Privacy notice

This notice explains what we do with information you give us when you use the Building for a Healthy Life self-assessment tool. We are the data controller for that information.

What we collect

Your account. Your email address, which is also how you sign in, and a record of when you sign in. Customer accounts sign in by emailed link and have no passwords. Administrator accounts use a password with two-factor authentication.

Your projects. The project name, site address and local planning authority you enter.

Your assessment. Your answer to each point across the twelve considerations, any comments you write, and the dates on which you work.

Documents you upload. Drawings, location plans and supporting material. These often contain other people’s information — the names of applicants, landowners, agents or consultants, and the addresses of neighbouring properties. Please upload only what the assessment needs, and please do not upload sensitive personal information such as health or financial details about individuals; the assessment has no use for it.

Payment. We record that a payment was made, when, for how much, and the reference our payment provider gives it. We never see or hold your card or bank account details — those go directly to GoCardless, and are never stored on our systems.

Your documents. The certificates and Project Packs we generate for you, and a record of when they were produced and sent.

A record of activity. We keep an audit trail of significant actions — when an assessment was finalised, when a document was issued or re-sent. This is what allows a certificate to be trusted later.

Messages you send us. If you contact us through the signed-in contact form, we keep your name, the email address you give us, your message and any assessment reference you include, so that we can reply and hold a record of what was asked.

Why we hold it, and on what basis

Most of it because we cannot provide what you bought without it — running your account, recording your assessment, taking payment, producing and delivering your documents, and passing your assessment to The Design Review Panel if you ask us to. That is processing necessary to perform our contract with you.

We keep billing records because company and tax law require them to be kept. We keep the audit trail because a record-keeping product is worth nothing if it cannot be relied on afterwards — our legitimate interest in the integrity of what we issue. We do not send marketing without asking you first.

We may also analyse assessment data in aggregated and anonymised form — stripped of anything identifying you, your organisation or your scheme — to understand trends in how schemes perform against the framework.

Who else sees it

We do not sell your information and we do not share it for anyone else’s marketing. We do rely on other organisations to run the service, and we are specific about who they are and what they get.

Each acts on our instructions under a written agreement, and none may use your information for their own purposes. GoCardless is the exception: it acts on its own responsibility for the payment itself.

When you ask for a Panel assessment

If you request an Independent Design Review Panel Assessment, we pass your completed self-assessment, the material you uploaded with it, and your contact details to The Design Review Panel (Design Review Ltd) so that the review can be carried out.

The Panel is a separate organisation with its own privacy policy, and it decides for itself how it conducts a review and what records it keeps. It is not acting under our instructions in reaching its opinion. We pass your information to it only because you have asked for a review, and only the information the review needs.

The Design Review Panel and BHL Assessments Ltd are connected companies under common ownership. That disclosure, and the safeguards that keep a Panel review independent, are set out on our About and governance page.

Where your information is held

Your database records — your account, projects, assessments, bookings and billing — are held in the United Kingdom (London). Your uploaded documents and generated certificates are held in the European Union. Email is handled in the European Union, and payment in the United Kingdom.

One thing happens outside the UK and EU, and we would rather set it out than leave it to be discovered:

Our operational records are held in the United States by Airtable, which is how we keep track of assessments and enquiries day to day. This includes your assessment reference, project name, site address and email address. The transfer is covered by the standard contractual protections that apply to transfers of this kind, set out in Airtable’s data processing terms.

How long we keep it

• Your account: while it is in use. If you have finalised an assessment, we keep your account for ten years from your last sign-in, so that you can return to your documents across the life of a long project. An account that has never finalised an assessment is deleted two years after you last sign in.
• Your certificates, assessments and the audit trail: ten years from finalisation. A certificate is a dated record you or others may need to refer back to, and the schemes it describes are often in planning and delivery for a decade or more.
• Documents you upload: ten years from finalisation, then deleted.
• Billing records: seven years, in line with company and tax record-keeping requirements.

Your rights

You can ask for a copy of what we hold, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, object to how we use it, or ask for it in a portable form. Email info@bhlassessments.co.uk and we will reply within one month.

Two points where we should be straight with you rather than make a promise we would not keep:

A finalised assessment cannot be edited. That is deliberate — a certificate that could be quietly altered afterwards would be worth nothing. If something in a finalised assessment is factually wrong, tell us: we correct it by issuing a corrected version alongside a record of the correction, not by changing the original. Your account and contact details we can correct at any time.

Deleting your account does not destroy a certificate we have already issued. We remove your contact details and your uploaded documents, but we keep the certificate and its audit record, because it is a dated declaration that others may have relied on and because we may need it to establish or defend a legal claim.

Keeping it safe

Customers sign in by emailed link rather than a password, so there is no customer password to be stolen; administrator access uses a password with two-factor authentication. Customer and administrator accounts are separated, and administrator access requires two-factor authentication. Your uploads and certificates are never publicly accessible: each download uses a private link that expires within minutes. Finalised records cannot be altered.

Cookies

We use only what is needed to keep you signed in and to keep the service secure. We do not use advertising or tracking cookies. Read the cookie notice.

If you are unhappy

Tell us first — info@bhlassessments.co.uk — and we will look into it under our complaints procedure. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk at any time.