produce this evidence after the window closes.

Who we share it with

We use a few trusted providers who act on our instructions under contract. Where a provider is outside the UK, transfers are protected either by that provider's certification under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (an adequacy-style mechanism under The Data Protection (Adequacy) (United States of America) Regulations 2023), or by the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses (both "appropriate safeguards" mechanisms under Article 46 UK GDPR), as applicable to that provider.

We do not sell your personal data and do not share your address with third parties for their own marketing.

Business contacts and B2B outreach

Alongside our consumer reports, we offer professional services. We may email people at corporate subscribers — limited companies and limited liability partnerships (LLPs) — about services relevant to their work. We do this on the basis of our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR) in telling businesses about relevant professional services. Every such email says who we are and includes a simple way to opt out, and we stop as soon as you ask.

Sole traders and partnerships (other than LLPs) are treated as individuals: we only send them marketing email if they have given consent.

Where business contact details come from. Public business directories and professional business-data providers. We use only the business contact details needed to reach the right person, together with a note of where they came from.

Your right to object. You can object to this use of your details at any time (Article 21 UK GDPR) — use the opt-out link in any of our emails, or email noise@acoustaplot.com, and we will stop. Your other rights, listed below, apply in the same way.

Your rights

Please do not send us health or medical information. We never need it to answer a question about a noise report, and we do not ask for it. If you send it to us anyway, we will remove it from our records rather than keep it.

Complaining about how we handle your data. Use our data protection complaints form. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and respond without undue delay, telling you the outcome. You can also complain to the ICO at any time (Article 77 UK GDPR / section 165 Data Protection Act 2018) — you do not have to come to us first.

You can ask us to give you a copy of your data (Article 15), correct it (Article 16), delete it (Article 17), restrict its use (Article 18) or object to it (Article 21), port it (Article 20), or withdraw consent (Article 7(3) UK GDPR). Email noise@acoustaplot.com and we'll respond within one month (Article 12(3) UK GDPR). When you ask us to erase your data we remove your personal details and consent, and strip the personal fields from your order record (there is no separate report PDF to delete — your report is generated on demand from that record); anonymous aggregate statistics may remain. If you submit your report — including a Barrier Planning Report — to your local planning authority as part of a planning application, that authority will typically publish it, including your name and the property address, on its public planning register; that publication is outside our control and our erasure right does not extend to the copy the authority holds, so ask your council about its own retention and removal policy for submitted documents.

If something goes wrong

If we become aware of a personal data breach affecting your data, we will assess the risk to you without delay. Where the law requires it, we will notify the Information Commissioner's Office within 72 hours of becoming aware, and we will contact you directly if the breach is likely to result in a high risk to your rights and freedoms.

Complaints

Please contact us first so we can put things right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.