Privacy notice
What we collect, who it goes to, and how to get it back or deleted — written for how this site actually works, including the care details you may give us.
Who is responsible for your data
Choose a Carer (chooseacarer.co.uk) is operated by the company named on our legal information page, which is the data controller for personal data collected through this site. To contact us about your data, use the contact form.
What we collect
| Data | When | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your answers about the care needed — who it is for, the type of care, days per week, the help needed, when it is needed and how it may be funded | As you complete each step of the care request form | So providers understand the care needed, and so we can see where the form loses people |
| Health conditions of the person needing care, if you select any (for example dementia or diabetes) | One step of the care request form | So a provider can send a carer with the right experience. This is special category data — see below |
| Name, email address, phone number and postcode | Final steps of the form | So providers can contact you about arranging care |
| Your consent to share the request, and marketing consent if you give it (never pre-ticked) | Final steps of the form | A record of what you agreed to, and when |
| Messages you send through the contact form | When you send one | To reply to you |
| Page views, referring page, device type and a first-party session identifier | Every page | To see which pages are read and where the form fails. Stored on our own servers |
| Optional analytics cookies | Only if you accept in the cookie banner | Aggregate site statistics — see the cookie policy |
Health information
Information about someone’s health is special category data under UK GDPR. We only collect it if you choose to give it, and we only share it with your explicit consent, which you give by ticking the consent box before sending the form. The box is never pre-ticked, and without it the request is not sent. If you are filling the form in for someone else, please make sure they are happy for you to share their details, or that you are entitled to act for them.
Who we share it with
When you send a care request, it — including your contact details and the care details you entered — goes to our care-matching partner, a UK lead-matching service, which shares it with home care providers covering the postcode you gave. Those providers are independent businesses and become separate controllers of your data once they receive it; their own privacy notices govern how they use it, and you can ask them directly to delete it.
We also use service providers who process data on our behalf: Microsoft Azure (hosting), Microsoft 365 (email), Cloudflare (content delivery and security), and Google Analytics and Ahrefs (site statistics). We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with data brokers or advertising networks.
Our lawful bases
- Consent — sharing your care request with providers (and, for health information, explicit consent under Article 9(2)(a)); marketing emails; optional analytics cookies. You can withdraw consent at any time, which stops further sharing but does not undo what has already happened.
- Legitimate interests — keeping the site secure, stopping junk and fraudulent submissions, answering messages, and measuring which pages work using first-party data. We use the minimum data needed.
- Legal obligation — keeping records the law requires, such as accounting records.
How long we keep it
Care requests: 24 months from submission, then deleted or anonymised — long enough to deal with a complaint. Contact messages: 24 months. Page-view records: 26 months. Marketing subscribers: until you unsubscribe. Accounting records: six years, as the law requires.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can ask for a copy of your data, to correct it, to delete it, to restrict or object to its use, and to receive it in a portable format, and you can withdraw consent at any time. Use the contact form; we will respond within one month.
One honest limit: once a request has been shared, we can stop any further sharing and delete our copy, but we cannot recall what a provider has already received. You can ask them directly, and they must comply.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113). We would appreciate the chance to put it right first.
International transfers
Our hosting is in the UK and EU. Where a supplier processes data outside the UK, the transfer is covered by UK adequacy regulations or the International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
Changes
Material changes to this notice will be posted here. The date at the foot of this page is when it was last reviewed.