Privacy

LDC Express is committed to handling your personal data in line with UK GDPR. This page tells you what we collect, why, and what we do with it.

What we collect

• Contact details: name, email, phone number (optional).
• Property details: address, postcode, local planning authority, measurements and descriptions of the proposed or existing development.
• Photographs: you provide site photographs to support your application. Stored in encrypted Cloudflare R2 storage.
• Payment details: processed by Stripe. We never see your full card number. We retain Stripe session and payment intent IDs for reconciliation and refund purposes.
• Usage data: basic page-view analytics via Plausible (privacy-friendly, no cookies, no personal identifiers).

Why we collect it

• Legal basis — contract: we need your property and project details to draft and file your Lawful Development Certificate application.
• Legal basis — legal obligation: we retain transaction records for 6 years to comply with UK tax and consumer protection rules.
• Legal basis — legitimate interests: we analyse aggregate usage to improve the service.

Who we share it with

• Your local planning authority: the whole point — your details and application documents are sent by email to the council's planning team for a decision.
• Your conveyancer: only if you share your dashboard link with them.
• Sub-processors: Cloudflare (hosting, database, file storage, PDF generation, transactional email), Postmark (email delivery, including filing emails to the council), Stripe (payments), Anthropic (AI-assisted drafting of your Statement of Truth and application documents), Mapbox (the map preview of your property during intake), postcodes.io and planning.data.gov.uk (postcode-to-council and planning-designation lookups; these receive your postcode and coordinates only). All are bound by data-processing terms.

Retention

Abandoned intakes: if you start the intake wizard but don't proceed to payment, we hard-delete your answers, contact details, and property information 30 days after you started. Nothing you entered before paying is kept beyond that window.

Paid applications: the case file (your Statement of Truth, application form, cover letter, site location plan, photographs, council decision, and audit log) is retained for up to 6 years after the council decision or refund date — long enough to support any subsequent appeal, legal challenge, or tax question. You can request earlier deletion at any time; we'll retain only what we're legally obliged to keep.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to access, correct, delete, or port your data, and the right to object to processing. Email privacy@ldcexpress.co.uk and we'll respond within 30 days.

Contact

Data controller: {{ENTITY_NAME}} (trading as LDC Express), company number {{COMPANY_NUMBER}}, registered office {{REGISTERED_ADDRESS}}. Contact: privacy@ldcexpress.co.uk.

Last updated: 2026-09-03.