Privacy Policy

What we collect

Only what you type into a form on this site:

• Event registration — your name, business name, email, phone, business type, website or social handle, number of places, and any dietary or accessibility requirements you tell us about.
• Contact form — your name, email, business, business type and message.
• Directory account — your name, business name, business type, email and a password. The password itself is never stored: we keep only a one-way scrypt hash of it, which cannot be turned back into your password.
• Directory listing — whatever you choose to add to your listing: a description, your town, county and postcode district, phone, a public email address, website, services, qualifications, the animals you work with and social links.
• Membership payments — if you take a full listing, the payment is handled by Stripe on Stripe’s own pages. We never see or store your card details. We keep the Stripe customer and subscription references, whether the subscription is active, and the date it renews.

We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking scripts, and there are no third-party embeds on this site. Signing in sets one cookie, described in the cookie policy.

What appears publicly

The directory is a public part of this website, so some of what you give us is meant to be seen. This is the part worth reading twice:

• Nothing at all until your listing is approved. A listing that is pending, rejected or suspended does not appear in the directory, has no public page, and is not in the sitemap.
• A basic listing publishes your business name and your trade. Nothing else — no location, no contact details, no services.
• A full listing publishes everything in the “full listing details” section of your account, because being findable is the point of it. If you would rather something were not public, do not put it there.

Your sign-in email, your contact name and your password are never published, whichever tier you are on. A public email address, if you add one, is a separate field and can differ from the one you sign in with.

Why we hold it

• To organise events and let you know what is happening with them.
• To reply when you contact us.
• To cater for dietary and accessibility needs — information you have chosen to share so that we can make the event work for you.
• To run the directory, and to let you sign in and manage your listing.
• To take and renew membership payments, and to know whether a listing is currently paid for.
• To send occasional news about future events, but only if you ticked the box to say yes.

Who sees it

The organisers of Pawfessional Connections, plus anyone visiting the directory in the case of a published listing. We do not sell your details and we do not pass them to other businesses. Where an event is held at a venue that needs numbers or dietary requirements in advance, we share only what that venue needs.

Stripe processes membership payments as a separate data controller under its own privacy policy. Nothing else leaves this site.

Where it is stored

In a database on the server that runs this website, hosted in the United Kingdom. It is not exported to any third-party marketing platform. Payment information is held by Stripe rather than by us.

How long we keep it

Registration details are kept for as long as they are useful for organising and following up an event, and reviewed periodically after that. A directory listing is kept while you are a member. If you ask us to delete your details or remove your listing, we will.

Note that a lapsed or downgraded listing keeps the details you entered so that nothing is lost if you renew — they simply stop being published. Ask us and we will delete them outright instead.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to delete it, and withdraw consent to marketing at any time. Use the contact form and we will action it. You can also correct most of your own listing yourself by signing in.