Privacy and data use

Tameside Local is designed to be useful without building personal profiles of visitors. This page explains the current privacy position in plain English. Visitor analytics The site records basic usage events such as page views, searches, empty searches, listing submissions and listing website clicks. This helps improve the guide: for example, by spotting missing searches or popular categories. The analytics system does not store visitor IP addresses. It stores the requested path and limited search/category/town context where relevant. Browser user-agent information is converted into a daily hash so repeat patterns can be understood roughly without keeping the raw user-agent string as a long-term identifier. Listing submissions If you submit a listing, the details you type into the form are stored for review. That can include business or service name, category, town, description, phone, email, website, address area, postcode and contact name. Submissions are not automatically published. Contact names are intended for review/admin use and should not be shown publicly unless there is a clear reason and permission. Imported public data Many listings come from official or open public datasets. Examples include school records, food hygiene records, NHS organisation data, Charity Commission records, transport access-node data and local statistics. Imported records should show source attribution where available. Some public datasets may include addresses, postcodes, organisation names and official links. Companies House data Companies House business records have been imported only as unpublished review candidates. They are not bulk-published on the public directory at this stage. Review rules are needed before any of those candidates are made visible. Outbound links Some listing links go through an internal click-tracking URL before redirecting to the external website. This records that a listing website link was used, but it is intended for aggregate improvement rather than personal profiling. Cookies and accounts The public guide does not currently need visitor accounts. Admin access is separate and protected. If future features add cookies, logins, advertising or third-party embeds, this page should be updated before they are used. Retention Detailed analytics events are now covered by a repeatable retention tool: older events are aggregated into daily counts for longer-term trends, and detailed event rows older than the retention window are deleted after aggregation. The site should still avoid collecting unnecessary personal data and keep analytics deliberately limited. Your choices You can use the public guide without submitting personal information. If you do submit a listing, only include details you are happy for the site owner to review, and only include public contact details where they are appropriate for publication.