Last updated: 24 October 2026
This notice explains what personal information Sandbach Flashes collects, why, and what you can do about it. We collect very little: we have no accounts for visitors, no advertising and no tracking.
Who we are
Sandbach Flashes (sandbachflashes.co.uk) is run by a small independent group of local wildlife enthusiasts. We are responsible for the personal information described here. We are not connected with Natural England, which manages the Sandbach Flashes SSSI.
You can contact us about privacy through our Contact page.
What we collect and why
When you send us a message. Our contact forms ask for your name, email address, an optional phone number and your message. We use these only to read and reply to you. Each message is emailed to us, and a copy is kept in the website so nothing is lost if an email fails. To stop spam, the site briefly keeps a scrambled form of your internet (IP) address for 10 minutes, to limit how many messages one address can send. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in answering enquiries.
When you report a sighting. Each sighting we publish shows the observer’s name as recorded with it, along with the date, place and species. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in keeping a public record of the birds at the Flashes. If you would rather your name were not shown, tell us and we will remove it.
People who run the site. The few of us who manage the site have WordPress accounts. Logging in uses cookies, described in our Cookie Policy.
Services that load content on our pages
Some images, icons and maps on our pages come from other organisations. When your browser loads them, it sends your IP address to that organisation, as happens with any website. None of them is used for advertising on our site.
- Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons) provides the species descriptions and species photos. Our pages ask your browser not to send the address of the page you are on.
- OpenStreetMap Foundation provides the map tiles on our location and species maps.
- Font Awesome (Fonticons, Inc., USA) provides the icons used across the site.
- Google Fonts (Google, USA) provides the site’s lettering.
- Gravatar (Automattic, USA) shows profile pictures for blog authors. It receives a scrambled form of the email address to look up the picture.
Some of these organisations are in the USA, so your IP address may be processed there. They use their own safeguards for international transfers, set out in their privacy policies.
Who else sees your information
We do not sell or share personal information for marketing. Our web hosting company stores the site and its data for us, and contact form messages pass through our email provider.
How long we keep it
- Contact messages: 12 months, then deleted.
- Anti-spam IP record: 10 minutes.
- Sightings and observer names: for as long as we keep the record, unless you ask us to remove your name.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask to see the personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it, delete it, or stop using it. Contact us through our Contact page and we will reply within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
Cookies
Our Cookie Policy explains what is stored on your device when you visit.
Changes to this notice
If we change how we use personal information, we will update this page and the date at the top.