Privacy Notice
This notice explains what personal data SME Leads collects, where it comes from, what we do with it, and the rights you have over it.
1Who we are
SME Leads ([registered company name and company number, or "a sole trader trading as SME Leads"]) is the data controller for the personal data described in this notice.
Our registered address is [full postal address].
We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration number [ICO registration number].
You can contact us about anything in this notice at hello@smeleads.co.uk.
2What personal data we hold
For businesses we contact or include in our service, we may hold:
- Business name, trading name and business address
- Business contact details, including email address and telephone number
- The name and role of a business owner, director or named contact, where this is published by the business
- Publicly available information about the trades, services and sectors the business works in
- Records of our correspondence with you, and whether you have asked not to be contacted
Most of this is business contact information. Where a business is a sole trader, a partnership, or is named after an individual, that information can also be personal data about a person — and we treat it as such.
3Where we get it from
We do not usually collect this information from you directly. We compile it from sources that are already public, including:
- Business websites and their published contact pages
- Public trade directories and membership listings
- Public registers, including Companies House
- Public planning and listed-building consent records published by local planning authorities
If we hold information about you that we obtained from somewhere other than you, you have the right to be told where it came from. Ask us and we will tell you the specific source.
4Why we use it, and our lawful basis
We use this data to match early-stage public planning opportunities to businesses likely to be able to carry out the work, and to tell those businesses about the opportunities.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests — our interest in operating the service, and the interest of specialist contractors in hearing about relevant work they would otherwise miss. We have assessed that this does not override your rights, and we will stop contacting you the moment you tell us to.
Where you have given us consent — for example by signing up to alerts — our lawful basis is consent, and you can withdraw it at any time.
Electronic marketing. Where you are a sole trader or an unincorporated partnership, we will only send you marketing emails where we have your consent or where you are an existing customer and have not opted out. You can opt out of any message at any time, and every email we send includes a way to do so.
5Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal data.
We share it only with service providers who help us run the service — for example [email delivery provider, e.g. Mailchimp / Brevo] and [hosting provider] — and only so they can perform that service for us. We may disclose data where we are required to by law.
[If any provider stores data outside the UK, name it here and state the safeguard relied on — e.g. UK adequacy regulations or the International Data Transfer Addendum.]
6How long we keep it
We keep business contact data for as long as it remains relevant to the service, and review it [review period, e.g. every 24 months].
If you ask us to stop contacting you, we keep a minimal record of your email address on a suppression list indefinitely. We do this specifically so that we do not contact you again by mistake — it is the one piece of data that deleting would make things worse.
7Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Be told what personal data we hold about you, and get a copy of it
- Have inaccurate data corrected
- Have your data erased in certain circumstances
- Object to our processing where we rely on legitimate interests
- Object to direct marketing at any time — this right is absolute, and we must stop
- Ask us to restrict how we use your data
- Be told the source of data we did not collect from you
- Withdraw consent, where our basis is consent
To exercise any of these, email hello@smeleads.co.uk. We will respond within one month. There is no charge.
8Cookies
This website sets no cookies and runs no analytics or tracking scripts. Nothing is stored on your device by us.
[If you later add analytics, a chat widget, or embedded content, this section must be updated and a cookie banner will be required for anything non-essential.]
9Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first at hello@smeleads.co.uk and we will try to put it right.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or by calling 0303 123 1113.
10Changes to this notice
If we change this notice we will update the date at the top of the page. Where changes are significant, we will tell people we hold contact details for.