Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

HygieneFix is operated by Anthony Johnson in the United Kingdom. We provide a food hygiene rating lookup service using publicly available Food Standards Agency (FSA) data and optional paid improvement-plan products. For privacy enquiries, contact privacy@hygienefix.co.uk.

2. What Data We Collect

Search queries: When you search for a business by postcode or name, the query is used to request rating data. We do not intentionally build a personal profile from your search history.

Email addresses: If you voluntarily subscribe or request an action plan, we collect the email address needed to provide that service or the communications you requested.

Payment data: Payments are processed by Stripe. HygieneFix does not store your full payment-card details.

Analytics data: Where analytics is enabled and you have provided the required consent, Google Analytics 4 may process information about visits, pages viewed, device/browser characteristics and interactions. Analytics is not loaded before the consent condition implemented by HygieneFix is satisfied.

Advertising data: Google AdSense may process information needed to serve, limit, measure and report advertising. For UK, EEA and Swiss advertising traffic, HygieneFix is preparing to use Google's certified Privacy & messaging consent management platform (CMP). Until that mode is activated, the AdSense script remains behind the site's existing non-essential consent gate.

3. Lawful Basis for Processing

Depending on the activity, we rely on consent, contractual necessity and legitimate interests under UK data-protection law.

Consent: Used for non-essential analytics/advertising technologies where consent is required, and for marketing communications where applicable. Consent can be withdrawn.

Contract: Used where processing is necessary to take payment and deliver a product you purchase.

Legitimate interests: Used for proportionate service operation, security, fraud prevention and maintenance where those interests are not overridden by your rights.

4. Food Hygiene Rating Data

Food hygiene ratings displayed on this site are sourced from the Food Standards Agency's public service/API under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The public records can include business names, addresses, ratings, inspection information and local authority details.

HygieneFix maintains service data for lower-rated establishments to provide rating-change and improvement features. For sole traders, public business data can sometimes relate to an identifiable individual. We rely on legitimate interests in operating the service and provide a route to raise privacy concerns at privacy@hygienefix.co.uk.

The FSA/local authority record remains authoritative. If you believe the official rating record itself is wrong, contact the local authority responsible for the inspection.

5. Cookies, Local Storage and Consent

Essential storage: Used where necessary for core operation and security.

Current first-party consent mode: Before the Google-certified CMP is activated, HygieneFix stores a local consent preference and does not load GA4 or AdSense until non-essential use has been accepted.

Google-certified CMP mode: After HygieneFix publishes a Google Privacy & messaging European regulations message and enables that mode, Google's certified CMP manages advertising-consent choices for relevant regions. The legacy HygieneFix banner is then disabled to avoid conflicting advertising-consent prompts.

Analytics in CMP mode: GA4 is conservatively disabled until it is explicitly connected to a compatible consent signal. This avoids assuming that an advertising-consent decision automatically authorises analytics.

You can also use your browser controls to delete stored preferences. Google's privacy message, when enabled, provides the advertising choices configured through the AdSense Privacy & messaging service.

6. Service Providers

We use third-party services including Google (analytics and advertising), Stripe (payments), Vercel (hosting), Resend (email), Supabase (database services), Sentry (error monitoring) and Anthropic (AI processing for improvement-plan generation). Each provider processes data for the function it supplies and under its own contractual/privacy terms.

When an AI improvement plan is generated, establishment/inspection information relevant to the plan may be sent to the AI provider. We design the workflow so that full payment-card details are not included in AI requests.

7. Data Retention

We keep personal data only for as long as reasonably required for the purpose for which it was collected, to meet legal/accounting obligations, resolve disputes and operate the service. Different categories have different retention periods. You can ask us about the retention period that applies to your data.

8. Your Rights

Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law gives you rights including access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection and withdrawal of consent. To exercise a right, contact privacy@hygienefix.co.uk. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

9. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we handle personal data, contact us first so we can investigate. You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

10. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy when the service, providers or legal requirements change. We will update the date at the top of the page and, where appropriate, provide additional notice or obtain consent for materially different processing.