Privacy

This page covers four groups: the businesses listed in the directory, people who create an account to claim a listing, people who send a firm an enquiry, and everyone who visits. The last section is short, because we collect almost nothing.

Businesses listed here

We list 4,198 exterior cleaning firms. Where a firm is a sole trader or a partnership, its business contact details are personal data under UK GDPR, so this section explains the position properly.

What we hold

• Business name, phone number, address, postcode and map coordinates.
• Website address, and the exterior cleaning services that website advertises.
• The Google place ID and Google Maps link that let people find the business's reviews and opening hours there.
• Offline only: the Google rating, review count and opening hours the listing had when we collected the data in September 2026. We don't publish them; each listing links to its Google Maps page instead.
• Where we found one on your website, a business email address. We use it for two things only: inviting you to claim your listing, and telling you when a customer has sent you an enquiry through it (see below). It is not published on the site and is not in the public source code. Every email about an enquiry has an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes the enquiry form off your listing.

Where it came from

Public business listings on Google Maps, and each firm's own public website. We did not obtain any of it from the businesses directly, and we did not ask first — which is precisely why the right to object below matters. There is more detail on how listings are checked.

Why we hold it

To operate a directory that helps people find exterior cleaning firms. We rely on legitimate interests as the lawful basis. The information is already public, the processing is what a directory is, and we think a reasonable business would expect to appear in one — but if you don't, that is your call to make, not ours.

Getting it corrected or removed

Correct or remove your listing. You do not have to give a reason and we will not ask you to justify it. Removals are actioned within 5 working days, the page then returns “gone” to search engines rather than lingering, and the business goes on a suppression list so a later data refresh cannot quietly put it back.

If you use the form on that page, we hold what you put in it: your name, your email address, your phone number if you give it, whether you're connected to the business, and what you write. We email it to our own mailbox and send you a confirmation, both through Resend (see Emails, below). We don't store it on the website, and we use it only to deal with your request. It stays in our mailbox, which Google Workspace runs for us, as the record that we did.

If you create a business account

Accounts exist so that a business can claim its listing. If you make one, we hold:

• Your email address, and your name if you give it.
• Your password, stored only as a one-way hash. We cannot see it or recover it.
• When the account was made, when you confirmed your email address, and when you last signed in.
• Each claim you make: which listing, any note you add, when, and the outcome. If your email address isn't at the business's own domain, one of our team reads the claim and may ring the phone number on the listing to check it.
• For a listing you've claimed, what you add to it: a description, the areas you cover, your prices, any extra services, and when you last saved. This is published on the listing page, marked as written by the business, so don't put anything in it you wouldn't want public.

One cookie, and only once you sign in

Signing in sets a single cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days. It holds a reference to your account and an expiry date, signed so that it cannot be forged, and nothing else. It is strictly necessary for the account to work, so we don't ask for consent to it. Signing out removes it, and nobody who only browses the directory ever gets it.

Stopping abuse

To stop password guessing and spam sign-ups, we count attempts from each IP address and against each email address, over windows of up to an hour. Enquiries, and correction and removal requests, are counted the same way. We store a keyed one-way hash of the address alongside the count, never the address itself, and counts more than a day old are deleted the next time any limit is checked.

Emails

The emails we send you (the link to confirm your address, claim links, and the outcome of a claim) go through Resend, a US email delivery service. It handles your address and the message in order to deliver them. We don't send account holders newsletters or marketing.

Where it is kept, and for how long

Account data is stored in a database run for us by Supabase, in London. We hold your account details to provide the account you asked for, and the abuse counts because keeping accounts secure is in everyone's legitimate interest. We keep an account until you delete it, which you can do yourself at the bottom of your dashboard. That removes the account and its claims straight away, and any listing you had claimed goes back to how we listed it, with everything you added taken off the page.

If you send a firm an enquiry

We hold what you put in the form: your name, email address, phone number if you give it, postcode, the kind of work, and your message. We use it to pass your enquiry to the one firm you sent it to, because you asked us to. We don't send it to anyone else, and we don't use it for marketing.

• If the firm has claimed its listing, we email the enquiry to them straight away, and they reply to you directly. It also stays in their account for 90 days, then we delete it. What they do with it after that is up to them.
• If the firm hasn't claimed its listing, we email them at the address on their website to say an enquiry is waiting. That email gives only your first name, the kind of work, and the first half of your postcode. They see the rest only if they claim the listing within 14 days. If they don't, we delete your enquiry and email you to say so.
• Enquiries are stored in our database (Supabase, London), and the emails go through Resend, as above.

People who visit

If you are here to find a cleaner, there are no cookies, no analytics and no advertising. We set no cookie unless you sign in to a business account, we use no browser storage, and there is no tracking script of any kind. Fonts are served from our own domain, so loading a page makes no request to Google.

Two things are worth knowing:

• Postcode search. When you search a postcode, your browser sends it to postcodes.io, a free public service, to turn it into coordinates. That request goes from your browser to them and does not pass through us.
• “Use my location”. Your browser asks your permission and the coordinates stay in the page to sort the results. They are never sent to us and never stored.

Our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, as any web host does.

Your rights

Where we hold personal data about you, you have the right to ask what we hold, to have it corrected, to object to us holding it, and to ask for it to be erased. The fastest route for a listing is the correction and removal page, which also shows you the complete record we hold on any business. Otherwise, email removals@needitcleaned.co.uk. Email sent to us is kept in our mailbox, which Google Workspace runs for us.

If you are unhappy with how we handle a request, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.