1. Introduction
This Privacy Policy explains how Shakespeare Web & Social, operated by Monty Shakespeare as a sole trader, collects, uses, stores and protects personal information.
This policy applies to the website shakespearewebsocial.co.uk, including its contact form, and applies to visitors to the website, prospective clients and existing clients.
- We are committed to protecting your personal information and handling it responsibly and transparently. We aim to comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018 and other applicable data protection and privacy legislation.
2. Who We Are
The data controller responsible for your personal data is:
Monty Shakespeare, trading as Shakespeare Web & Social
Website: https://shakespearewebsocial.co.uk
Email: monty@shakespearewebsocial.co.uk
Telephone: 07592234209
For questions about this Privacy Policy or how your personal data is handled, you can contact us using the details above.
3. Personal Data We Collect
The personal data we collect depends on how you interact with Shakespeare Web & Social.
3.1 Information You Provide Through the Contact Form
When you submit an enquiry through the contact form on shakespearewebsocial.co.uk/contact, we may collect:
- Your name
- Your email address
- The services you are enquiring about
- Your comments and/or questions
3.2 Information You Provide Through Other Forms of Contact
If you contact us by email, telephone, text message or another direct method of communication, we may collect information that you choose to provide.
This may include:
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your telephone number
- The contents of your communications
- Information about your enquiry or potential project
If you choose to communicate with us by telephone or text message, we may retain your telephone number for the purposes of communicating with you.
3.3 Information Collected When You Become a Client
If you become a client, we may collect additional information that is reasonably necessary to provide our services and manage our business relationship.
This may include:
- Your business address
- Where your business operates
- Information about your business's purpose
- Information about your products and services
- Information necessary to provide web design, SEO or other services
- Information contained in communications between you and Shakespeare Web & Social
- Information required for invoicing and accounting purposes
We will only request information that is relevant and reasonably necessary for the purpose for which it is collected.
3.4 Information Collected Automatically
When you visit our website, certain technical and usage information may be collected automatically through Google Analytics, where you have provided the necessary consent.
This may include:
- Browser and device information
- Operating system information
- Approximate geographical information
- Pages visited
- Interactions with the website, including where you click
- Date and time of visits
- Referring website or source
Google Analytics may use information from your device and browser to provide website usage statistics. Google states that, for users in the UK, individual IP addresses are used to derive approximate location information and are then discarded rather than being stored as individual IP addresses.
4. Cookies and Similar Technologies
Our website uses cookies and similar technologies.
4.1 Essential Security Cookie
The contact form uses an essential security cookie containing a randomly generated CSRF security token.
This cookie is used to help protect the contact form against unauthorised or malicious submissions.
The cookie is strictly necessary for the security and operation of the contact form and is not used for advertising or analytics purposes.
4.2 Google Analytics Cookies
Where you provide consent, we use Google Analytics cookies to understand how visitors use our website.
These cookies help us understand information such as:
- How many people visit the website
- Which pages are visited
- How visitors interact with the website
- How visitors arrive at the website
- General information about visitors' browsers and devices
Google Analytics cookies are not essential to the operation of the website. You can change whether you accept or reject cookies with the setting below.
5. How We Use Personal Data
We may use personal data for the following purposes:
- Responding to enquiries
- Providing information requested by you
- Discussing potential services or projects
- Providing services to clients
- Communicating with prospective and existing clients
- Managing our business relationship with clients
- Maintaining the security of our website and systems
- Protecting the contact form against spam and malicious submissions
- Maintaining business and legal records
- Preparing and maintaining invoices and accounting records
- Understanding how visitors use our website
- Improving the experience, visibility and functionality of our website
- Improving the processes and efficiency of our business
- Complying with our legal and regulatory obligations
We will not use your personal data for purposes that are incompatible with the purposes described above without providing appropriate information and, where necessary, obtaining your consent.
6. Lawful Bases for Processing
Under the UK GDPR, we must have a lawful basis for processing personal data.
Depending on the circumstances, we may rely on the following lawful bases:
Contract and steps prior to entering into a contract
We may process personal data where it is necessary to take steps at your request before entering into a contract, or where processing is necessary to provide services under a contract with you.
For example, this may apply when discussing a potential project or providing services to an existing client.
Legitimate interests
We may process personal data where it is necessary for our legitimate interests, provided that those interests are not overridden by your rights and interests.
Our legitimate interests may include:
- Responding to enquiries
- Managing communications with prospective clients and clients
- Maintaining website security
- Preventing spam and malicious activity
- Improving our website and business processes
- Maintaining appropriate business records
Legal obligation
We may process personal data where processing is necessary to comply with a legal obligation, including obligations relating to taxation, accounting and financial records.
Consent
Where required, we rely on your consent for processing activities such as non-essential analytics cookies.
Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before consent was withdrawn.
7. How We Share Personal Data
We do not sell or routinely share your personal data with third parties.
We may provide personal data to third-party service providers where this is necessary to operate our website, provide our services, maintain our systems or comply with legal obligations.
Webhosting UK
Our website and associated server-side systems are hosted by Webhosting UK.
Webhosting UK operates data centres in the UK, including facilities in Wakefield, York and Nottingham. Personal data processed through our website and hosting environment may therefore be stored and processed through Webhosting UK's infrastructure and services.
Google Analytics
Where you have consented to analytics cookies, information about your use of our website is processed through Google Analytics.
Google operates data collection and processing infrastructure in multiple locations. For UK users, Google states that data is initially collected through UK or EU-based infrastructure before being forwarded to Analytics processing servers. Transfers of UK personal data to Google LLC are subject to appropriate contractual safeguards.
Email and contact form processing
Our contact form operates using software and code hosted on our Webhosting UK server. Email is sent through our business email infrastructure using SMTP and PHPMailer.
PHPMailer is software used by our server to send email and is not itself a separate third-party service to which we disclose your personal information.
Other third parties
In some circumstances, we may use additional third-party service providers where reasonably necessary to provide our services or operate our business.
Where we do so, we will take appropriate steps to ensure that personal data is handled in accordance with applicable data protection law.
We may also disclose personal data where you specifically request or authorise us to do so, for example where another professional or freelancer is involved in providing a service that we do not provide ourselves.
We may disclose personal data where required by law, regulation, court order or a competent public authority.
8. International Transfers
Some of the service providers we use may process personal data outside the United Kingdom.
For example, Google Analytics may involve transfers of UK personal data to Google LLC in the United States. Google states that appropriate contractual safeguards, including Standard Contractual Clauses where applicable, are used for relevant international transfers.
Where personal data is transferred outside the UK, we will take appropriate steps to ensure that the transfer is lawful and that suitable safeguards are in place as required by applicable data protection law.
9. How Long We Keep Personal Data
We do not retain personal data indefinitely where there is no ongoing need to do so.
Website enquiries
If you make an enquiry but do not become a client, we generally retain the information relating to your enquiry for up to one year before deleting it, unless there is a legitimate reason to retain it for longer.
If you become a client, information relating to the initial enquiry may be incorporated into our client records where it is reasonably necessary for providing our services or maintaining appropriate business records.
Client information
We generally retain client information for the duration of our business relationship.
After the relationship ends, certain information may need to be retained for longer where it is necessary for legal, accounting, tax or other legitimate business purposes.
Accounting and financial records
As a sole trader, we are required to retain certain business and tax records for HMRC purposes. Business records generally need to be retained for at least five years after the relevant Self Assessment deadline, subject to applicable exceptions and circumstances requiring longer retention.
We may therefore retain invoices and other financial records for the period required by applicable law.
Contact form security records
The contact form uses a server-side rate-limiting system that records a hashed representation of the submitting IP address together with a timestamp.
These records are used to prevent repeated or abusive form submissions. Rate-limiting records are automatically eligible for deletion after 24 hours when appropriate, although a record may remain for longer if there has not been a subsequent submission from the relevant source.
10. How We Protect Personal Data
We take reasonable and appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against unauthorised access, loss, misuse, alteration or disclosure.
These measures include:
- HTTPS encryption for website connections
- SSL/TLS encryption for data transmitted over the internet
- Secure hosting infrastructure provided by Webhosting UK
- Password protection and access controls for systems containing personal data
- Secure server-side processing of contact form submissions
- Security measures designed to prevent malicious or automated form submissions
- Appropriate restrictions on access to personal information
No method of transmitting or storing information electronically can be guaranteed to be completely secure. However, we take reasonable steps to protect the personal information entrusted to us.
11. Your Data Protection Rights
Under applicable UK data protection law, you may have rights including:
- The right to be informed about how your personal data is used
- The right to access your personal data
- The right to have inaccurate or incomplete personal data corrected
- The right to request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances
- The right to request restriction of processing in certain circumstances
- The right to object to certain processing
- The right to data portability in certain circumstances
- Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling, where applicable
These rights are subject to certain conditions and exemptions under applicable data protection law.
12. How to Exercise Your Rights
If you wish to exercise any of your data protection rights, please contact:
Email: monty@shakespearewebsocial.co.uk
Please provide sufficient information for us to identify you and understand your request. We may need to request additional information to verify your identity before providing personal data or acting on a request.
We aim to respond to requests as promptly as reasonably possible and, where possible, within seven business days.
For requests subject to the statutory UK GDPR response period, we will respond without undue delay and normally within one month of receiving the request, subject to any applicable extensions or exemptions permitted by law.
13. Complaints
If you have concerns about how we have handled your personal data, we encourage you to contact us first so that we can investigate and attempt to resolve the issue.
You also have the right to complain to the UK's data protection supervisory authority, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):
You can find further information about your data protection rights and the ICO's role on the ICO website.
14. Third-Party Websites and External Links
Our website may contain links to websites, services or platforms operated by third parties.
We are not responsible for the privacy practices, security or content of external websites.
If you follow a link to another website, we recommend that you review that website's own privacy policy before providing personal information.
15. Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy periodically to reflect changes to our business, website, services, technology or applicable legal requirements.
When we make changes, we will update the "Last updated" date at the beginning of this policy.
Where we make significant changes that materially affect how we use personal data, we will provide additional notification where appropriate.
16. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, how we handle personal data, or your data protection rights, please contact:
Monty Shakespeare
Trading as Shakespeare Web & Social
Website: https://shakespearewebsocial.co.uk
Email: monty@shakespearewebsocial.co.uk
Telephone: 07592234209
Last updated: 4 October 2026
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