Privacy Policy

Who we are

Garden Stairs, 29 Gwynn Road, Gravesend, Kent DA11 8AP. Contact: info@gardenstairs.co.uk.

What we collect

When you ask for a quote we collect your name, phone number, email address, postcode and what you tell us about the job, plus any photos, drawings or plans you attach (up to four files). Phone photos can carry the date and the place they were taken. Along with your answers, a quote request carries the first page of ours you landed on, the page holding the form, the website that sent you to us (a search engine, for example) and any advert tags in the link you followed, such as a Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising click reference. If you phone or text us, we keep your number and a note of the call or message. We use all of this to reply to you, arrange a survey and price your staircase.

How your enquiry reaches us

The quote form is handled by Cloudflare, which hosts this website. Cloudflare turns your enquiry into an email, with your files attached, and delivers it to our office inbox, which is provided by Google. Cloudflare does not keep your files once the email is delivered; like any web host it keeps brief technical and delivery records, including IP addresses, for a few days. If that email cannot be sent straight away, Cloudflare holds the text of your enquiry (not the files) for up to 30 days and tries again every 15 minutes, and we will ask you to email the files.

Lawful basis and retention

We use your enquiry, and any files with it, to take the steps you ask for before a contract, and customer records to carry out the contract. Enquiries that do not go ahead, including their files, are deleted from our inbox and records after 12 months; project records are kept for 6 years for guarantee and accounting purposes. Analytics and advertising cookies are used only with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.

Who we share it with

Cloudflare (website hosting and delivery of the form), Google (our office email and, only if you accept cookies, Google Analytics and Google Ads), HighLevel (our phone line, text messages and customer records), and, for projects, the fabricators and installers working on your staircase. Some of these companies handle data in the United States; those transfers rely on the UK-US data bridge or the providers' standard data protection clauses. We do not sell your data.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of your data, or for it to be corrected, deleted, restricted or given to you in a portable form, and you can object to how we use it, by contacting info@gardenstairs.co.uk. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, please tell us first at the same address; we will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days. The Information Commissioner (ico.org.uk) also takes complaints about how firms handle personal data.

Cookies

Neither Google Analytics nor Google Ads runs unless you press Accept on the cookie bar. If you accept:

• Google Analytics shows us which pages are viewed and how people found the site. Cookies: _ga and _ga_4Q1ZPKSPWX, kept for up to 2 years.
• Google Ads tells us whether someone who clicked one of our adverts went on to send the quote form or tap our phone number. Cookies: _gcl_au, and _gcl_aw if you arrived from an advert, kept for 90 days.

Google then receives the pages you view, your browser and device type, your approximate location from your IP address, and whether you sent the form or tapped the phone number, never what you typed. We do not use this for personalised advertising. Google explains how it uses this data at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.

If you choose Reject, or make no choice, none of this happens. You can change your mind at any time with Cookie settings at the foot of every page; choosing Reject there also removes the Google cookies from your browser.

Your choice is kept in your browser's local storage so the bar does not keep reappearing; it is not sent to us, and we ask again after 12 months. The first page you opened, the website that pointed you here and any advert tags sit in your browser's session storage until you close the tab; they reach us only if you send the quote form, as part of that enquiry. Cloudflare, our host, counts page loads and loading times without cookies to keep the site working well.