1. Who we are
NeighbourPlate Ltd (company number 17525495, registered office 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX) is the "data controller" for the personal data described here: we decide why and how it is used. Contact us about your data at privacy@neighbourplate.com, or use "Contact Us About Your Data" under Profile > Privacy & Data. General support: support@neighbourplate.com.
2. What we collect
Account and profile: your name, email address, phone number (if you give one), profile photo and preferences, and your sign-in details. Orders and activity: listings you view or favourite, baskets, orders (including extras and any note you write for the cook), collection details, collection codes, reviews and replies, issue reports and disputes, and your messages, including messages with our support team. Location: a collection area you set, searches by postcode or place, and, if you allow it, your device's location to show listings near you. For sellers, your collection location and meeting place. Payments: we do not store your full card details; our payment provider does. We hold payment and payout references, amounts and fees, including for any listing boosts you buy. For sellers, our payment provider collects and verifies your identity and bank details for payouts. Seller verification and compliance: if you sell, your food business registration details, your hygiene certificate, proof documents, your food safety confirmations, and the rating and establishment details we look up from the Food Standards Agency's public register. In the Food Safety Hub you may create records such as diary and cleaning entries, temperature records, allergen register entries (for dishes and extras), supplier details, training records, a recipe book, and photos of receipts. Some of these records can include information about other people (for example staff training). You are responsible for having the right to record it. Tax reporting: details UK law requires us to collect from every seller: name, date of birth (individuals), home address or a company's registered office, tax identification number (such as a National Insurance number or UTR) or company number, and your earnings through the platform. These are private and never shown to buyers. Supplies store: your delivery name, phone number and address, order contents and batch traceability records. Feedback: ideas and feedback you send in Help us improve. Technical: device type and operating system, a push-notification identifier, app version, and security and error logs. Special-category information: you may choose to put health information in a free-text field, for example an allergy in a note to the cook. We use it only to deliver your order and only because you chose to provide it. Please do not include it unless you need to.
3. Why we use it and our legal basis
- To provide the service you asked for — creating accounts, listings, orders and payments, messaging, handling cancellations, refunds and disputes, collection codes, Supplies orders and delivery (legal basis: contract).
- To keep people safe and the platform trustworthy — verifying sellers, checking hygiene ratings, moderating messages and reviews, preventing fraud and abuse, handling food-safety incidents and allergen changes (legitimate interests, and legal obligation where the law requires it).
- To meet legal duties — tax, accounting, HMRC reporting by digital platforms, responding to authorities, and keeping food-safety traceability records (legal obligation).
- To tell you about your orders and things you asked for, such as new listings from a seller you favourited, and for push notifications, which you can switch off in settings (contract, or consent for push notifications and device location, which you can withdraw at any time).
- To improve the app, understand feedback and keep it secure (legitimate interests).
- Where you choose to provide health information such as an allergy in a note, to deliver your order safely (your explicit consent).
We do not sell your personal data and we do not use it for advertising or profiling that has legal or similarly significant effects on you.
4. Automated tools and AI
We use a third-party AI service provider for some features. For sellers, if you use the AI helpers, the text you ask it to improve (such as a draft listing description, bio, or storage instructions) and, for the photo check, the photo you are checking are sent to that provider to produce a suggestion. They are optional and you must still review everything. For all users, chat messages may be checked automatically, including by the AI service, for abuse, scams, safety concerns and attempts to take payment outside the app. We send only what is needed for the task. Flagged messages may be held or reviewed by our team. Decisions that affect your account are made by a person, not solely by an automated tool.
5. Who we share it with
- The other person in a transaction: a seller sees a buyer's first name, order details, collection details and any note; a buyer sees the seller's public profile, listings, ratings and reviews, and collection place once an order is placed. For sellers, your name, food business name and registered business address are shown to buyers on your listings, as UK consumer law requires.
- Our service providers (processors), who handle data only on our instructions and under contracts that protect it: payment and identity-verification providers; hosting, database and file-storage providers; a push-notification provider; an AI service provider (see section 4); and map and place-search providers used to show maps and look up places and postcodes. Place and postcode searches you type are sent to the map and place-search providers.
- Public sources and authorities: we look up sellers' ratings from the Food Standards Agency. We report sellers' tax details and yearly earnings to HMRC as the law requires, and give the seller a copy. We may also share information with local authorities, the Food Standards Agency, the police, regulators and courts where the law requires, or where it is needed to investigate a food-safety or allergen incident or a serious crime.
- Professional advisers, insurers and, in a sale or reorganisation of our business, the buyer and its advisers, under confidentiality.
Our support and moderation team can read message content and reports only when investigating a dispute, a safety concern or a support request, never otherwise.
6. Transfers outside the UK
Some of our providers, including our payment, notification and AI providers, may process data outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on adequacy regulations or the UK's approved safeguards (such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU standard clauses) so your data stays protected.
7. How long we keep it
While your account is active we keep the data we need to run it. If you delete your account, data that is only about you — device and notification data, favourites, an open basket, seller verification documents, receipt photos, feedback and saved delivery addresses — is removed straight away, including the underlying files. Food Safety Hub records you created (such as diary, cleaning, temperature, allergen and training records and recipes) stay with your closed account, which is no longer linked to your name, so that food-safety records can still be traced. Records tied to a completed order, payment, payout, review or dispute, and messages exchanged around them, are kept but no longer linked to your name or contact details, because we must keep them for tax, accounting and legal purposes (normally up to 6 years) and because deleting the other party's side of a shared record is not ours to do alone. Sellers' tax details and the records of our checks are kept for five years after the end of the reporting year they relate to, as the law requires, even if the account is closed, and are then deleted. Supplies order and batch traceability records are kept as long as needed to trace a product in a recall, and no more than 6 years. Support messages are kept for as long as needed to resolve the matter and for a reasonable period afterwards.
8. Your rights
You have the right to be told how we use your data, to access it, to have it corrected, to have it erased in certain cases, to restrict or object to certain uses, to move it to another service, and to withdraw consent. You can use the most common rights in the app: go to Profile > Privacy & Data to download a complete copy of your data, or to delete your account. For anything else, such as correcting information or objecting to a use, use "Contact Us About Your Data" there or email privacy@neighbourplate.com. We reply within one month.
Complaints to us: you can complain to us about how we handle your personal data by using "Contact Us About Your Data" under Profile > Privacy & Data or by emailing privacy@neighbourplate.com. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days, look into it, and tell you the outcome without undue delay. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113), and we would appreciate the chance to put it right first.
9. Security and breaches
We protect your data with appropriate technical and organisational security measures, including access controls and encryption. No system is perfectly secure. If a breach is likely to put you at risk we will tell you and, where required, the ICO within 72 hours.
10. Children
NeighbourPlate is for people aged 18 and over. We ask you to confirm that you are 18 or over when you create an account, and we keep a record of that confirmation. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone younger, and will delete it if we find that we have.
11. Cookies and tracking
The app does not use advertising cookies or third-party advertising trackers. If we publish a website, it will have its own cookie notice.
12. Changes to this policy
When this policy materially changes, you will be asked to review and accept the new version. The effective date at the top shows the current version.