Legal
Privacy policy
This page explains what personal data the The Belfast Guide collects, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and the rights you have under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Plain English first; the legal references sit alongside.
1. Who we are
The The Belfast Guide (the “service”) is built and operated by Lavery Ltd. (“we”, “us”, “our”), 12–18 Bradbury Place, Belfast BT7 1RS. Company no. NI002186, VAT GB252747549. We are the data controller for any personal data processed through this site.
Privacy questions, access requests and complaints should go to contact@thebelfastguide.com. If you’re not happy with how we’ve handled your data you also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
2. What we collect, and why
We try to collect as little as possible. This table covers everything the service stores about you, the lawful basis we rely on (UK GDPR Art. 6), and how long we keep it.
| Data | Why | Lawful basis | Retention |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account details: name, email, authentication state. Held by our auth provider Clerk. | To let you sign in and protect your account. | Performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and our legitimate interest in account security (Art. 6(1)(f)). | Until you delete the account, then up to 30 days in Clerk’s soft-delete buffer. |
| Operator submission: venue name, address, contact email, phone, photos, opening hours. | To list your venue on the public guide and contact you about approval. | Performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interest in running a moderated directory. | For the lifetime of the listing. Two years after the last update if the listing is unclaimed or rejected. |
| Venue media: optional photos and videos posted by approved venue operators in status updates or event chatter at their venue. | To show live venue updates and venue-authored event comments, and retain the related public history. | Performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interest in operating the venue guide (Art. 6(1)(f)). | Retained with the related status or comment until an operator or administrator removes it, or deletion is requested. |
| Crowd reports: venue you tagged, the tag you chose (e.g. “Good buzz”), the approximate time, your account ID or a randomly generated device ID. We never store the precise GPS fix used for the geofence check. | To show other visitors how busy each venue is right now. | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)). | Each report expires after 1.5 hours of being shown as a live status. The report remains in that festival’s public, read-only archive until a valid deletion request or moderation action requires removal. |
| Chat messages: text you post in a venue thread plus your account ID. | To run moderated conversations, show replies in your activity inbox, and take you back to the relevant thread. | Performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and legitimate interest in moderation (Art. 6(1)(f)). | Retained as part of the conversation history until you request deletion, delete your account, or moderation requires removal. At festival rollover the conversation becomes read-only; it is not hidden or deleted because of its age. |
| Saved venues / events: held in your browser’s local storage and, when you are signed in, synced to your account. | So your shortlist persists between visits without an account. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) by your action. | Venue saves remain until you remove them. Event saves and reminder topics are cleared when that festival is archived; browser data for older years is kept separate and is not restored into a new season. |
| Friends and shared plans: friend requests, accepted friendships, your display name and profile photo, and the venues/events you save. | To let mutually accepted friends find one another and view each other’s current Belfast plans. QR links expose only an unguessable profile token, display name and photo. | Performance of contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) and your deliberate action in sending or accepting a request. | Until either person removes the friendship or you delete your account. Saved-event retention remains as described above. |
| Friend live-location sharing: your current latitude/longitude, reported accuracy, update time, and the friends you explicitly allow to see it. | To show your current position as a dot on the map for only the accepted friends you select. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | The latest location remains as a timestamped “last seen” marker until you disable sharing globally. It is hidden immediately from an individual friend when you disable sharing for them. Friendship privacy choices remain until changed or the friendship is removed. |
| Assigned bus live location: the current latitude/longitude, reported accuracy, update time and recent movement bearing, derived speed and stable route direction from a user who has accepted a scheduled bus-tracking shift. | To show the shuttle as a moving public marker and estimate its arrival at the next stop. The public map does not receive the assigned person’s name, email or account ID. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | Only the latest fix is kept, never a journey history. It changes to a timestamped last-reported marker if updates pause, disappears immediately if the driver stops sharing, and is deleted no later than the scheduled end. The assignment itself remains until an administrator replaces or removes it. |
| Push notification subscription: the delivery endpoint your browser issues, its encryption keys, your notification preferences, and the list of saved venues/events the notifications are about. Only created after you tap “Turn on notifications” and accept the browser prompt. | To send the alerts you asked for: reminders before saved events, live updates and offers from saved venues, festival announcements, and replies to your posts when that preference is enabled. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | Until you turn notifications off in the app or revoke the browser permission: revoked subscriptions are deleted automatically the next time we try to send. |
| Approximate location: only when you tap “use my location”. | To show distance and walking time to nearby venues. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | Held in memory only for nearby-venue features. If you separately enable friend live-location sharing, your latest coordinates are stored as described in the friend-sharing row above. |
| Anonymous crowd data: only if you separately opt in, by ticking the (un-ticked) crowd-data box on the location prompt, tapping “Allow anonymous crowd data”, or switching it on in the map legend. When you open the app we place your device into a grid square roughly 250 m wide and keep just that square plus a scrambled, rotating device code. We never store your exact coordinates, your account, or where you were before. If you’re signed in we remember your yes/no choice on your account so it applies on all your devices: the choice itself, never your location. | To show a general “how busy is this part of town” heat layer on the map. A square only appears once at least five devices are counted in it, and only as a broad level (lively / busy / very busy / packed): never a people count, and never an individual dot. It cannot be used to follow anyone’s movements. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | Each contribution disappears automatically 2.5 hours after you last opened or returned to the app. Turning the option off in the map legend removes your device’s contribution immediately. |
| Marketing list: operator email + your active opt-in. | Guide updates, programme news and occasional offers from Lavery’s and partner venues. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | Two years from your most recent opt-in or interaction, then deleted. Every email includes a one-click unsubscribe. |
| Product analytics: pages viewed, in- app events, a pseudonymous identifier. Captured by PostHog (EU host). | To understand which features get used so we can keep improving the guide. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | 13 months, then automatically purged by PostHog. |
| Advertising / conversion: whether you completed an action (such as a venue signup) after arriving from a Google ad. Measured by Google Ads (gtag.js). | To measure whether our Google ads are working, so we don’t waste money on ads that don’t help. | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)). | Per Google’s ad-data retention; we keep no copy ourselves. |
| Server logs: IP address, request path, status code. Held by our hosting providers. | Security, abuse prevention, and to investigate errors. | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)). | 30 days. |
4. Marketing emails
When operators sign up for a venue listing, we ask whether you’d like to hear from us by email. The checkbox is un-ticked by default: you have to actively opt in. If you opt in we use your address only for:
- Guide updates: programme changes, late-running events, weather call-offs, traffic / road closures that affect your venue.
- Programme announcements: new Belfast programmes and what we have planned for the guide.
- Occasional offers from Lavery’s and partner venues.
Every email includes an unsubscribe link in the footer. You can also email us at contact@thebelfastguide.com and we’ll remove you within seven days. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it.
We retain marketing details for two years from your most recent opt-in or last interaction with one of our emails, after which we delete the record.
6. International transfers
Our analytics provider (PostHog) is hosted in the EU. Other providers may process data in the United States. Where this happens we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Addendum or Standard Contractual Clauses, plus, where available, certification under the EU/UK–US Data Privacy Framework. Copies of these safeguards are available on request.
7. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
- Access the personal data we hold about you.
- Correct data that’s inaccurate or out of date.
- Erase your data (the “right to be forgotten”), subject to limited exceptions such as our need to keep moderation logs.
- Restrict or object to specific processing, including direct marketing. We’ll always honour an objection to marketing.
- Withdraw consent at any time, where consent was the basis (for example for analytics or marketing).
- Data portability: receive a machine- readable copy of the data you provided.
- Lodge a complaint with the ICO.
Signed-in users can manage or delete their account directly from Account settings. To exercise any other right, email contact@thebelfastguide.com. We’ll respond within one calendar month.
8. Security
The service runs on TLS end-to-end. Authentication is delegated to Clerk, with multi-factor authentication available for operator and admin accounts. Public forms are protected by Cloudflare Turnstile and per-IP rate limiting. Backend functions enforce role-based authorisation server- side; we never trust the client.
We’ll notify affected users and the ICO within 72 hours if a personal-data breach is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, as required by Art. 33 and 34 UK GDPR.
9. Children
The The Belfast Guide is intended for people visiting or running venues in Belfast. The minimum age for posting chat messages or crowd reports is 13, in line with the ICO’s Age Appropriate Design Code. We don’t knowingly collect data from younger children; if you believe we have, please contact us so we can remove it.
10. Changes
If we change this policy in any material way we’ll update the effective date above, bump the cookie banner version, and (for changes that affect your rights) email opted-in users. The previous version is always available on request.
11. Contact
Lavery Ltd., 12–18 Bradbury Place, Belfast BT7 1RS. Company no. NI002186 · VAT GB252747549.