Privacy policy

Last updated 29 August 2026

The short version: we collect what we need to run the marketplace and nothing more. We don’t use analytics, we don’t use advertising trackers, and we don’t sell or share your data with anyone for marketing. Your email address and phone number are never visible to other members.

1. Who we are

Plug a’ Trade (“we”, “us”) runs the website at plugatrade.co.uk, where customers post jobs and tradespeople offer their services.

Plug a’ Trade is operated by NK Productions Limited, a company registered in England and Wales. NK Productions Limited is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.

Company number	17431725
Correspondence address	60 Tottenham Court Road, Office 1921, Fitzrovia, London W1T 2EW, United Kingdom
Contact	hello@plugatrade.co.uk

Email is the quickest way to reach us, including for any request about your data.

2. What we collect

Account details	Your name, email address and password (stored only as a cryptographic hash — we never see it). Optionally a username, profile photo and a short bio.
Contact and location	Phone number, address and postcode, if you give them. We store an approximate latitude and longitude derived from your postcode so we can sort results by distance.
Trade details	If you sign up as a trade: business name, the trades you work in, your working area, availability, and any VAT number and business address you put on invoices.
Verification documents	Certificates, insurance and qualification documents you upload so we can check them. These are stored privately and are never shown to other members.
Jobs and posts	Job posts, adverts, photos, comments and stories you publish, and applications you send or receive.
Messages	Messages and attachments you exchange with other members. Only you and the person you are talking to can read them.
Estimates and invoices	Documents you create or receive through the site, including line items, totals and any customer details you enter on them.
Reviews	Reviews you leave after a completed job, and reviews left about you.
Payment details	If you subscribe, Stripe handles the payment. We never see or store your card number — we keep only Stripe's identifiers and your subscription status.
Reports and moderation	Reports you make about other members or content, and any record of suspensions or appeals.
Notifications	If you turn on push notifications, the subscription details your browser gives us so we can send them. You can turn this off at any time in Settings.
Technical data	Standard server logs kept by our hosting providers — IP address, browser type, timestamps — used for security and to keep the service running.

3. What other people can see

This one matters, so it gets its own section.

Never shown to other members: your email address, your phone number, your full street address, and any verification documents you upload.
Your full name is optional. Settings has a switch to hide it. When it’s off, other members see your username instead — and that is enforced on our servers, not just hidden in the page.
Public to anyone, signed in or not: trade profiles, including business name, trades, working area, portfolio photos, adverts and reviews.
Visible to signed-in members only: job posts and their photos.
Shared only when you choose: contact details are exchanged when a hire is agreed, so the two of you can actually arrange the work.

4. Why we use it, and our lawful basis

To provide the service	Running your account, showing your posts, delivering messages, matching jobs to trades. Lawful basis: performance of a contract with you.
To take payment	Managing subscriptions and invoices. Lawful basis: performance of a contract, and legal obligation for financial records.
To keep people safe	Verifying trades, reviewing reports, suspending accounts that break the rules. Lawful basis: legitimate interests — running a marketplace people can trust.
To contact you	Service email such as confirmations and password resets, and in-app or push notifications about your own activity. Lawful basis: performance of a contract, and consent for push notifications.
To improve and secure the site	Diagnosing faults and preventing abuse. Lawful basis: legitimate interests.

5. The assistant

The site has an optional AI assistant that can help you find a trade, describe a problem or draft a job post. When you use it, what you type is sent to Anthropic, who provide the underlying model, so it can produce a reply.

It only ever sees data you could already see yourself.
Your conversations are not used to train anyone’s models under our agreement with Anthropic.
If you don’t use the assistant, nothing is sent to Anthropic at all.

We don’t sell your data and we don’t share it for anyone’s marketing. We use these providers to run the service:

Supabase	Database, accounts and file storage. Hosted in the EU (Stockholm).
Cloudflare	Website hosting, security and email routing.
Stripe	Subscription payments. They handle card details; we never receive them.
Resend	Sending service email such as password resets. EU region.
Anthropic	The AI assistant, and only when you use it (see above).
Sentry	Tells us when something breaks. It reports faults only — it is not analytics and it doesn't track your browsing. If the site works, nothing is sent. When it doesn't, we receive the error and a version of the page address with names and reference numbers stripped out, never your identity.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to establish or defend legal claims.

7. Where your data is held

Your account data, files and messages are stored in the European Economic Area (Stockholm, Sweden), and service email is sent from the EU. Some providers — Stripe, Cloudflare, Anthropic and Sentry — may process data outside the UK and EEA. Where that happens, transfers are covered by the safeguards UK data protection law requires, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement or Standard Contractual Clauses.

8. How long we keep it

Your account: for as long as it exists. Delete it and the data goes with it — see below.
Financial records: invoices and payment records are kept for six years, which UK tax law requires.
Moderation records: reports and suspension records are kept while they are needed to keep the marketplace safe.
Server logs: kept for a short period by our providers for security and diagnostics.

9. Deleting your account

Settings has a Delete account option, and it does what it says. It is not a deactivation: your profile, posts, messages, photos and uploaded documents are removed. Two things necessarily survive:

Financial records we are legally required to keep, as above.
Messages you sent sit in other people’s conversations too, and reviews you left remain attached to the trade they were about — but they are no longer linked to your name or account.

10. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:

give you a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
correct anything that’s wrong (most of it you can edit yourself);
delete your data (see above);
restrict or object to how we use it;
provide it in a portable format;
withdraw consent, where we relied on it — push notifications, for example.

Email hello@plugatrade.co.uk and we’ll respond within one month. If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, though we’d rather you came to us first.

11. Security

Access to data is enforced in the database itself rather than only in the app, so a bug in a page can’t expose data the rules don’t allow. Passwords are hashed and never stored in readable form. Verification documents and message attachments live in private storage reachable only through short-lived signed links. Traffic is encrypted in transit.

No system is perfect. If you think something is wrong, tell us at hello@plugatrade.co.uk and we’ll look at it straight away.

12. Age

Plug a’ Trade is for people aged 18 and over. We don’t knowingly collect data from children. If you believe a child has an account, tell us and we’ll remove it.

13. Cookies

We use only what’s needed to keep you signed in — no analytics, no advertising trackers. The details are in our cookie policy.

14. Changes

If we change this policy we’ll update the date at the top, and if the change is significant we’ll tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect.

Questions about any of this? Email hello@plugatrade.co.uk.