1 · Who we are
The data controller for personal data processed through the Tradelynx platform is Tradelynx Limited (registered in England and Wales, company number 17064008, registered office 2 Hayling Close, Fareham, Hampshire, PO14 3AE; ICO registration number ZC156126). For Tradelynx Enterprise customers, the enterprise organisation is the controller and Tradelynx Limited is the processor under the workspace data-processing addendum.
- Privacy contact: privacy@tradelynx.co.uk
- General support: support@tradelynx.co.uk
2 · What this notice covers
This notice covers how we handle personal data when you:
- submit a customer enquiry or create a customer account,
- sign in using magic links, email OTP, SMS OTP, or phone-call OTP,
- sign up as a trader, upload documents, or complete identity verification,
- message through Tradelynx, upload photos / files, or use support workflows,
- use property-history, owner-verification, or paid report products,
- use telephony features, public trader profiles, public listing pages, or enterprise / API features,
- pay for subscriptions, entitlements, or other chargeable products.
3 · Categories of personal data we process
What you give us (name, address, the job description), what your devices give us (IP, device type), and what we generate (job history, ratings, payment records).
The exact data we process depends on the feature you use. The main categories are identity and contact data, property and job information, account and authentication data, communications, uploaded files, verification and compliance records, billing records, support records, technical security logs, and public profile information where a trader has enabled publication.
4 · Feature-by-feature summary
5 · Sources of personal data
We collect personal data directly from you when you submit forms, create accounts, send messages, upload files, or contact support.
We also receive personal data from other sources in certain workflows:
- from matched traders and customers during job delivery and messaging,
- from DiDit when a trader completes or attempts identity verification,
- from Stripe when a checkout, subscription, refund, or billing event occurs,
- from Telnyx when SMS, calls, or call-control events are processed,
- from public or customer-entered property details, owner-verification submissions, and property-history records,
- from estate agents, insurers, lenders, or other enterprise users where they create or manage records in the platform.
6 · More detail by processing area
Customer enquiries and job handling
When a customer submits an enquiry, we process their contact details, property / job details, messages, uploaded media, and scheduling information to route the request, manage follow-up, support matched traders, and keep an auditable job history. Customer contact information is not intended to be shown on public pages.
Customer login (magic links and OTP)
We support email magic-link and OTP login, and some flows can also send a code by SMS or automated phone call. Those flows process email address, phone number, OTP generation and verification data, delivery channel, timestamps, and security metadata such as IP address and user agent where available.
Trader sign-up and document handling
Trader onboarding processes identity / contact details, business details, postcode, profile data, uploaded documents, extracted document metadata such as expiry dates and reference numbers, prescreening results, verification state, trust markers, and related audit logs. We may use these records to decide whether further manual review is required and whether a trader can access certain workflows.
How you found us. When you apply we also record where your visit began: the website that referred you, any campaign tag on the link you arrived by, and the first page you landed on. Of the referring site's address we keep only its name and the first part of its path, never the query string, so a search term or anything else carried in that link is discarded and never stored. If you choose to answer "How did you hear about us?" on the application, we keep your answer too. Recording where your visit began happens automatically; answering the question is your choice, and skipping it changes nothing about your application. Both are used only to understand which of our efforts reach tradespeople, are visible only to Tradelynx staff, and are never shown on your profile. Our lawful basis is legitimate interests.
Verification and automated operational decisioning
Tradelynx uses automated operational rules in several places, including lead routing, trader prescreening, message / contact-control enforcement, document extraction, and trust / reliability summaries. These processes help us route work, reduce abuse, prioritise the right follow-up, and decide whether manual review is required.
We do not currently describe these features as producing solely automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects in every case, but some of them can materially affect workflow access, routing, visibility, and review requirements.
If a tradesperson's verified Tradelynx customer ratings fall below the floor we publish on our routing page, new job offers pause automatically while a member of our team reviews the case. The tradesperson is told why on their dashboard and can contest it, existing jobs are not affected, and no suspension or removal happens without a person deciding. Whether a day is marked as a whole day off also decides, automatically, whether new job offers reach a tradesperson that day; they control it themselves.
Property history and owner verification
Property-history workflows process property identifiers, address data, property-history entries, search queries, report access logs, entitlements, subscriptions, owner-verification requests, and evidence links. Access to richer report views depends on the access tier recorded in the platform: owner-authorised access, subscription-based access, or admin access.
HomeLynx Property Passport: sharing with estate agents, insurers, and lenders
The Property Passport exists to make your property's maintenance record portable and useful, and that means, when you choose to use it that way, property data is shared with professional organisations who pay for Tradelynx Enterprise products. We want to be plain about what that sharing involves:
- Estate agents can receive a disclosed history of your property, but only the individual events you have explicitly toggled to "share" (event type, date, and verification level; no descriptions, no amounts, no trader identity). Agents can also produce market-readiness condition reports about a property and share them by link. If you generate a passport share code, anyone you give the code (plus postcode) to can view the passport summary you've enabled.
- Insurers can ask to connect to your property. Nothing is shared unless you accept the invitation; if you do, the insurer sees an anonymised maintenance and work history for the property (trade, type of work, dates, certification signals, with no trader identity and no exact amounts). You can revoke the connection at any time.
- Mortgage lenders with an enterprise workspace can monitor properties on their book. Monitoring lenders receive periodic condition summaries (counts and severity of incident / condition events, at property level) and can view property-level detail such as EPC band, compliance status, valuation records, and significant condition events. Lender monitoring operates on an opt-out basis for monitored properties: you can unsubscribe a property from a lender's monitoring, and you can redact past condition summaries, from your property pages on Tradelynx or by contacting privacy@tradelynx.co.uk.
Passport ownership transfer (when you sell). If you sell your property you can hand its Passport to the new owner. What moves is the building's record: work history and evidence grades, certificates and documents, property facts, the Health Score and maintenance schedules. What stays with you: your account, your HomeLynx Inventory (it never transfers), your spend figures and self-declared amounts (withheld from the buyer), and who-viewed records from your time as owner. Every sharing consent you granted ends at the moment of transfer. The new owner starts from zero and nothing is shared onward without their say-so. You approve each transfer yourself and can cancel it any time before the buyer accepts; each step is recorded in our audit log.
How these organisations may use the data. Estate agents, insurers, and lenders receive this information as independent data controllers, and they may use it to inform their own decisions, for example insurance underwriting, pricing, or renewal terms; lending and remortgage decisions; property valuations; and marketing appraisals. Tradelynx does not control those decisions. A well-maintained, well-documented property record will usually work in your favour, but you should assume that anything you share through the passport can be taken into account by the organisation you share it with.
What is never shared through these surfaces: your name and contact details, message content, traders' identities, and exact job amounts (work values are shown in broad bands only). Every read of passport event data by an enterprise surface is written to an access log we retain for audit.
Messaging, moderation, and image scanning
Message content and attachments can be checked against profanity and contact-sharing rules. Image scanning / contact-detection tooling is used on message attachments to reduce off-platform bypass and protect the marketplace.
Telephony, SMS, and call control
Telnyx-backed functionality is used for SMS delivery, automated OTP calls, public trade phone routing, and telephony webhook / call-control events. We log telephony events and redacted phone metadata for audit and troubleshooting.
Call recording (only where a trader has switched it on). A trader can enable recording for calls connected through Tradelynx. When they have, every caller hears an announcement at the start of the call stating that the call may be recorded and transcribed so the trader has an accurate note of what was agreed, that the recording is deleted straight after transcription, and that you can decline by pressing 9 when the announcement plays. If you press 9, the call is not recorded. The recording is transcribed by Telnyx and the audio is deleted immediately afterwards and is never stored on Tradelynx systems. Only the written transcript is kept, and only for 30 days, after which it is automatically deleted. The lawful basis is the legitimate interests of the trader in keeping an accurate service record, balanced by the announcement, the keypress opt-out, the immediate deletion of audio, and the short retention. Where a call is not connected through a recording-enabled trader, no recording takes place and telephony data remains event logs (call start, duration, outcome) only.
Trader ratings of customers
Traders who complete work at your property may leave an anonymised rating of the experience. This rating is only visible to traders who are offered future jobs at your property, is never publicly visible, is never attributed to a specific trader, and is accessible to you in aggregate form via your account settings at /c/account. You may request deletion of your rating data at any time by contacting privacy@tradelynx.co.uk.
Historic review invitations (past customers of a trader)
A verified trader can log a job they completed before joining Tradelynx and ask us to invite that job’s customer to leave an honest review. If you receive one of these invitations, it is because the trader provided your email address as the customer for that job. Tradelynx did not obtain your details from anywhere else, and the invitation itself tells you this and names the trader (this is our UK GDPR Article 14 notice). We store the contact details the trader gives us, the trader’s recorded declarations (that you are a genuine customer they may lawfully contact, and that no reward is offered for a review), and, if you choose to review, your submission and technical integrity signals (such as IP address) that we are legally required to use to keep reviews genuine under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. You will receive at most one invitation per job, with no chasers, and every invitation carries a one-click opt-out; opting out suppresses your address platform-wide, so no Tradelynx trader can invite you again. We treat these invitations as direct marketing sent on the trader’s initiative: the trader relies on their existing customer relationship with you, and our lawful basis for facilitating and policing the process is legitimate interests. Reviewing is entirely optional, never rewarded, and negative reviews are published on the same terms as positive ones.
Optional games and public leaderboards
Tradelynx may include optional, non-essential mini-games. If you choose to submit a score to a public leaderboard, we ask you to pick a display handle and to explicitly agree, by ticking a box, that your chosen handle and score will be shown publicly. We never display your name, email address, or account identifier on a leaderboard: only the self-chosen handle and the score. You must be signed in to register a score (this is the only thing that links a score to you, internally).
A leaderboard may show all-time scores and a daily board that resets each day (your best score for that day). We rely on your consent for this public display. You can withdraw that consent and remove your score at any time using the "Remove my score" control inside the game, or by contacting privacy@tradelynx.co.uk; this removes you from both the all-time and daily boards. Leaderboard data is also deleted automatically if you delete your account. We store only your handle, score, tier reached, the related timestamps and (for the daily board) the calendar date of that score.
To keep your streak and your stats, the Tradie IQ game stores a random game id in your browser. It is not your name, email or account, and on its own it does not identify you. We also count how the game is used (pages opened, games started and finished, shares) so we can see whether it is working. Those counts never include a price you quoted, a handle, your IP address or anything you typed. Only if you click "Accept" on our cookie banner do they carry your game id, and only then, if you later sign up as a tradesperson or a customer within 30 days of playing, do we record that a player went on to sign up: the date, how you first came to the game, and what you last played. That record holds no name, email or account id. Our lawful basis is your consent to analytics cookies, which you can withdraw at any time from the cookie banner. Usage counts are kept for 90 days and signup records for 12 months, then deleted automatically.
LabourLynx (day labour)
If you join LabourLynx as a worker, we process the profile you give us: your name, contact details, postcode, trades and experience, the days you say you are free, and, if you choose to add them, the DBS check level you hold (none, basic, standard or enhanced), its issue date and whether you are on the DBS Update Service, and the site cards and tickets you hold. A DBS level and the cards you hold are your own declaration: Tradelynx does not check them, and we never ask for or store a certificate number or what a certificate says, so we do not hold criminal record information. Tradespeople looking for help see your first name and initial, postcode district, approximate distance, trades, experience, availability and declarations; a tradesperson looking at a shift on a day you are free also sees your email and phone so they can reach you. Every list of workers shown to a tradesperson is recorded, with which workers it showed. If you opt in to apprenticeship referrals, we only pass your details to a provider with your separate consent. You can change or remove your DBS and ticket declarations at any time from your LabourLynx dashboard or app.
National waitlist
If you join our waitlist (because we’re not live in your area yet), we ask for your email, optionally your first name, whether you’re a homeowner or a tradesperson (and which trade), and the first part of your postcode only (e.g. NE1) so we can see where demand is and decide where to launch next. You can optionally tell us how you find the existing options and what would make you switch. We rely on your consent to contact you about launching in your area. This information is never shown publicly. It’s only used internally to plan launches and improve the product. You can unsubscribe or ask us to delete your waitlist details any time via privacy@tradelynx.co.uk. We keep it only until we launch near you (plus a short follow-up window) or until you ask us to remove it.
8 · Public pages and public profile disclosure
Tradelynx publishes public trader listing pages and public trader profile pages. These pages can be indexed by search engines. Approved public fields can include display name, town, trade, public bio, profile photo, badges / verification markers, review counts, completed job counts, skills, certifications, and areas covered.
Direct contact details are intended to stay off these public pages. Public trade phone numbers may also be published by town / trade as separate routing numbers where configured.
9 · International transfers of your data
Some of our third-party processors operate outside the UK. Where we transfer personal data internationally we rely on one of the following safeguards under UK GDPR Article 46:
- Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) adopted under the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA), including the UK Addendum to the EU SCCs where applicable.
- Adequacy decisions made by the UK Secretary of State, including the UK-EEA adequacy regulations.
Our processors and the safeguard used:
Where a provider is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, that certification is the transfer mechanism. Where it is not, we rely on Standard Contractual Clauses under the UK International Data Transfer Agreement. You can request a copy of the relevant SCCs by contacting privacy@tradelynx.co.uk.
10 · Data retention
We keep personal data only for as long as needed for the purposes described in this notice, taking account of contractual, legal, accounting, dispute, fraud-prevention, and evidential needs. Headline retention values:
- Lead enquiry data: 3 years from submission
- Job records: 6 years from completion (HMRC statutory requirement)
- Account data: deleted within 30 days of a verified account closure request
- Trader verification documents: deleted within 90 days of application rejection; otherwise kept for the active life of the document plus 7 years after it is replaced, expires or the account closes (whichever is later), to support dispute resolution
- Wellbeing check-in responses: stored anonymously with no personal identifiers, no deletion required
- Marketing campaign records: 2 years
The fuller breakdown by category is in the Data Retention Schedule.
11 · Security, fraud prevention, and audit logging
We use authentication controls, row-level access controls, signed storage URLs, audit / event logging, webhook verification, rate limiting, abuse-prevention checks, moderation rules, and restricted admin / service-role access to protect platform data. Encryption is TLS 1.2+ in transit and AES-256-GCM at rest for sensitive columns.
When you send a Making Tax Digital submission from Books, HMRC requires us to send fraud prevention information with it: your public IP address and port, an identifier for your device, your browser's user agent, your screen and window sizes, your time zone, your Tradelynx user ID, and how and when you completed two-step verification. HMRC uses this to protect taxpayers from fraud. We send it only with submissions you choose to make, and our relay passes it on without storing your submissions.
We also keep security, audit, and operational logs to investigate misuse, protect users, and support legal or support enquiries. We notify the ICO and affected individuals within 72 hours of becoming aware of a notifiable breach.
12 · Lawful bases
Our main lawful bases:
- Contract (or steps before entering a contract): for core platform workflows such as enquiries, jobs, payments, subscriptions, and account access.
- Legitimate interests: for routing, trust and safety, fraud prevention, moderation, support, audit logging, enterprise product operation, service improvement, and platform security.
- Legal obligation: where we need to keep records for accounting, tax, dispute handling, law-enforcement response, or similar requirements.
- Consent: where this is the appropriate basis for optional marketing or comparable optional communications.
- Explicit consent (Article 9): for the biometric data created during trader identity verification. See below.
Biometric data in identity verification
Every trader completes identity verification before they can take work. As part of that, our verification partner DiDit analyses a video selfie against the photograph on your identity document, to confirm the document is yours and that a live person is present.
That analysis creates biometric data about you, a special category of personal data under Article 9 of the UK GDPR, which we may only process with your explicit consent. We ask for that consent, in those words, before verification starts. You cannot be verified without it, and we do not begin the process until you have given it.
- Where it is held: DiDit hold verification data in the European Economic Area.
- How long: we have set DiDit's retention period to 6 months, after which your verification record is deleted from their systems. Their default is indefinite; we chose a limit.
- Model improvement: DiDit also use anonymised or pseudonymised data derived from verifications to improve their identity and fraud-detection systems, acting as an independent controller for that purpose on the basis of their legitimate interests. You can object to this by asking us to delete your verification record, or by contacting DiDit at privacy@didit.me.
- Withdrawing consent: email privacy@tradelynx.co.uk and we will ask DiDit to delete your verification record. Withdrawal does not undo checks already completed, and we cannot keep a trader verified on the platform without it.
A more detailed lawful-basis matrix is kept internally because different workflows sometimes rely on different bases for the same user type.
13 · Your rights
You can ask to see your data, correct it, delete it, take it elsewhere, or stop us using it. Most requests are handled in-app within 30 days.
To exercise rights, contact privacy@tradelynx.co.uk. We may need to verify identity before actioning a request and may retain some data where we have an overriding lawful basis or legal obligation to do so.
15 · Complaints and contact
If you have a privacy concern, please contact us first at privacy@tradelynx.co.uk.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or 0303 123 1113.