Privacy policy.

1. Who is responsible

Local Business Consultants is responsible for this website’s use of your information. The website offers a free Business Priorities Check and a route to discuss consulting services. Its separate consultant toolkit is restricted to authorised users.

For a question or request about your information, email tellmemore@localbusinessconsultants.co.uk.

The customer-facing pages contain no advertising, analytics or tracking scripts, and no external fonts. The code authored for them does not set tracking cookies. Hosting services process technical access information to deliver and protect the site.

2. Information used to prepare a report

The questionnaire uses your industry, business stage, team size and selected answers, including relevant follow-up answers. Your name is used only in your browser to address the on-screen report. It is not sent by the public questionnaire to the report service. Your email address is used for the requested email copy.

Your answers stay in the open page until you select “Show and email my report”. That action sends your email address, selected business context and answer choices to the report service. The request uses the generic label “Business owner” instead of your name. The service checks the request, prepares the report again from those choices and requests an email copy through Microsoft 365 from tellmemore@localbusinessconsultants.co.uk when sending is available. The email uses a generic greeting.

You choose whether to complete the check. A name and valid email are required by this form to show the report, and you confirm that you control the email address. You can review and change your answers before submitting. There is no mailing-list subscription.

The questionnaire does not save answers or contact details in browser storage. Reloading or closing the page clears its questionnaire state. Your browser’s own autofill settings remain under your control. Do not include confidential customer details or sensitive personal information.

The report applies predefined rules to your selected answers. It suggests business priorities for you to consider; it does not make decisions about your eligibility, access to services or other legal rights.

3. The Microsoft 365 sending connection

Local Business Consultants authorises an application to send requested report emails from tellmemore@localbusinessconsultants.co.uk through Microsoft 365. Its sending permission is restricted to that mailbox. Questionnaire visitors do not connect a Microsoft account or grant access to their own inbox.

The report application has permission to send emails only. It does not have permission to read inbox or sent messages, delete mail, or access other mailboxes. This is separate from staff handling enquiries received at the contact address.

Credentials for the connection are held in the hosting platform’s secret configuration. They are not included in public pages, delivered to the questionnaire browser or stored in the report-request log.

4. Storage, sending limits and retention

The report service keeps a minimal request log to prevent duplicate sending. It contains a hashed request reference, a hash representing the request’s contents, sending state and a creation timestamp. It does not contain readable names, email addresses, questionnaire answers or report content.

To limit unwanted or excessive email, the service also keeps counters for a recipient, a short-lived questionnaire session and the service as a whole. Recipient and session references are protected with keyed hashes. The counters contain these opaque references, counts and expiry times; they do not store readable email addresses, names, answers or raw IP addresses.

Request-log entries more than seven days old are removed when the next eligible email request is handled. Daily sending-limit counters expire at the next midnight in UTC and are deleted when the next eligible email request is handled. Cleanup happens during use, so deletion is not guaranteed at the exact expiry time.

Your on-screen report is not saved to the application database. Requested report copies are stored in the sending Microsoft 365 mailbox’s Sent Items. Earlier report copies remain in the previously used Gmail account. These mailbox copies are separate from the minimal log and remain until manually deleted; no automatic deletion schedule or fixed retention period has been set for them. Changing the sending service does not delete earlier copies. Copies in your own mailbox follow your email provider’s settings and your choices. Printed or downloaded copies are under your control.

Messages you choose to send to Local Business Consultants remain in the relevant email account to handle your enquiry and any subsequent agreed work. These enquiry messages are separate from questionnaire records and remain until manually deleted; no automatic deletion schedule or fixed retention period has been set. Contact us if you want to ask about or request deletion of a message.

5. Purposes, lawful basis and providers

We rely on legitimate interests to provide the reports visitors request, respond to their enquiries, and protect the service against duplicate, unwanted or excessive email. We limit processing to what is needed for those purposes and use opaque sending records rather than keeping a database of report answers. You can object to processing based on legitimate interests by contacting us.

The website is hosted through OpenAI Sites and Cloudflare. These services process requests and technical access information to operate the site. Microsoft processes the sending connection and report emails through Microsoft 365. Google continues to hold historical report copies in the previously used Gmail account. Your own email provider processes the copy you receive. This may involve processing outside the UK.

The published ChatGPT Sites Data Processing Addendum for individual accounts covers hosted personal data and specifies Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum for UK data. Microsoft’s privacy statement explains its enterprise services and international-transfer safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Extension to the Data Privacy Framework. Google’s data-transfer information remains relevant to historical Gmail copies. Cloudflare’s privacy policy explains its international-transfer safeguards, including the UK Extension and Standard Contractual Clauses. These provider pages give further details and contact routes for information about their safeguards.

Local Business Consultants uses the information for the report you request, sending safeguards and related enquiries. It does not sell questionnaire or sending-account data, use it for advertising, subscribe you to marketing or use it to train AI models.

A message saying that the email service accepted a request does not prove that it reached your inbox. The page keeps an uncertain outcome distinct from confirmed acceptance, and may withhold a repeat attempt to avoid sending duplicates.

6. Your choices and contact

You can review your answers before submitting, close the questionnaire without sending them, and keep your own copy of the report. The Microsoft 365 administrator can withdraw the application’s mailbox sending permission or disable its connection. Once that change takes effect, the application cannot make further authorised sends. This does not delete messages already sent or historical Gmail copies.

Depending on the circumstances, you can ask to access, correct or delete your personal information, restrict its use or object to its use. Contact us with your request; enough information may be needed to identify the relevant record and verify that it relates to you.

You can also raise a concern with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office through its complaints service.