Privacy notice
This page says what information we hold, why, and what your rights are. It is written to match what the software actually does, and it is short because we collect very little.
Who we are
Parish in a Box is run by Oli Triggs, trading as Parish in a Box. You can reach us at oli@parishinabox.co.uk about anything on this page.
What we collect, and why
If you ask for a free compliance check
You give us your council's name, your role, and your email address. We use them to send you the report and, at most, one follow-up message. The lawful basis is legitimate interests: you asked for the report, and it is reasonable to send it and follow it up once. We do not add you to a newsletter, because we do not have one.
When we check a council website
The checker reads pages the council has already published to the public internet. It obeys the site's robots.txt, reads at most 25 pages, and does not open documents. Where published pages contain personal data — a clerk's name and contact details, councillors' names — the resulting report reproduces what the council itself has published.
If we write to you and you did not ask us to
Where we contact a clerk directly, we use contact details the council has published for exactly that purpose, we say who we are and why we are writing, and we send at most one follow-up. If you reply asking us to stop, we stop and we note the address so we do not write again.
If your council subscribes
We hold the account details needed to run your council's website — the clerk's name, council email address and sign-in credentials (stored as a cryptographic hash, never as the password itself) — and the content your council chooses to publish. For published content the council is the data controller and we act on the council's instructions.
Server logs
Like almost every web server, ours records the network address of requests. We use this only for security — rate limiting and abuse prevention — and it is kept briefly.
Cookies
The public website sets no cookies at all. One essential cookie is set only when a clerk signs in to their council's admin, to keep them signed in. There are no analytics, no tracking, and no third-party cookies anywhere.
Where data lives and who sees it
The service is hosted with Render on infrastructure in Frankfurt, in the EU. Email runs on IONOS in the UK and EU. We do not sell or share your information with anyone else, full stop.
How long we keep things
Free-check details: until the report and one follow-up are done, or immediately on request. Subscriber data: for the life of the subscription and a short period after, so a council that leaves can retrieve its content. Logs: days, not months.
Your rights
You can ask what we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or deleted, and object to our processing. Email oli@parishinabox.co.uk and we will respond within a month, usually much faster. If you are unhappy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Last reviewed 30 July 2026. If the software changes what it collects, this page changes the same day.