Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how Grace's Pet Sitting collects, uses and protects your personal information when you contact us, request pet care, or use our website.

1. Who we are

Grace's Pet Sitting is a small, local pet-sitting service based in Watford, providing in-home pet visits and related pet-care services across the surrounding Hertfordshire area.

• Business name: Grace's Pet Sitting
• Website: https://gracespetsitting.co.uk
• Contact email: hello@gracespetsitting.co.uk

Grace's Pet Sitting is responsible for deciding how your personal information is collected and used. If you have any privacy questions or would like to make a request about your information, please contact us at hello@gracespetsitting.co.uk.

2. Information we collect

We may collect information through:

• The Booking Enquiry Form
• The New Client Form
• The Contact Form
• The Feedback / Testimonial Form
• Emails
• Telephone calls
• WhatsApp or text messages
• Meet and greet appointments
• Admin booking and client records
• Website technical information, where applicable

Owner / customer information

• Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Home address
• Postcode and area
• Preferred contact method
• Booking dates and service requirements
• Communications and notes
• Payment and transaction records

Emergency contact information

• Emergency contact name
• Emergency contact phone number
• Relationship to the customer, if provided

Pet information

• Pet name
• Pet type and breed
• Age and sex
• Neutered / spayed status
• Feeding and water instructions
• Routine and care requirements
• Temperament and behaviour
• Reactions to new people
• Medication, allergies and medical needs
• Veterinary practice and contact details
• Emergency care instructions

Home and access information

• Property address
• Key collection and return arrangements
• Alarm or access instructions
• Relevant home-care and safety information

Feedback and media

• Testimonials and ratings
• Pet photographs or videos
• Permission choices relating to website, social media and marketing use

Website information

• IP address (as part of standard web-server logs)
• Browser and device information
• Website usage information
• Cookie or similar technology preferences

We only collect information reasonably needed to respond to enquiries, arrange and deliver services, keep pets safe and manage the business.

3. How the information is used

We may use your information to:

• Respond to enquiries
• Check availability
• Arrange meet and greet appointments
• Set up and manage bookings
• Provide safe and appropriate care
• Follow feeding, medication and routine instructions
• Contact owners during bookings
• Contact emergency contacts or veterinary practices when necessary
• Process and record payments
• Maintain booking and client records
• Respond to complaints or disputes
• Meet insurance, accounting or legal obligations
• Keep the website and admin dashboard secure
• Publish testimonials or pet photographs only where appropriate permission has been given

We will not sell your information to advertisers or unrelated third parties.

4. Lawful bases for using your information

Under UK data protection law, we rely on the following lawful bases:

Contract

• Responding to booking enquiries
• Taking steps requested before a booking
• Managing confirmed bookings
• Providing pet-sitting services
• Communicating with you about those services

Legal obligation

• Keeping records required for tax, accounting or other legal requirements
• Responding where disclosure is required by law

Legitimate interests

• Running and administering the business
• Protecting the website and admin systems
• Managing complaints, disputes or insurance matters
• Maintaining appropriate client and booking records

Consent

• Publishing pet photographs or videos
• Publishing testimonials where consent is required
• Optional marketing communications
• Non-essential cookies or similar technologies, where consent is legally required

Submitting a booking form is not treated as consent to all processing. Confirming that you have read this Privacy Notice is a simple acknowledgment and is kept separate from your optional consent choices. Consent for pet photographs or social-media use is always optional and is never required to receive pet-sitting services.

5. Who your information may be shared with

We only share information where necessary, with:

• Emergency contacts you have supplied
• Your veterinary practice
• Emergency veterinary providers
• Our website, database and secure storage provider
• Our email service provider
• Payment providers, where used
• Insurers
• Accountants or professional advisers
• Law enforcement, courts or regulators where legally required

Service providers we use

• Lovable — website hosting and publishing platform.
• Lovable Cloud (built on Supabase) — secure database, file storage (for gallery images, client documents and form submissions) and admin authentication.
• Lovable Email — delivery of automated emails relating to enquiries, bookings and admin notifications.
• Google Fonts — website typography is loaded from Google's font service, which may involve Google receiving your IP address as part of standard web requests.

Outside the website, we use Gmail for email and WhatsApp or text messages for other correspondence.

Payments are currently taken by bank transfer only.

Service providers are only permitted to process your information for the agreed business purpose and are expected to keep it secure.

6. International data transfers

Some of our service providers may process information outside the United Kingdom. Where they do, we rely on the safeguards those providers put in place (such as UK / EU approved data-transfer mechanisms and their own security measures) to protect your information.

7. How your information is stored and protected

Your information may be stored in:

• The private admin dashboard
• Our secure database and file-storage system
• Grace's email account
• Secure PDF form records
• Booking and client management records

Practical protections include:

• Admin authentication (login required)
• Private (non-public) file storage buckets
• Access limited to authorised users
• Secure passwords
• Restricted database permissions (row-level security policies)
• Time-limited, signed links for private documents where applicable
• HTTPS encryption for the website and admin dashboard
• Software updates and provider-managed backups

No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take these steps to protect your information. Private information such as home addresses, emergency contacts, home-access details and pet-care instructions is never displayed publicly on the website.

8. How long we keep your information

We keep personal information only for as long as it is genuinely required. The table below sets out our usual retention periods.

Key-collection notes, alarm codes and similar access information are deleted promptly once they are no longer needed.

9. Your rights

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

• Be informed about how your information is used
• Request access to your information
• Ask for inaccurate information to be corrected
• Ask for your information to be erased
• Ask for processing to be restricted
• Object to certain uses
• Request transfer of your information, where applicable
• Withdraw consent where consent is the lawful basis

To exercise any of these rights, please email hello@gracespetsitting.co.uk. We may need to verify your identity before responding.

10. Withdrawing photo or testimonial consent

You can withdraw your permission for Grace's Pet Sitting to use a testimonial or a pet photograph or video at any time by emailing hello@gracespetsitting.co.uk. We will stop future use and remove the material from the channels we control where reasonably possible.

Withdrawing this optional permission will not affect the pet-sitting service we provide to you or your pets.

11. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please first contact us at hello@gracespetsitting.co.uk so we can try to put things right.

You also have the right to raise a concern with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

12. Cookies and website technologies

The Grace's Pet Sitting website uses a small number of essential technologies to work correctly. Based on the current build of the website, we do not use advertising cookies or third-party analytics.

Essential technologies

• Session and admin authentication — used only when Grace signs in to the private admin dashboard, to keep her logged in securely. Provided by our database and authentication provider (Lovable Cloud / Supabase). Stored in the browser (local storage) for the duration of the admin session.
• Google Fonts — the website loads its typography from Google Fonts. This is a standard web request and does not set advertising cookies, but Google may receive your IP address as part of the request.

Because the public website does not currently use non-essential cookies or analytics, we do not show a cookie consent banner. If analytics or other non-essential technologies are added in future, this section will be updated and a suitable consent mechanism will be added at the same time.

13. Changes to this Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time, for example when our services or the systems we use change. The updated version will always be published on this page, with a new "Last updated" date at the top.

This Privacy Notice is intended to be clear and helpful. It is not legal advice and does not guarantee compliance with any specific law or regulation. If you have questions, please contact hello@gracespetsitting.co.uk.