Privacy notice for homeowners

1. Why you might have had a letter

When someone applies for planning permission, the council publishes the application on its public planning register. Tellux collects new applications from those registers and shows them to local builders and trades, so they can offer to quote for the work. If a builder wrote to you, they found your application this way.

2. Who is responsible

Tellux is a trading name of Jack Jeffries. Email contact@tellux.co.uk.

Tellux decides what planning information to collect and how it's used in Tellux. The builder named on your letter is also responsible for their own letter and what they do with any reply you send them.

3. What we hold and where it comes from

• From council planning registers, through our data supplier PlanWire: the site address, the application reference, a description of the work, the dates and its status. Where the council publishes it, the applicant's name.
• If you reply to a builder through the page on your letter: the name, contact details and message you choose to send.
• If you ask us to stop letters: a scrambled code made from your postcode and house number or name, so we can recognise your address without keeping it in readable form.

4. What we use it for, and our legal basis

• Letting local builders offer to quote for your planned work. Builders using Tellux in your council area can see the application and write to you by post. Our legal basis is legitimate interests: helping local trades find work, and helping homeowners hear from local builders. We think that's reasonable because the information is already public for anyone to see, letters are only about your planned work, and you can stop them at any time.
• Passing your reply to the builder, if you send one. Legal basis: legitimate interests, as you asked for a quote.
• Making sure no one writes to you after you've said no. Legal basis: legitimate interests and our legal duty to respect objections.

We don't make decisions about you by computer that have legal or similar effects, and we don't sell your information.

5. Who sees it

• Builders and trades who use Tellux in your council area.
• Stannp, the UK company that prints and posts letters when a builder asks us to post them.
• The companies that host Tellux for us (Vercel and Neon). Some of them may handle information in the US, protected by the UK's data bridge with the US or the UK's approved contract clauses.

6. Your right to object

You can tell us at any time that you don't want letters, and we will always stop. Use tellux.co.uk/stop or email contact@tellux.co.uk. Your address is then hidden from every builder on Tellux, and no one can write or post a letter to it through Tellux. A letter already in the post may still arrive in the next few days.

7. Your other rights

You can ask for a copy of the information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it or limit how we use it. Email contact@tellux.co.uk. We'll reply within one month.

8. How long we keep it

• Planning application details stay in Tellux while they're useful to builders. We're setting firm time limits and will update this notice when we do.
• A reply you send a builder stays in their Tellux account until they delete it or close their account.
• A request to stop letters is kept permanently, because that's the only way to make sure it keeps working.

9. Complaints

Please tell us first at contact@tellux.co.uk and we'll try to put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.