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Privacy Policy

Last updated: 20th October 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how YourCareHome collects, uses, stores and shares personal data when you use www.yourcarehome.co.uk and related services on the Site.

YourCareHome is a website operated by theMediaFlow Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 06769171, VAT number GB 947 337 591, ICO registration number ZB031096. Registered office: c/o HSA, Lewis House, Great Chesterford Court, Great Chesterford, Saffron Walden, Essex CB10 1PF. References in this policy to we, us or our mean YourCareHome / theMediaFlow Ltd.

1. What personal data we may collect

We may collect and use the following categories of personal data:

  • identity and contact data, such as your name, email address, telephone number and any details you include in a form or message;
  • account data, such as your email address, saved listings and when you last signed in;
  • review and feedback data, including ratings, comments, survey responses and complaint information;
  • enquiry data, including information you provide when asking about a care provider or service;
  • technical and usage data, such as IP address, browser type, device data, pages viewed, timestamps, referring website information and general usage patterns;
  • communication data, including messages you send to us; and
  • marketing and preference data, including any consent choices you make.

The Site is not directed at anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us through our contact page so we can delete it.

2. Where listing information on the Site comes from

Information shown on the Site about individual care homes, home care providers and similar services is built primarily from publicly available regulatory datasets:

  • England – Care Quality Commission (CQC);
  • Scotland – Care Inspectorate Scotland (CIS);
  • Wales – Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW);
  • Northern Ireland – Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA).

We use this regulatory data under the Open Government Licence or the regulator’s own published reuse terms, as applicable.

Where a regulator publishes the name of a registered manager, that name may appear on a listing as part of the published regulatory record. Where a regulator publishes a contact email or telephone number, the same applies, although we may suppress, mask or redact contact details where we consider it appropriate to do so.

If you are a registered manager, owner or operator named on a listing and you would like personal information removed or amended, please contact us through our contact page.

Listings can also be claimed and updated by their operators. Where an operator claims a listing, additional information they choose to provide (such as photographs, descriptive copy, contact preferences) is processed under the lawful bases set out below.

3. Special category data

Because the Site relates to care services, some information submitted through enquiries, care survey (quiz) answers, forms, reviews or messages may reveal information about a person’s health, disability, care needs or related circumstances. Under data protection law, this may amount to special category data. Where you choose to submit this kind of information, we rely on your explicit consent as the basis for processing it, in addition to the general lawful bases set out in section 6.

Please do not submit unnecessary health or care information, especially about another person, unless you are lawfully authorised to do so and it is necessary.

If you tell us about someone else’s health or care needs, please make sure they agree, or that you are acting for them as their attorney, deputy or carer.

4. How we collect personal data

We collect personal data:

  • directly from you, for example when you contact us, submit a review, complete a form or send an enquiry;
  • from your device, through server logs, cookies and similar technologies when you use the Site; and
  • in limited cases from third parties, for example where a provider responds to an enquiry, where we investigate a complaint, or where provider information is supplied from a public source or a provider.

5. How we use personal data

We may use personal data to:

  • operate, maintain and improve the Site;
  • publish, moderate, investigate, verify, remove or respond to reviews, comments and other submissions;
  • respond to enquiries and requests;
  • pass on an enquiry to a relevant provider where that is part of the service you have requested;
  • manage listings, provider relationships and website functions;
  • monitor usage, performance, security and misuse;
  • comply with legal obligations and deal with complaints, disputes or claims;
  • send service communications; and
  • send marketing communications where we are legally permitted to do so.

6. Lawful bases

Depending on the circumstances, we rely on one or more of the following lawful bases:

  • legitimate interests – for operating and improving the Site, preventing misuse, moderating content, responding to complaints, maintaining records and running our business;
  • consent – where you have given consent, including where required for certain cookies, direct marketing or specific third-party lead sharing;
  • performance of a contract – where processing is necessary to provide a service you have requested; and
  • legal obligation – where we need to comply with law, regulation, court orders or lawful requests.

In practice we rely on these bases for these purposes:

Purpose Lawful basis
Enquiries, tour and brochure requests, care survey Consent, with your explicit consent for any health information
Care seeker and provider accounts, saved listings, listing claims and subscriptions Contract
Billing and tax records Legal obligation
Newsletter Consent
Emails to providers about their listing, enquiries and our provider services; review moderation; security and fraud prevention Legitimate interests
Analytics and advertising cookies Consent

Where special category data is processed, we will also rely on an appropriate additional condition under applicable data protection law.

We do not make decisions about you using computer processing alone, including profiling, that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

6A. If you run a care service

If you run a care service, we use the contact details your regulator publishes, or that you give us when you claim a listing, to tell you about enquiries, changes to your listing and our services for providers. We rely on legitimate interests for this. Every such email includes an unsubscribe link.

7. Reviews, comments and public content

If you submit a review, comment or other content to the Site, we may use the information you provide to assess whether the submission appears genuine, relevant and compliant with our rules.

If your submission is published, information contained in the published content may be visible to the public. You should not include personal contact details, confidential information or identifying information about other individuals unless you are lawfully entitled to do so and it is appropriate.

Where you submit a review, the display name you provide is published alongside it. The content of your review may also be shared with the provider it concerns, including where we investigate a query or complaint about the review.

We may contact you about your submission if we need to verify it, investigate a complaint or deal with moderation or legal issues.

8. Enquiries and lead handling

When you send an enquiry, or ask us to put you in touch with a care home, home care provider or related service, including a request for a tour or a brochure, your enquiry is stored securely and passed to that provider once it has claimed and verified its listing; providers on a paid plan receive it by email straight away. The provider then handles your enquiry as a separate data controller under its own privacy notice, and you should refer to that notice to understand how it uses your information.

Where we ask for your consent to pass your details to one or more providers for follow-up or marketing, you can withdraw that consent at any time.

We keep a copy of the enquiry in line with the retention schedule set out in section 13 (Data retention).

9. Marketing

We may send you marketing communications where we are legally entitled to do so. Where consent is required, we will ask for it.

You can opt out of marketing communications at any time by using the unsubscribe option provided or by contacting us through our contact page.

10. Who we share personal data with

We may share personal data with:

  • service providers and processors who help us operate the Site or provide services, such as hosting, email delivery, analytics, technical support, moderation support or customer service providers;
  • care providers or related services where you have asked to be connected with them or where sharing is otherwise lawful and necessary for the service requested;
  • professional advisers, insurers or prospective purchasers of the business where appropriate and lawful;
  • courts, regulators, law enforcement bodies or public authorities where required or permitted by law; and
  • other parties where you have consented or where disclosure is otherwise lawful.

The service providers and processors we use are listed in section 11.

We do not sell personal data.

11. Specific service providers we use

The principal service providers and processors we use to operate the Site include:

  • Hosting and database – DigitalOcean (UK and EU regions);
  • Content delivery, security and bot protection (Turnstile) – Cloudflare;
  • Application security – Wordfence;
  • Payments – Stripe, for provider subscriptions and billing. Card details are entered on Stripe’s own hosted pages and are not stored on our servers;
  • Consent management – CookieYes, which records your cookie choices;
  • Analytics – Google Analytics 4, used only with your consent;
  • Advertising – Google AdSense, which shows adverts on free listings only, where you have consented to advertising cookies;
  • Online store and tax services – Automattic / WooCommerce;
  • Image optimisation and site performance – Imagify and WP Rocket;
  • Maps and places – Google Maps Platform (Maps JavaScript API, Geocoding, Places);
  • Email delivery – Twilio SendGrid, for our newsletter, receipts, sign-in links and similar messages.

Each of these processors has its own privacy notice and security posture. We use them as part of the standard operation of the Site and we keep the list under review.

12. International transfers

Several of the service providers listed in section 11 are based in, or process personal data in, the United States. These include Twilio (SendGrid) for sending emails (including our newsletter), Stripe for payment processing, Google for maps, analytics and advertising, Cloudflare for content delivery, security and bot protection, Automattic / WooCommerce for online store and tax services, and Defiant (Wordfence) for security. Using these services involves transferring relevant personal data, such as your name, email address, IP address or payment details, to the United States.

Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on appropriate safeguards required by data protection law. For transfers to the United States, we rely on our providers’ certification under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension (the UK-US data bridge) and/or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement together with Standard Contractual Clauses, as set out in those providers’ data protection terms. Some other providers, such as our image-optimisation and site-performance services, are based in the European Union.

13. Data retention

We keep personal data for the periods below.

Data Kept for
Enquiries, tour or brochure requests, quiz results and other form submissions Kept while we provide the service, so the provider you enquired about can see them, and removed on request
Care seeker accounts Kept until you delete your account from My Account. An account that is created but never signed in to is deleted after 7 days
Provider accounts Kept while you hold a claimed listing, and removed on request once no listing is claimed
Published reviews Indefinitely, for as long as the listing remains published; underlying data up to 6 years after a review is removed
Newsletter subscription Until you unsubscribe
Unsubscribe list Your email address only, kept for as long as we send email, so we never email you again after you opt out
Billing and tax records 6 years after the end of the relevant tax year, as required by law
Security and server logs Up to 13 months
Other correspondence 3 years

Retention periods may vary where we have a legal, regulatory, complaint-handling or fraud-prevention reason to keep information for longer.

14. Security

We use appropriate technical and organisational measures intended to protect personal data against unauthorised or unlawful processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage.

However, no website or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

15. Your rights

Depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:

  • request access to your personal data;
  • request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal data;
  • request erasure of personal data;
  • request restriction of processing;
  • object to processing, including processing for direct marketing;
  • request portability in certain cases; and
  • withdraw consent where we rely on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us through our contact page. We aim to respond within one month, as data protection law requires.

Care seekers can delete their account at any time from My Account.

16. Complaints

If you have concerns about how we use personal data, please contact us first using our contact page.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.

17. Third-party sites

The Site may link to third-party websites, services or social media platforms. We are not responsible for their privacy practices, and you should review their own privacy notices before providing personal data to them.

18. Cookies

We use cookies and similar technologies on the Site. Some third-party services we use – for example Google Maps and Cloudflare Turnstile – may also set cookies or process device data such as your IP address. Please see our Cookie Policy for more information.

19. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The latest version published on the Site will apply.