Privacy policy

We collect your postcode, your yes / no / unsure answers, and the date and time. That's it. No name, no email, no account.

We use your postcode to work out which constituency and region you're in, because the whole point of this site is showing what different areas think. To do this, our site sends the postcode (and nothing else) to postcodes.io, a UK postcode lookup service run by Ideal Postcodes. We keep your postcode with your answers, where our team can see it, and it helps us spot spam, such as an unusual number of submissions from one postcode. We never publish postcodes.

We only ever show combined totals for an area, and only once at least a few people there have taken part, so nobody's individual answers can be picked out.

We also add the sticker counts from our in-person boards at events. These go in as anonymous totals linked only to the constituency of the town where the board was, with no postcode or any other details about the people who took part.

This information is stored in a database run by Cloudflare, our hosting provider, in Western Europe, accessible only to the small team running this site. We keep survey answers for as long as Common Ground runs this survey project, so we can show how views change over time.

To protect the survey from spam, we keep a scrambled version of your internet (IP) address for up to 7 days, alongside your postcode and the time. We don't keep the IP address itself. The scrambled version is held in a separate list from your answers, and it's only used to notice when lots of submissions arrive from the same connection or the same postcode. If that happens, the extra submissions are set aside for a person to check rather than counted automatically.

The survey page also runs a bot check from Cloudflare, called Turnstile, to tell real people from automated programs. To do this, Cloudflare looks at technical details of your visit, such as your IP address and information about your browser. This isn't used for advertising, and we never see those details; we only receive a yes or no answer. If the bot check isn't passed, your answers are set aside for a person to check rather than counted automatically. You can read more in Cloudflare's Turnstile privacy policy.

If you sign up on our contact page we collect your email address, your name if you give it, and which boxes you tick. We use these only to send you our newsletter and updates you've asked for.

Our mailing list is run through Mailchimp, an American company, so this information is stored on their systems in the United States. Mailchimp is certified under the UK-US data bridge, the arrangement the UK government has approved for sending personal data to the United States. Mailchimp also records when you signed up and the IP address you signed up from.

Every email we send includes an unsubscribe link, or you can email us and we'll remove you.

If you email info@commongroundorg.co.uk we keep your message and address so we can reply and follow up. We don't add you to any mailing list unless you ask.

Our gallery shows photos of our sticker boards and conversations at public events. If a photo includes you and you'd like it taken down, email us and we'll remove it.

Our site is hosted by Cloudflare, an American company with data centres around the world. Our database, which holds the survey answers, is kept in Western Europe. The short technical logs described below may be handled outside Europe, including in the United States. Cloudflare is certified under the UK-US data bridge, the arrangement the UK government has approved for sending personal data to the United States.

As on most websites, each time a page is requested a short technical log entry is made: the page address, the date and time, your IP address, your browser type and the rough location your IP address suggests. These logs are deleted after 7 days at most. Within Common Ground, only our small team can see them, and we only use them to fix problems and keep the site secure.

If you type a postcode into the survey or the "find yours by postcode" box on the results page, it can appear in this log as part of the page address. A postcode typed into the results page box is sent to postcodes.io to find your area and isn't saved anywhere else.

Cloudflare also shows us overall figures, such as how many visits the site has had. These don't use cookies and don't identify anyone.

This site doesn't set any cookies for ordinary visitors. The only cookies are set when someone on our team signs in to the admin area (one to keep them signed in, and one that switches on the admin's edit mode) or when someone signs in to the password-protected resources page for Common Ground groups. They do nothing except that.

If someone enters the wrong password for our admin area or the resources page, we keep a scrambled version of their internet (IP) address for up to 24 hours, so that a connection making lots of wrong guesses can be locked out for a while.

If your browser can't connect to our site, it may send Cloudflare a short report about the failure, including your IP address. This helps Cloudflare find network faults.

Data protection law asks us to say what our legal reasons are for using your information.

• For the survey, and for the technical logs and spam checks that keep this site working and secure, we rely on our legitimate interests: running a fair community survey and keeping this site safe.
• For the newsletter, we rely on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by unsubscribing.

You can ask us at any time:

• what information we hold about you
• to correct it
• to delete it.

Just email info@commongroundorg.co.uk. Survey answers aren't stored with your name, so to find yours we'd need your postcode and roughly when you took the survey.

If you're not happy with how we've handled your information, you can complain to the UK's data regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office.

If we change how this site handles your information, we'll update this page. Last updated: 8 October 2026.