Last updated: October 2026
This policy explains how Kingstanding Together, an unincorporated community association, collects and uses personal data through this website (kingstanding.org). If you have any questions, contact us at our contact form.
Signing a petition
When you sign a petition we collect your name, email address and postcode, and we record your IP address and the time you signed. We use this to check your signature is genuine, to email you a link to confirm it, and to keep you updated about the campaign. Our lawful basis is your consent, which you give by ticking the box when you sign.
Your name and postcode are never shown publicly on the website. The “recent signatures” list shows only a broad area (for example “Kingstanding”) and a rough time — never your name, email or full postcode.
Who we share it with
Confirmed signatures — name and postcode only — are submitted to Birmingham City Council as part of formally delivering the petition; that is the point of signing. We send confirmation and campaign emails through Brevo (Sendinblue), which processes your email address on our behalf. We do not sell your data or share it for marketing.
How long we keep it
Signatures are kept for the life of the campaign as part of the petition’s record — including signatures that were never confirmed by email (these still show in the public total, but are not submitted to the Council). We do not delete signatures automatically. You can ask us to remove your details at any time using the contact details below.
Membership and the members’ area
When you apply to join, we record your application on our register of members — your name, postal address, email address, and (only where you choose to declare it) whether you are registered to vote at that address — as our constitution requires. Our Management Committee reviews each application; if it is approved we record your date of admission and email you your sign-in details, and if it is declined we delete your details and tell you. The members’ area uses real names: your name — plus your board position and profile photo if you have one (adding a photo is optional and entirely your choice) — is visible to other signed-in members in the member directory, but never your email or address, and never to the public. There is no anonymous membership. We keep this data while you are a member; if you leave, or ask us at the contact below, we remove your account.
Sharing a memory (Voices)
If you send us a memory through our Voices project, we receive what you send us by email. We publish contributions only with your consent, credited as you ask, and you can ask for a contribution to be amended or removed at any time.
Comments, likes and shared photos
If you create an account to comment, like things or share photos, we keep your display name (shown with what you post), your email address (never shown; used only to confirm your account, reset your password and, if you choose, tell you about replies), your password in a scrambled form nobody can read, and what you post and when. We use this to run these features, which you ask us to do by signing up, and to keep the site safe. You can change your details, turn off reply emails or delete your account at any time from your account page; deleting it removes your email address, comments and likes straight away. Photos you share stay in the archive with the credit you gave them unless you ask us to take them down. More detail is in our community guidelines.
Your profile and privacy settings
You can add a short bio and a header image. They appear, with your display name and profile photo, on the small card people see when they tap your name on the community feed, along with the month you joined. You can also choose who can @mention you, switch notifications off by type, and mute or block people and words. We keep these settings with your account to make them work. Nobody is told when you mute or block them. Display settings (text size, contrast and font) are saved only on your device. When you change your name, profile photo or bio, we keep a permanent record of the change, who made or approved it, and when. If you delete your account, we keep your last name and a one-way fingerprint of your email address (not the address itself), so that if the same person signs up again the two accounts can be linked. For 90 days after a change, your previous name is shown next to your new one on your profile card (and, for members, in the members’ directory). Members’ name changes are approved by an organiser first.
Closed groups (members)
Members can start closed or hidden groups in the members’ area. What’s posted in a group is seen by its members — and our Super Admins can always see every group and everything posted in it, so they can keep members safe and close a group if needed. Posts that are reported are also seen by our moderators. Posts are kept until their author, a group admin or a Super Admin deletes them, or the group is deleted.
Two-step sign-in
Organisers, Management Committee members and website admins sign in with a code from an authenticator app as well as their password; other members can switch it on too. We keep the app’s secret key and one-time backup codes in a form only our server can check (backup codes are stored scrambled). They’re deleted if two-step sign-in is switched off.
Local groups
If you add a local group, we keep the details you give for its listing, who set it up and who its organisers are, and that you confirmed you’re 18 or over. The listing — including the contact details you enter for the group — is published once our volunteers approve it, so please use the group’s own email or phone, not personal ones. When an organiser posts as the group, the post shows the group’s name and the organiser’s display name. If you follow a group, we keep a note of it so we can tell you about its posts; nobody else can see who follows. Organisers can remove a listing at any time, and deleting your account takes you off any group you organise.
Newsletter
We only send our newsletter to people who ask for it, by ticking the box when they sign up or on their account page. We record that you agreed and when, and use your account’s email address to send it. Our lawful basis is your consent. You can stop it at any time from your account page, and deleting your account removes you from the list. We never share the list.
Councillor surgeries and Ward Forums
To book a councillor surgery appointment or send a question or agenda suggestion for a Ward Forum, you first confirm you live locally. We ask for your full name, address, postcode and phone number. We send only your postcode to postcodes.io, a free public postcode service, to find which ward you live in (Kingstanding, Oscott or Perry Common).
When you book a surgery appointment you can also attach up to three documents (such as a letter or a photo of the problem) so your councillors can read up before you meet. Only you and your ward’s councillors can open them; they are never public. Photos are re-saved to remove hidden location data. Documents are deleted 90 days after the surgery, straight away if the appointment is cancelled, and within a day if you upload one but don’t finish booking.
Your ward’s councillors see your name, contact details and what you write when you book an appointment or send a question, so they can see you and reply. Questions and suggestions are not shown to other residents. Our lawful basis is that you ask us to pass them on. Bookings and questions are deleted 12 months after the surgery or after you send them. You can remove your verified address at any time from your account page. If you delete your account, your address, bookings, questions and any documents you attached are deleted too. Ward Forums themselves are official meetings, minuted by Birmingham City Council, and the Council publishes those minutes.
My Area: your postcode
If you have an account, you can choose to save your postcode so the site can show you what’s near you: your ward, your councillors, your next ward meeting and planning applications within a kilometre. It’s optional, and you can use the site fully without it. We send only the postcode to postcodes.io, a free public postcode service, to find its location and ward, and we keep the postcode, that location and the ward with your account. If you’re a verified local resident (above), the postcode from your verified address is used, so we only ever hold one postcode for you.
Your postcode is never shown publicly or to other residents, and we use it only to personalise local information for you — never for advertising or anything unrelated. Our lawful basis is that you ask us to do this. You can change or remove it at any time from your account page or My area. It is included when you download your data, and deleted with your account.
Planning in Kingstanding
Our planning pages copy public information from Birmingham City Council’s planning register and licensing notices every morning: each application’s address, description, dates and decision. We never copy the names of applicants or agents. If you ask for weekly planning emails, we keep your email address and the wards you chose, and use them only to send those emails. There’s an unsubscribe link in every email, and deleting your account removes them too. If you follow an application, we keep a note of which one (and your email address, if you ask for email updates) so we can tell you when it changes. Nobody else can see what you follow. Stop following at any time, from the application’s page or the link in any email; deleting your account removes these too. Comments on applications go to the council, not to us.
Ask Kingstanding
When you use Ask Kingstanding, your question and the last few messages of the chat are sent to Fireworks AI, which runs the AI model that writes the answer. If our own pages don’t answer the question, a short search is sent to Tavily, which searches a fixed list of official websites (such as Birmingham City Council and GOV.UK). We don’t send your name or account with it. Please don’t type personal details into the chat. We don’t keep the answers.
Community insights
To understand what matters locally, we keep a copy of questions asked in Ask Kingstanding and of Ward Forum questions, agenda suggestions and comments. Before we store them, we take out email addresses, phone numbers, postcodes and house numbers. We store them without your name or account. If you are a verified resident, we note your ward. For surgery appointments we keep only a count, never what you wrote. Each question is sorted into a topic (such as “Housing” or “Roads and pavements”) by the same AI service.
Only our Super Admins can see these insights. A weekly summary of the numbers and topics goes to the people they choose. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in understanding what residents need. Items are deleted after 12 months. We never keep questions about suicide or self-harm.
Pride in Place residents’ survey
Our Kingstanding South-East Pride in Place survey asks what you think about the area and what should be prioritised. Everyone is welcome to take part, whatever their age. We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number or house number, and answering does not sign you up to anything.
What we collect: your answers; your postcode (you can choose not to give it) — used only to understand which parts of the area we have heard from and whether you are inside the Pride in Place area, and never reported for an individual postcode; whether the response was given online, with a volunteer at a named event, or on paper; and, if you reached the survey from a link such as a leaflet or our homepage, which one. We do not record your IP address or any device details with your answers.
Why we can use it (lawful basis): our legitimate interests as a community association in finding out what residents want for the area and making sure those views inform the Pride in Place programme. We have weighed this against your interests: the survey is voluntary, collects as little as possible, and results are only published as totals. The optional questions about disability and ethnic group are special category data, so for those we rely on your explicit consent — we only ask them if you tick to agree, and you can skip them. We use them only to check whether we are hearing from a broad range of people.
Children and young people: young residents’ views matter and anyone can take part. The survey does not ask for anything that identifies you. If you are under 13, we ask that you check with a parent or carer before answering the two optional questions about disability and ethnic group — or simply skip them.
Is it anonymous? We don’t ask who you are, but a postcode combined with other answers could in rare cases make a response identifiable, so we treat every response as personal data and protect it. Only a small number of named, authorised people can see individual responses; the website’s editors cannot. We do not combine survey answers with our membership or petition records, or try to work out who gave a response.
Survey reminders: so we can stop showing you the “Take the survey” reminder once you’ve done it, finishing the survey online leaves a small cookie in your browser. If you’re signed in to a kingstanding.org account or the members’ area at the time, we also note that your account has taken part. We don’t note your answers, when you took part, or anything that links your account to your response.
Who we share it with: we share totals and summaries only — never individual responses — with the Kingstanding South-East Neighbourhood Board and Birmingham City Council to inform Pride in Place planning, and publish a summary on this website. Groups of fewer than five people are never broken down.
How long we keep it: individual responses are kept for three years after the survey closes, so they can inform the Pride in Place plan and its first years of delivery, and then deleted. The totals and summaries (which contain no individual responses) may be kept for the life of the programme.
Your rights: because you are not named, we may not be able to find your response later — but if you give us the reference shown when you submitted it, we can remove or correct it. Use our contact form.
Cookies
We use only the minimal storage needed to run the site (for example, to remember your display preferences and to help prevent duplicate signing). We do not use advertising cookies. If you sign in to comment, two small cookies keep you signed in; they are removed when you sign out.
Counting visits: to see which pages are useful, we count visits anonymously with Umami, which runs on our own server. It uses no cookies and stores nothing on your device, keeps no IP addresses (they are turned into an anonymous code that changes regularly), and never shares anything with Google or advertisers. It records things like which page was viewed, the website you came from, and your type of device and country. Petition pages and the members’ area are not counted.
Your rights and contact
You can download a copy of everything linked to your account at any time, from your account page (“Download my data”). You can also ask us what personal data we hold about you and ask us to correct or delete it, or raise any concern about how your data is handled, by emailing our contact form. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ico.org.uk).