Trade Privacy Notice
At Checkatrade we know how important it is to keep your personal data safe, that is why we are committed to making sure that you receive the service you expect and that your privacy is protected every step of the way.
Checkatrade is a trading name of Vetted Ltd. which is the data controller. Our registration number with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is Z6851067.
In this notice we provide information on the personal information we collect, how we use it, how long we keep your data, and how to exercise your data protection rights. We offer different service options and there might be some differences in how we process your personal data depending on the services you have selected.
This notice applies not only to you but also to your employees, contractors and subcontractors. By engaging with our services, you acknowledge that the terms outlined in this notice extend to all individuals working under or in association with your business, including employees, contractors and subcontractors. It is your responsibility to ensure that they are aware of and comply with the terms contained within.
If you have claimed your profile listing on our platform, we will use data collected from various sources to build your profile. These sources include third-party data providers and publicly available information. We will also collect additional personal and business details to ensure that we provide everything you need to make the most of our services. Our lawful basis for processing your data is for the purpose of entering you into a contract and for our legitimate business interests in providing services to you and consumers. The data we collect includes: Business Name, Names of individuals to be listed, Business Address, Telephone Number, Email Address, Trade Category, Reviews and Skills.
We will also complete some basic checks. These checks include adverse media/open source reviews of press stories and reviews/feedback relevant to you or your business. The checks include reviewing social media business pages. These may be completed by a third party under the instruction of Checkatrade.
We may publish names and partial address details of tradespeople as part of your profile on our platform. Personal data collected during the application and vetting process will be retained in line with our retention periods which in most instances is six years.
When you enquire about joining Checkatrade or otherwise being included on our platform, we will collect personal and business details to provide you with our services. Our lawful basis for processing your information is to enter you into a contract and to provide ongoing support to you whilst on our platform. The information we collect will vary depending on the type of services you sign up for.
If you end your membership, personal data collected during the time of your membership will be retained in line with our retention periods and your basic profile including the name of your business, reviews and score rating will remain searchable on our platform.
Approved Tradespeople
If you sign up for Approved Services (an “Approved Tradesperson” or “Approved Tradespeople”), the information we normally collect includes:
Business Name
Full Names of all individuals to be listed
Address (business and personal)
Telephone Number
Email Address (business and personal)
Date of Birth
Payment Details (direct debit, bank details, credit/debit card number, details of payments to/from you)
Trade Category
Qualifications / Accreditations
Customer References
Reviews
To become an Approved Tradesperson, you will also have to pass our independent checks to which you will be asked to consent. This is an important part of our vetting process and may be processed by our third-party partners, Outworx and Foundever, who are based in South Africa, these include:
Identity checks through facial recognition confirmation, by third party service providers HooYu/Mitek
Credit checks, including County Court Judgement (CCJ) checks
Checks regarding unspent criminal convictions
Adverse media/Open-source reviews of press stories and reviews/feedback relevant to you or your business and may include unspent criminal convictions. These checks include reviewing social media business pages and are performed by third party service provider Moody’s
Company checks on Companies House.
The information we collect during your Approved Tradesperson membership application, will be used to carry out these checks and additional information will be requested if required. We also carry out checks on individuals who are linked to your Approved Tradesperson application such as directors, partners, employees, subcontractors, agents, suppliers or contractors and additional information may be requested, if required. By providing this additional information, you confirm that you have obtained any necessary permissions and have informed the individuals concerned about this data processing in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
When you provide the details of other individuals to be included in your Approved Tradesperson application, this should be done with the full knowledge and consent of the individuals concerned. When other individuals are added to your account at your request, they will also have to undergo vetting checks. These checks include a database duplicate check, a director’s credit and CCJ check, checks regarding unspent criminal convictions and adverse media/open-source reviews of press stories. Some additional checks might be required depending on the results of our initial vetting.
We also perform these checks throughout your time as an Approved Tradesperson and on an annual basis.
We publish partial address details of Approved Tradespeople on our platform as part of your profile.
We publish reviews of your company and services on our platform as part of your profile being visible on our platform. These reviews may contain your personal data and the personal data of your employees and subcontractors.
We use the review to produce score ratings, which will form part of the overall ratings given to you and which are published as part of your profile on our platform. Our Terms and Conditions for Tradespeople provide details of how you can respond or object to reviews.
You agree that you will provide notice to your relevant employees, contractors and/or sub-contractors that their personal data may appear in a review on our platform by bringing a copy of this notice to their attention.
We use reviews solely in relation to Approved Tradespeople, for the purpose of monitoring the services they provide and evaluating their performance. In all other cases, reviews are used only to generate the score ratings referred to above, and not for service monitoring or evaluation purposes.
Our lawful basis for processing personal data will depend on the different aspects of your interactions with us.
When you submit an enquiry about joining Checkatrade we will create a new profile, for you or provide access to an existing one. This is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or is otherwise justified by our legitimate interests in delivering our services to you and to consumers.
Our lawful basis for call recordings is for our legitimate business interests to monitor the quality of our service, for staff training purposes, for analytics purposes and to ensure accurate recordkeeping. Our lawful basis for processing review information is that it is necessary in our legitimate business interests in (i) assessing and rating you (ii) making decisions on your services and (iii) protecting our customers.
We also process personal data for our legitimate business interests to protect our brand and to safeguard the public against harm through the misuse of our branding.
Our lawful basis for processing your payment details (as described above in the ‘Joining our Platform’ section:
in respect of your use of our services and to enable you to use our payment services is that it is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and us; and
to facilitate payments between you and customers via our payment service is that it is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and the customer.
Approved Tradespeople
Our lawful basis for the vetting checks we carry out on applicants applying to be an Approved Tradesperson, linked individuals or individuals with significant control of your business, is performed with your consent.
Our lawful basis for the vetting checks we carry out on applicants applying to be an Approved Tradesperson, linked individuals or individuals with significant control, is for our legitimate business interests to protect the public against fraudulent and harmful activity.
Our secure contacts service is provided for our legitimate business interests to protect our tradespeople from spam and for accurate lead reporting purposes.
Our lawful basis for processing personal data through our Guarantee Scheme is for the performance of a contract and for our legitimate business interests to protect the public from fraudulent and harmful activity.
Our lawful basis for processing your payment data is that it is necessary for the performance of the contract between you and the customer.
All Approved Tradespeople listed on our platform are provided with a secure telephone number and email address as part of our Secure Contacts system. This contact information is displayed with your profile for use by consumers when making enquiries. Checkatrade will connect the enquiry to the personal contact details you provided when you became an Approved Tradesperson.
Our lawful basis for processing data through the Secure Contacts system is for our legitimate business interests to protect our Approved Tradespeople from spam activity and for accurate lead reporting purposes. When a consumer contacts an Approved Tradesperson listed on our platform or in our directories using the secure telephone numbers and email addresses we provided, we retain a record of the telephone number or email address and information on the duration of a call. We retain audio data for analytical matching on a pseudonymised basis. This information is used for quality control purposes, market research and to meet our contractual obligations to our tradespeople. Occasionally we request feedback from consumers using this service.
When you contact us, we will retain a recording of the telephone conversation for 13 months. Our lawful basis for call recordings is for our legitimate business interests to monitor the quality of our service, for staff training purposes, for analytics purposes and to ensure accurate recordkeeping.
If you are an Approved Tradesperson and a claim is made, we will request information from you relating to the work and communications with the customer. The customer will also be requested to share information such as invoices, photographs and records of communications which will contain personal data. If required, we will share your personal data with the surveyors requested to investigate the completed work. Our lawful base for processing personal data through our Guarantee Scheme is for the performance of a contract and for our legitimate business interests to protect the public from fraudulent and harmful activity.
If you make use of our payments service to request payments from customers through our platform, you will need to provide us with certain customer information in order for us to send the customer a payment request (for example, the customer's name, email address and contact details). Such information should only be uploaded to our service with the customer's knowledge and agreement.
In order to facilitate payments from customers, we will process your payment details, such as your bank details, in conjunction with our payments service providers as described below.
You can opt in to use our online facility to prepare quotes or send invoices. In providing this service Checkatrade acts as the data processor and the tradesperson is the data controller. The data of customers should only be uploaded to our service with their knowledge and agreement.
We are a trusted consumer brand and we take steps to protect our brand when our logo or name is used without our permission or misused in any way.
Approved Tradespeople
Approved Tradespeople may use our branding on vehicles, printed material and any online presence. When you stop being an Approved Tradesperson, we will request that all our branding be removed from vehicles, printed material and any online presence. If we find that this request has not been complied with, we will take steps to protect our brand and the public. This is done through legal proceedings supported by legal firm Shoosmiths and through the use of brand research service providers such as SnapDragon. The brand research consists of online and offline checks including visits to the business address details we hold on record for the former Approved Tradesperson. The processing is done for our legitimate business interests to protect the value of our brand and to ensure that the public is not misled through the misuse of our brand.
An important part of our service is to arrange partnership agreements with companies and organisations who offer exclusive rates to our tradespeople on their relevant products and services. You will receive marketing communications from us telling you about these benefits. These communications can include discounts or offers on vehicles, insurance, fuel, financing, equipment, vouchers, training and other products and services relevant to your trade. Your personal data will be shared with these partners when you consent to take part in a discount or tradesperson offer or for the purposes of arranging an automatic tradesperson benefit. Marketing communications involving partner offers will always be from us unless you have consented to receive marketing from third parties. You can unsubscribe from communications when you receive them, or by contacting privacy@checkatrade.com.
Approved Tradespeople can find a list of our current partnerships and offers in the Approved Tradesperson area on our platform when you become an Approved Tradesperson.
When you sign up to Checkatrade you agree to us sending you emails, text messages, marketing material in the post and call you to highlight additional services and products we provide. You can opt-out of these marketing communications through the unsubscribe link or instruction contained in every email or text we send to you. Your marketing preferences can also be updated on our platform. If enabled in your mobile device settings and you have downloaded our App, we will send push notifications.
If you have provided an email address, mobile number or use our platform, you will receive service messages related to the management of your Approved Tradesperson services and the optimising of your account, as stated in your Terms and Conditions. You may also receive voicemail messages in order to service your account including in relation to credit control matters. These messages include alerts about consumers requesting your services, payment information, insurance updates, and lead statistics. We are required to send these messages to meet our contractual obligations for Approved Services. We also send messages requesting feedback on our service for market research purposes, and research related to the development and improvement of our products and services. If you opt-out of marketing communications, you will still receive service messages.
If you enter any of our competitions, prize draws and promotions, we will use your personal information for administration purposes. There will be additional terms and conditions which will contain more information about how we use and share your personal information.
If you send us your personal information to enter a competition, prize draw or promotion, we will process your entry to allow for winners to be contacted. Please refer to the terms and conditions for further information. If you enter via social media channels, your personal data is subject to the processing of the channel so please refer to them directly.
We may utilise Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to enhance our services and improve user experiences. This may include the processing of personal and usage data or user data to provide tailored recommendations, analyse user behaviour in order to protect the integrity of our systems, or optimise our products or your enjoyment of our services. Any data utilised for AI purposes will be in accordance with this Privacy Notice and applicable data protection laws.
In the provision of the Approved Services, we will share data from customers who have requested a quote or a specific service, this will include contact information, and the specifications of the work required and may be used to contact customers. Upon receipt of the customers data, you will become the data controller. As data controller you will be responsible for complying with your obligations under applicable data protection laws, including ensuring you process the data in a lawful and transparent manner.
We use personal information in order to serve you advertisements on selected, third-party platforms that make their advertising space available to us. We do this either by means of using retargeting cookies and similar technologies (details can be seen in our cookie notice) or by matching other unique identifiers, subject to appropriate safeguards and preferences. One such example is when we use Facebook’s custom audience feature (we also use other sites and providers, including Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram). Custom Audiences enable us to display personalised advertising to our customers whilst they are on Facebook, or your information may be used to create lookalikes of similar audiences for targeting. This information is matched on a pseudonymised basis. Social media sites do not receive any new information from us about you except as necessary to fulfil our instructions and the information is retained for a limited period.
We may disclose your de-personalised data to third parties to engage in targeted advertising.
We may also share your IP address with third parties for fraud prevention purposes, but this data will be deleted once no longer required.
We may also use pixels within emails.
You can opt out of your data being used in this way - please see the Contacting Us section for details of how to connect with us.
You can opt-out of marketing communications through the unsubscribe link or instruction contained in every email or text we send to you. Your marketing preferences can also be updated on our platform.
We share information with third parties for the following purposes:
To provide you with the services.
To carry out background checks.
To process transactions and payments through service providers (e.g. Adyen and GoCardless).
To provide products and services such as clothing and other Checkatrade merchandise, third party services and tradespeople benefits
To carry out the checks we require for vetting purposes through credit score agencies, including CCJ checks (e.g. CreditSafe), media risk screening companies (e.g. Moody’s) and trade accreditation bodies and identity confirmation companies (e.g. HooYu/Mitek)
If we buy or sell any business or company assets.
For data analysis purposes within the Brookfield group of companies.
To analyse calls in order to improve our products and services.
To provide the details of new tradespeople to partners who provide tradespeople benefits (e.g. TradePoint, Selco, Wickes, Onsi and Right Fuel Card) to Checkatrade tradespeople.
To facilitate dispute resolution services for consumers including when address and other information is required for legal proceedings – including the provision of information to litigants in person
To inform benefit providers when you are no longer a Checkatrade tradesperson.
For the purposes of debt recovery via our external debt collection firm (e.g. Azzurro Associates Ltd, Solaris Law, STA International Ltd, Altradius and Shire Recoveries Limited). We may pass your debt to Azzurro Associates Ltd who will become the data controller of your data.
To support investigations by regulatory and law enforcement bodies such as Trading Standards and the Police under statutory obligations.
If you are a current or past tradesperson, we retain your personal data for six years from the time you stopped being a Checkatrade tradesperson. Storing data allows us to keep accurate records for tax and financial purposes and to enable us to handle any future complaints. In some cases, we are legally required to retain personal data. To maintain the integrity of Checkatrade and protect the public, we retain personal data for a longer period in cases where we terminated the tradespeople due to unacceptable practices or behaviour, and in cases where regulatory and law enforcement investigations are ongoing.
If you applied to be a Checkatrade tradesperson and your application was unsuccessful, we will maintain a record of your application. Maintaining a record of unsuccessful applications helps us to ensure our service is working correctly and allows us to identify duplicates or fraudulent activity.
Some of the data that we collect may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the United Kingdom and we may use third party suppliers to provide other services outside the EEA (such as the USA and South Africa). We use international data transfer safeguarding measures such as the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or International Data Transfer Agreements for such transfers, and the US-UK Data Privacy Framework.
You have individual rights pertaining to your personal information, including:
Your right of access - you have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.
Your right to rectification - you have the right to ask us to correct information you think is inaccurate or complete information you think is incomplete.
Your right to erasure - you have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances. We maintain a retention policy and will inform you if we are not able to delete your information immediately.
Your right to restriction of processing - you have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.
Your right to object to processing - you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances including for marketing purposes.
Your right to data portability - you have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.
Where the processing of your data is based on consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, but this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing carried out on the basis of consent before its withdrawal.
You do not need to pay a fee for exercising your rights. We are required to respond within one month unless there are reasons why it will take longer to collect the information you requested. If that is the case, we will inform you. In some cases, we will require you to provide proof of your identity if we are unable to confirm your identity through other information we hold about you. This is required to ensure the security of the personal information we hold and to meet our legal obligations.
Please contact us to exercise your rights using the details found in Contacting Us.
If you would like to contact us about the handling of your personal information, please alert the Checkatrade Data Privacy team or the Data Protection Officer at privacy@checkatrade.com or write to us at Checkatrade Privacy Team, Focus Point, 21 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9DX.
If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. For full details about how to share any concerns, visit: www.ico.org.uk or call 0303 123 1113.
When changes are made to this notice, it will be noted. The date the update was released will always be listed below.
Date release: July 2025