Privacy policy
Last updated 12 Nov 2026
This policy explains what personal information Trade-Link-UK collects when you use our website and apps, why we use it, who sees it, how long we keep it and the rights you have under UK data protection law: the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).
The short version
- We use your information to run the network: your profile, jobs, messages, bookings, contracts, invoices and payments.
- Other members never see your phone number, email address, ID documents or selfie.
- Payments, payouts and plans are handled by Stripe. Your card and bank details go to Stripe, not to us.
- ID checks are done by a person. We don't use facial recognition.
- We don't sell your information or use advertising cookies.
- You can download your data or delete your account at any time, and email support@trade-link-uk.com to use any of your other rights.
1. Who we are
Trade-Link-UK (company number SC905790) is the controller of your personal information, which means we decide how and why it is used.
Contact us about anything in this policy at support@trade-link-uk.com, marked "Data protection". We are not required to appoint a Data Protection Officer, but a named person in our team is responsible for data protection and reads every request.
2. What we collect and where it comes from
From you, when you join and use the site
- Account: name, email address, mobile number, password (stored as a one-way hash we can't read), whether you are a contractor or subcontractor, company name, and which version of our terms you accepted and when.
- Profile: photo, headline, about text, trades, areas, travel distance, availability, rates, the least you'll work for, Gas Safe number, site card, insurance status, which certificates you hold, and the work history you add (roles, who you worked for, where, dates, what you did and photos of your work).
- Verification: photo ID, live selfie, trade tickets, certificates and insurance documents, with their reference numbers and expiry dates (see section 4).
- Location: the towns and areas on your profile, a rough map position for your area, and job and booking site locations (see section 5).
- Activity: posts, comments, likes, follows, photos, job adverts, applications, messages, bookings, availability, contracts, work days, invoices, reviews and fee records.
- Invoice details: if you create invoices, your business name and address, VAT number and UTR, plus your clients' details and the invoice lines.
- Payments: if you pay or are paid in the app, or take out a plan, the payment, payout and plan records, your Stripe account and customer references and your payout choice. Stripe collects your card or bank details, and for Subcontractors setting up payouts, your identity and bank account details. We don't see or keep your card number or bank login.
- Earnings records: if you take the Earnings and tax plan, the income, expenses and tax settings you enter. These are private to you.
- Help assistant: the questions you ask it and its answers.
- Contact with us: emails and the details of any complaint or request.
From other people
- Other members, when they message you, book you, record a contract with you, approve or query your work days, invoice you, pay you or review you.
- Stripe, which tells us whether a payment has gone through and whether your payouts are set up.
- Our team's notes from checking your documents.
- Public registers, such as the Gas Safe Register, when we check a certificate.
Automatically
- The login cookie and browser storage described in our cookie policy.
- Your IP address, browser and device type, and the pages you request, which our hosting provider logs to run the site and keep it secure.
3. How we use it and our lawful basis
UK GDPR says we must have a lawful basis for each use. Ours are:
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Create and run your account; show your profile to members; list and match jobs and people; carry messages; handle bookings, contracts and invoices; take payments, pay Subcontractors out and collect our fees through Stripe; provide the Earnings and tax plan | Contract (Article 6(1)(b)): we need it to provide the service you signed up for |
| Check photo ID, selfie and trade documents, show Verified badges, and require Subcontractors to be verified before they apply for jobs | Legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)): keeping the network safe and trustworthy for members, and letting contractors know who they are hiring |
| Keep contact details private, hide them in messages and posts, and stop members arranging work around us | Legitimate interests: protecting members' privacy and our business, which depends on the fee |
| Show members' reviews, and show how reliably a contractor pays invoices sent through the site | Legitimate interests: helping members decide who to work with |
| Prevent fraud, misuse and fake accounts; keep the site secure; enforce our terms | Legitimate interests |
| Invoice fees and keep accounting and tax records | Legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) |
| Respond to requests from the police, HMRC, courts or regulators | Legal obligation |
| Use your device's location for a search, when you press "Use my location" | Consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you give in your browser and can withdraw at any time |
| Answer help assistant questions | Contract, as part of the service; using it is optional |
| Send sign-up and password reset emails, show notifications on the site and email them to you (you choose which, apart from contracts, invoices and payments), and tell you about changes to our terms | Contract and legitimate interests |
| Send news or offers by email | Consent only. We don't do this at the moment and will ask first if we start |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interests against yours and concluded they are not overridden. You can ask us for details and you have the right to object (section 11).
4. Identity checks, selfies and sensitive information
Subcontractors must have their photo ID, selfie and the certificates they hold verified before they can apply for jobs. Contractors can get verified too. We store copies of your photo ID and documents in private storage that only you and our checking team can open. To confirm the ID is yours, we ask for a selfie taken live with your camera while you hold up a number of fingers we choose, so an old photo can't be used.
A member of our team compares your selfie with your ID by eye. We don't use facial recognition software and don't create a faceprint or any other biometric template, so we don't process biometric data for identifying you as defined in UK GDPR. If we ever introduce automated face matching, we will update this policy and ask for your explicit consent first.
ID documents can show things like your nationality. We don't use them for anything other than confirming who you are, and we never show them to other members. We don't ask for or keep information about criminal convictions, health, ethnicity, religion or other special category information. Please don't include it in your profile or posts.
5. Location
The map shows subcontractors at a rough position for their area, about 2 km out, never an exact address. You can hide yourself from the map on Edit profile. Job adverts and bookings show the site location the poster enters.
If you press "Use my location", your browser asks your permission and passes us your device's position for that search or form. We only keep it if you save it to a job, booking or your profile. You can turn location access off in your browser or phone settings at any time.
6. The help assistant
The help assistant sends your question to an AI model through OpenRouter to write an answer. Before it does, phone numbers, email addresses and links are removed. Its answers are automated and can be wrong. Please don't enter sensitive information into it. Your recent chat is kept in your browser until you close the tab.
7. Who we share it with
- Other members see your profile, posts, job adverts, the messages you send them, bookings, contracts, work days and invoices you share with them, which checks you have passed, reviews of you and, for contractors, how reliably you pay invoices sent through the site. They never see your phone number, email address, ID images, selfie, or ID and card numbers. Gas Safe numbers on approved certificates are shown so contractors can check the Gas Safe Register.
- Our team sees account details, contact details, verification documents and selfies to run the site, check documents, collect fees and deal with complaints. They can't see your earnings records.
- Service providers who handle information for us under contract and only on our instructions (listed below).
- Stripe, to take payments, pay Subcontractors out and run plans. Stripe also uses this information for its own legal duties, such as identity and anti-money-laundering checks, under the Stripe privacy policy.
- Authorities such as HMRC, the police or a court, when the law requires it or to protect someone's safety.
- A buyer or investor, if all or part of the business is sold or restructured, under confidentiality, and this policy would continue to apply.
| Service | What for | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, logins, sign-up and log-in emails, live notifications and file storage (photos, documents, selfies) | The data centre region chosen for our project, with some support access from the US |
| Vercel | Website hosting and request logs | Global network, company in the US |
| OpenRouter and the AI model provider it routes to | Answering help assistant questions (phone numbers, emails and links are removed first) | US |
| OpenStreetMap Foundation | Map images on the map page (receives your IP address) | UK and EU |
| Google Fonts | The site's fonts (receives your IP address) | US |
| Stripe | Taking invoice payments by bank, paying Subcontractors out, and card payments for plans and for our fee. Stripe also checks the identity of Subcontractors who set up payouts, as a controller in its own right | UK, EU and US |
| Resend | Password and account emails, emails about your notifications (contracts, invoices, messages and so on), and alerts to our team about new sign-ups and documents to check | US |
We don't sell your personal information or share it for advertising.
When you create invoices or enter details about your own clients, you are responsible for that information and we handle it for you under our data processing terms.
8. Transfers outside the UK
Some of the services above are based in, or can be accessed from, the United States or the European Economic Area. Transfers to the EEA rely on UK adequacy regulations. Transfers to the US rely on the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework where the company is certified, or otherwise on the ICO's International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum with a transfer risk assessment. Email us for a copy of the relevant safeguards.
9. How long we keep it
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Account and profile | While your account is open. Deleted when you delete your account |
| Posts, comments, photos, follows and shortlists | Until you delete them or your account |
| Photo ID, selfies and verification documents | While current. Kept for 90 days after being replaced, rejected or expiring, then deleted. Deleted straight away when you delete your account |
| Contracts, bookings, work days, invoices, payment and fee records and the messages on them | 6 years after the end of the tax year they relate to, as tax law requires. After you delete your account they show you as "Deleted member" |
| Other messages and job applications | Until you delete your account |
| Earnings records, saved invoice details and draft invoices | Until you delete them or your account |
| Emails, complaints and requests to us | 2 years after they are resolved |
| Record that you downloaded your data or deleted your account | 6 years, to show we handled the request |
| Hosting logs | Up to 30 days |
10. Keeping it safe
Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Database rules control exactly what each member can read, documents and selfies are in private storage, and only named team members have admin access. If a breach is likely to put your rights at risk, we will report it to the ICO within 72 hours and tell you without undue delay if the risk is high.
11. Your rights
You have the right to:
- Access: get a copy of your information. Download it here, or email us.
- Rectification: have wrong or incomplete information corrected. Most of it you can edit on your profile.
- Erasure: have your information deleted. Delete your account here. We keep only what the law requires, as set out in section 9.
- Restriction: ask us to pause using your information while a complaint or correction is sorted out.
- Portability: get the information you gave us in a machine-readable file (the download is JSON).
- Objection: object to us using your information on the basis of legitimate interests. We will stop unless we have compelling grounds or need it for a legal claim.
- Withdraw consent: where we rely on consent, such as device location, at any time.
- Not be subject to automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects. We don't make any: verification, suspensions and complaints are decided by people. Search results are ordered by things like verification, trade and distance, which doesn't have that kind of effect.
To use a right that the site doesn't handle for you, email support@trade-link-uk.com. It's free. We may ask you to confirm your identity, usually by replying from the email on your account. We reply within one month, or within three months for complex requests, in which case we tell you within the first month. We can refuse requests that are manifestly unfounded or excessive, and will explain why.
12. Complaints
If you're unhappy with how we use your information, please tell us first at support@trade-link-uk.com so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.
13. Age
Trade-Link-UK is for people aged 18 and over. We don't knowingly collect information about children and delete it if we find we have.
14. Changes to this policy
We will update this page when the way we use information changes and show the new date at the top. We will tell members by email or on the site before any important change.