Privacy Notice: What We Store and for How Long

Who we are

This site is run by plumbers.trade, 7 Princes St, Edinburgh. To reach us, use the contact form or write to the address above.

We decide how the personal details described here are used, which makes us the controller under UK data protection law.

If your business is listed

What we publish. The business name, which for a sole trader can be your own name; its phone number, website and business address where it publishes them; the town it is based in and the towns it covers; the plumbing and heating jobs it lists, its hours, how long it has traded, any registration it holds that we have checked on the public register (such as a Gas Safe number), and the date we last checked the listing.

Where it comes from. Public sources: the Gas Safe Register and other accreditation scheme registers, local search listings and business profiles, the trade marketplaces, the business's own website and pages, Companies House, and whatever the business sends us.

Why, and the basis. Legitimate interests: the public's interest in a free, factual list of the plumbers and heating engineers near them, with direct contact details and no fee, and ours in publishing it. We weighed that against yours. We publish only details the business already publishes so customers can contact it; we add no reviews, ratings or verdicts; a home address is never shown unless the business shows it; and a listing costs nothing.

Your choices. You can object at any time and we take the listing down, or ask us to correct it. Use the Modify listing button on its page, or the contact form. There is no charge and no condition. A listing stays while the business trades and is published; one that has stopped trading is taken down when we find out.

If you use the site to find a plumber

When	What we keep	Why, and the lawful basis	How long
You post a job request	The job you describe (the service, your answers to the job card, the town and the first half of your postcode, when you need it and your description), your name, phone number and email address, and the messages you and businesses send each other about it	To pass your request to the Premium plumbers who cover your area. They see the job, your name and your phone number, and can reply to you here. They never see your email address: it is kept only to confirm your request and to tell you when a business replies. Basis: doing what you asked us to do	90 days from posting, then deleted with every message. You can delete it sooner from your private job page. A request you do not confirm is deleted after 48 hours
You send a plumber an enquiry	Your name, email, phone if given, message, the days that suit you, and your job card: the job and how soon, the kind of property and when it was built, what the boiler runs on, the hot water system, how many radiators and bathrooms, whether you own or rent, and the first half of your postcode	To pass your enquiry to the plumber you chose (only plumbers with Premium take enquiries), who replies to you directly. Basis: doing what you asked us to do	12 months, then deleted. The plumber keeps the email we sent them under their own privacy terms
You open a listing or tap its number	A count per listing per day. To count you once a day, a one-way code made from your IP address and a secret that changes daily, never the address itself	For the business's monthly figures, and to limit spam on the forms. Basis: legitimate interests	The code: deleted after a day. The daily counts, which identify nobody: 2 years
You use the contact or listing form	Your name, email, company if given and message	To answer you. Basis: legitimate interests in replying	In our mailbox while we deal with it, and up to 2 years after

Your shortlist, the numbers you marked as called and any job card you save are kept in your own browser, not sent to us. Clearing the site's data in your browser deletes them. The job card leaves your browser only inside an enquiry you send, and only to that plumber. Saving it from the enquiry form is off unless you tick the box.

If you claim or pay for a listing

When	What we keep	Why, and the lawful basis	How long
You ask us to add your business	What you enter on the add your business form (the business name, services, town, area, phone, website, hours and description), the email you give, and how the request was decided. With fast-track and Premium, the Stripe numbers as below	To check the business and set up its listing and account. Basis: doing what you asked us to do	Once your listing is set up, as the listing's record; a request we do not take forward, 90 days; one left undecided, 12 months
You claim a listing	The email you give, and a record of the claim: when, how it was decided, and whether it was accepted	To check you run the business before you can change anything. Basis: legitimate interests	An accepted claim while the listing is claimed; a rejected, superseded or undecided one 90 days
You sign in	A one-time link and a session, both stored only as a keyed code, and a session cookie in your browser	To keep you signed in to your dashboard. Basis: providing the service you asked for	Links last 30 minutes and are deleted a day later; sessions 30 days
You use the dashboard	Your settings, and on Premium your price list, reply note, availability and the photos you upload, with their captions and before and after pairing (we remove the location and camera details stored inside a photo before keeping it, and a person sees each one)	To show them on your profile. Basis: our contract with you	While the listing is claimed. When Premium ends they stop showing, and are deleted 90 days later
You pay for Premium	Your Stripe customer and subscription numbers, the plan, the date it is paid to, and when you accepted the terms. Card details go to Stripe only	To run the Premium you bought. Basis: our contract with you, and tax law	While the account exists; Stripe keeps payment records as long as tax law requires
A verification check is on record	When it was done, whether by your published phone number or email, and a short note of what you confirmed	To show the Owner verified badge truthfully. Basis: our contract with you	2 years; a check that could not be completed, 90 days
We email you	Enquiries (on Premium), the monthly report and the result of a check	To run the listing tools. The monthly report rests on legitimate interests, and every one has a one-click link to stop it	Sent, not stored, beyond the records above

Cookies

One cookie, and only for business owners who sign in: a session cookie that keeps the dashboard open for up to 30 days. The spam check on forms (Cloudflare Turnstile) reads technical details of your browser to tell people from scripts. There are no advertising cookies, no analytics scripts and no tracking across sites.

Who else handles it

Cloudflare hosts the site, the database and owners' photos, runs the spam check, and sends and receives our email.
Stripe takes owners' payments for us; card details go to Stripe and never reach us.
Mail to our address is forwarded by Cloudflare to our mailbox at Google (Gmail), which also holds those messages. Replies go out from that mailbox.
A plumber on Premium you send an enquiry to receives what you wrote by email, through their own mailbox provider, and is responsible for it from then.

Nothing is sold, and nothing is passed to anyone else for marketing.

Outside the UK

Cloudflare, Stripe and Google (which holds our Gmail mailbox) are based outside the UK and may process these details outside it. Those transfers rely on the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the company has signed up to it, and otherwise on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum in its data processing terms.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, have it corrected, have it deleted, restrict how we use it, object to our using it where we rely on legitimate interests (and always to any marketing), and receive what you gave us in a format you can reuse. No decision about you is made automatically.

Ask through the contact form or by post to the address above. UK data protection law gives us one month to answer in full. If you are unhappy with the answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

Last updated 19 October 2026. Terms for plumbers · How this directory works

Privacy notice