Privacy notice
What we hold, where we got it, and how to change or delete it. Written to be read, not to be survived.
Last updated 12 August 2026.
The short version. We list creative businesses in Southampton using information that is already public. We show your business name, what you do, and your council area — never your street address. Every listing shows where we got each detail. If you would rather not be listed, one click removes you, permanently, and we will not add you again.
Who we are
Makers Map is operated by Data Torturing Solutions, the data controller for the information described here.
| Contact | [email protected] |
|---|---|
| ICO registration | ZC218139 - Tier 1, expires 8 August 2027 |
| Postal address | c/o Project Co.Working, Dolphin Centre, Poole, Dorset, BH15 1UD |
Why sole traders' business details count as personal data
If you trade under your own name, your business name and business contact details identify you personally. UK data protection law treats them as your personal data, and this notice applies to you. If you run a limited company, the company's registered details are not personal data in the same way, though your name as an officer may be.
What we hold
| Information | Shown publicly? |
|---|---|
| Business or trading name | Yes |
| What you make or do (our classification) | Yes |
| Council area and ward | Yes |
| Website address | Yes |
| Company number, if you have one | Yes — it is already on the public register |
| Whether you look like a sole trader (our estimate) | Yes, as a label |
| Links to your social profiles and shops | Yes — the ones linked from your own site |
| Business email and phone | Only if you published them on your own website, or gave them to us |
| Business postcode | No — used only to work out your council area |
| Street address | No — never published |
| A short extract of your website text | No — deleted after 90 days |
| Where each detail came from, and when | Yes |
We never publish street addresses. A lot of makers work from home, and a business address is often a home address. Listings show your ward and council area and nothing more precise.
Contact details only if you published them yourself. If your phone number or email is on your own website, we may show it — that is what you put it there for. If we only have a contact detail because it appears on a public register, we keep it to ourselves and never display it. Either way, tell us and we will take it down.
We do not collect anything about your age, gender, ethnicity, health, beliefs, politics or finances. We do not collect personal (non-business) contact details or personal social media accounts.
Where we get it
- The ICO's register of fee payers — a public register of organisations that handle personal data, published under the Open Government Licence.
- Companies House — the public register of UK companies. We also use it to work out who is not registered, which is how we find sole traders.
- The ONS Postcode Directory — to turn a postcode into a council area.
- Google Business Profiles — listings businesses have published themselves.
- Public business websites — visited by an identified
crawler that respects
robots.txt. How our crawler behaves. - You — if you add yourself, or claim and correct a listing.
Every listing shows which of these each fact came from and the date we collected it. We do not buy contact lists, and we do not sell yours.
Our legal basis
For the directory: legitimate interests
We rely on legitimate interests. In plain terms: creative funding in the UK is handed out by council area, and thousands of people miss money they are entitled to because nobody knows they are there. Building the list means starting from public information, because the people who most need finding are the ones no existing list contains.
We have written down that reasoning, weighed it against your interests, and recorded the safeguards it depends on. You can ask us for a copy of that assessment.
For marketing emails: your consent, and only that
We will not email you marketing unless you have ticked a box asking us to. We record which wording you agreed to and when. You can stop it at any time and we will act on it immediately. We do not send cold emails, texts, or social media messages. Ever.
If we write to you by post
We sometimes write to businesses at their published business address. We only ever use an address the business has published itself or that appears on a public register — never a home address we have guessed at. We screen against the Mailing Preference Service, tell you how we found you, and include a way to opt out. Say no once and we will not write again.
How we decide what to publish
We work out what a business does by reading the words on its website and public listings, and we estimate whether it is a registered company or a sole trader by looking for a Companies House record. Both are estimates, and both can be wrong.
Because of that, we only publish listings we are reasonably confident about; the rest wait for a person to check them. Every estimate we make is recorded along with the reasons behind it, so if you ask us why we described you a certain way, we can tell you exactly. Nothing we decide affects your access to any service, money, or credit — it decides how you appear in a free directory.
If we have got it wrong, find your listing and claim it. Correcting it is free and takes a minute.
Who we share it with
Nobody. We do not sell, rent or share your details with third parties. We do not pass your information to the insurers, banks or other companies we link to — those links just take you to them, the same as any other link.
Our servers are in London and run by DigitalOcean, who host the data on our behalf. Your data is not transferred outside the UK.
We do produce anonymous, aggregated statistics for councils and funders — counts of creative businesses by area and craft. These contain no individual records and cannot be traced back to you.
How long we keep it
| Your listing | While it is live, or until you ask us to remove it |
|---|---|
| Website text extracts | 90 days, then deleted automatically |
| Account and consent records | While your account is open, plus 2 years |
| Removal records | Indefinitely — see below |
Why we keep something after you ask to be removed. Our sources are public registers and websites. If we deleted every trace of you, the next time we refreshed our data we would simply find you again and add you back — which would make removal meaningless. So we keep the bare minimum needed to recognise your record and refuse it: enough to say "not this one". We keep nothing else, and it is never published or used for anything else.
Your rights
You can ask us to:
- Show you what we hold about you, and where it came from.
- Correct anything wrong. Claim your listing and edit it, or just tell us.
- Delete your listing. One form. No account needed, no reason required, no talking you out of it.
- Stop publishing it without deleting it, if you would rather.
- Object to us holding it at all. We will not demand you justify yourself — if you want out, you are out.
- Stop marketing at any time. This one is absolute.
We respond within one month. There is no charge.
Cookies
We use two small cookies and no tracking or advertising cookies at all:
- One remembers which poster or letter brought you here, so we know which libraries and markets are working. It holds a short venue code — nothing about you.
- One keeps you signed in after you claim a listing.
We do not use Google Analytics or any third-party tracker. When we record a QR scan or a link click, we store a one-way scrambled version of your IP address so we can count visits without keeping the address itself.
If you are unhappy
Tell us first — [email protected] — and we will try to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. You do not have to come to us first.
Changes
If we change how we use your information we will update this page and change the date at the top. If the change is significant we will say so prominently rather than quietly editing it.