How we look after your information.

HearAbouts is operated by Rose Regeneration Ltd (the data controller) as part of the Social Value Engine family of services. We are based in England.

If you have a question about your data, you can email us at hello@hearabouts.uk.

• Account details: your email address (collected by our authentication provider, Clerk) and any name or avatar you choose to add.
• Voices you submit: the words you write, the theme you select, the location you place on the map, and (optionally) your postcode, stakeholder role, and age range.
• Support actions: when you tap “support” on a voice or vote on a community priority.
• Technical logs: basic request information (page, time, anonymised IP) that our hosting provider keeps to operate the service securely.

We do not use advertising trackers, behavioural profiling, or analytics that follow you across other websites.

• To run the platform (legitimate interests, UK GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)): we need your account to identify you and your voice submissions so we can show them on the map and link them to projects.
• To send you updates about your area (consent, Art. 6(1)(a)): when you sign in, you ask us to keep you informed about projects and polls in your community. You can opt out at any time.
• To protect the service (legitimate interests): preventing spam, abuse, and attacks.

We use a small number of well-known service providers to operate HearAbouts. They process data on our behalf only:

• Clerk: sign-in, identity, and password resets.
• Replit: hosting and database storage.
• Anthropic: when you tap “help me sum it up with AI” on a voice draft, the text you wrote is sent to Anthropic’s Claude model to extract themes and outcomes. Anthropic does not use this data to train its models.

We never sell your data, and we do not share it with marketing companies.

• Voice submissions: kept indefinitely as part of the public community record. If you delete your account, we anonymise your voices (your name and postcode are removed but the substance of what you said is preserved).
• Account data: kept until you delete your account. You can do this any time from your settings page.
• Technical logs: kept for up to 30 days for security and debugging.

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• See what personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct anything that’s wrong.
• Ask us to delete your account and your data.
• Object to how we use it.
• Ask us to send your data to another service (portability).

For most of these you can act directly: head to your settings to delete your account and any voices you’ve submitted, or email us at hello@hearabouts.uk.

HearAbouts only uses essential cookies, the ones strictly needed to keep you signed in and to keep the site working. We do not use analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies, so you don’t need to accept or reject anything.

We show a small banner the first time you visit so you know cookies are being set, and you can dismiss it once you’ve read it.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your data, please email us first at hello@hearabouts.uk. We’ll do our best to put it right.

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