Love Bedford Privacy Policy
At Love Bedford, we care about Bedford, its businesses and the people who make it what it is. We also care about your privacy. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we look after it, and what your rights are.
We’ve tried to keep it clear and readable. If anything isn’t clear, just get in touch at hello@lovebedford.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help.
1. Who we are
Love Bedford is a local business directory and destination guide for Bedford town centre. It’s run by:
Dream Digital Ltd Registered in England and Wales, company number [10467633]
Dream Digital Ltd trades as Love Bedford for the purposes of this website and its associated channels.
How to contact us about privacy
Email us at hello@lovebedford.co.uk. It’s the quickest way to reach us, and it’s monitored by the people who actually look after your data.
We don’t have a formally appointed Data Protection Officer, as we’re not required to. Any privacy questions are handled directly by the directors of Dream Digital Ltd.
2. Change of ownership: BedfordBID to Dream Digital
Love Bedford was previously run by Bedford Business Improvement District Ltd (BedfordBID). Dream Digital built the Love Bedford platform and managed its website, technology, email marketing and forms on BedfordBID’s behalf for over a decade.
Before BedfordBID ceased operating on [01/04/2025], its directors agreed that Dream Digital would take over the Love Bedford brand, website and social media channels, along with the technology behind it, including the CRM, codebase, REST API, mailing list and form data. BedfordBID announced this change to businesses and subscribers on Mar 17, 2025.
What this means for you:
- The personal information held by Love Bedford passed from BedfordBID to Dream Digital as part of this handover.
- We use it for the same purposes it was originally collected for: running the directory, promoting Bedford’s businesses and events, and keeping subscribers up to date with what’s happening in town.
- We haven’t started using your information for anything new or unrelated.
- If you’d rather we didn’t hold or use your information any more, you can unsubscribe, ask us to update your details, or ask us to delete them at any time. See section 12.
Other BedfordBID services
Love Bedford’s handover didn’t include BedfordBID’s other schemes and services. For example, queries about the Retail RadioLink and night-time radio scheme are handled by Servicom, and other operational services were passed to the relevant Council teams. We don’t hold or control data relating to those services, so please contact the relevant organisation directly.
Some legacy BedfordBID content may stay on the website for a while for transparency. That content is published for information only and doesn’t change how we handle your personal information.
3. What this policy covers
This policy applies to personal information we collect through:
- Our websites: www.lovebedford.co.uk
- Our email newsletters and mailing lists
- Online forms on or linked from our websites
- The Love Bedford business directory and associated CRM
- Our social media channels, including Instagram and Facebook
- Emails and messages you send us
- Events, competitions, free prize draws and campaigns we run or promote
Our websites don’t have public comments or user accounts for visitors, so we don’t collect any information that way.
It doesn’t cover third-party websites we link to, including the websites of businesses listed in our directory. Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we’d encourage you to read them.
4. The information we collect
Information you give us
If you’re a business listed in our directory, we may collect:
- Business name, address, phone number, email address and website
- The name, job title and contact details of the people we deal with at your business
- Opening hours, descriptions, photos, logos, offers and other listing content
- Social media handles
- Notes of our conversations and correspondence with you
Much of this relates to your business rather than to you personally. But where it identifies an individual, such as a named contact or a sole trader, we treat it as personal information.
If you sign up to our newsletter, we collect:
- Your email address
- Your name, if you choose to give it
- Any interests or preferences you tell us about
- When and how you signed up
If you fill in one of our forms, such as an enquiry form, event submission, listing request, competition entry or survey, we collect whatever information the form asks for. This usually includes your name and email address, and may include your phone number, business details, event details and anything you choose to write in free-text fields.
If you enter a competition or free prize draw, we collect your name and email address, and may ask for your postal address (so we can deliver a prize) and your date of birth (so we can check you’re eligible to enter). We’ll also record whether you’ve chosen to join our mailing list.
If you contact us, by email, social media or otherwise, we keep a record of that correspondence and the contact details you use.
If you interact with us on social media, we may see your public profile name, handle, profile picture and anything you post, comment on, share or send to us directly.
Information we collect automatically
When you use our website, we and our service providers may automatically collect:
- Your IP address
- Your browser type and version, device type and operating system
- The pages you visit, how long you spend on them and how you got to our site
- The date and time of your visit
- Approximate location, based on your IP address (usually town or region level)
When you open or click on our emails, our email provider records this so we can see how our newsletters are performing. See section 11 for more.
Some of this is collected through cookies and similar technologies. See section 11.
Information from other sources
We may receive information about businesses from publicly available sources, such as their own websites, social media profiles and Companies House, so our directory is accurate and up to date.
Special category information
We don’t intentionally collect special category data (such as information about health, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation) or information about criminal convictions. Please don’t include this kind of information in forms or messages you send us. If you do, we’ll only use it to deal with your message and won’t keep it longer than we need to.
5. How we use your information
We use your personal information to:
- Run the business directory: creating, publishing and updating listings, and keeping in touch with listed businesses about their entries
- Promote Bedford: featuring businesses, events, offers and news on our website, newsletters and social media
- Send our newsletter: sharing news, events, offers and updates about Bedford town centre with people who’ve signed up
- Respond to you: answering enquiries, handling submissions and providing support
- Run events, competitions and campaigns: managing entries, picking winners fairly, contacting winners and delivering prizes
- Improve our website and services: understanding how people use the site and which content is most useful
- Advertise Love Bedford: if we run online advertising in future, measuring how it performs and showing relevant ads to people who’ve visited our websites (only with your consent, see section 11)
- Keep things secure: protecting our website and systems, preventing spam and misuse, and investigating problems
- Meet our legal obligations: keeping records we’re required to keep, and responding to lawful requests from authorities
- Handle the handover from BedfordBID: maintaining continuity of the Love Bedford service and keeping records of how data was transferred
We don’t sell your personal information, and we don’t use it to make decisions about you by purely automated means.
6. Our lawful bases for using your information
UK data protection law says we need a valid reason, called a lawful basis, for each way we use your information. Here’s what we rely on:
| What we do | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Sending our email newsletter | Consent. You signed up to receive it, and you can withdraw consent at any time by unsubscribing. |
| Publishing and managing business directory listings | Legitimate interests (promoting Bedford’s businesses and providing a useful local guide), or contract where a business has agreed terms with us for a listing. |
| Contacting businesses about their listings | Legitimate interests. Keeping listings accurate and useful. |
| Responding to enquiries and form submissions | Legitimate interests (dealing with what you’ve asked us), or taking steps at your request before entering into a contract. |
| Running competitions and events | Contract (the competition or event terms), or legitimate interests. |
| Website analytics, advertising, remarketing and other non-essential cookies | Consent, given through our cookie banner. |
| Essential cookies and website security | Legitimate interests in running a secure, working website. PECR allows strictly necessary cookies without consent. |
| Continuing Love Bedford after the BedfordBID handover | Legitimate interests in keeping the Love Bedford service running for the businesses and community that use it, for the same purposes the information was originally collected. |
| Keeping records for tax, accounting and legal reasons | Legal obligation. |
| Dealing with legal claims | Legitimate interests in establishing, exercising or defending legal claims. |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we’ve considered whether those interests are outweighed by your rights and freedoms. We’re confident they’re not, because we only use your information in ways you’d reasonably expect from a local business directory and destination guide. You have the right to object to this processing at any time (see section 12).
7. Email marketing
We’ll only send you our newsletter or other marketing emails if you’ve signed up to receive them, or if the law otherwise allows us to.
Every marketing email we send includes an unsubscribe link. Click it and you’ll be removed from that list straight away. You can also email hello@lovebedford.co.uk and we’ll take you off.
If you unsubscribe, we’ll keep your email address on a suppression list. That might sound odd, but it’s the only way to make sure we don’t accidentally email you again, for example if your address is imported from another source in future.
If you’re a listed business, we may still email you about your listing or other service-related matters even if you’ve unsubscribed from our newsletter. These aren’t marketing messages.
8. Competitions and free prize draws
We sometimes run competitions and free prize draws to celebrate Bedford’s businesses and events. Here’s how we handle your information when you enter:
- Your email address is your unique identifier. It lets us tell entrants apart and check each entry is valid, for example to stop duplicate entries.
- Winners are picked at random. We use a random number generator to pick a number, then match it against the list of valid entries. Nobody chooses the winner by hand.
- We only contact you if you win. Your email address is used to tell you you’ve won and arrange your prize. We won’t use it for anything else unless you’ve told us you’d like to join our mailing list.
- Joining the mailing list is always optional. Entering a draw never depends on signing up to our newsletter. If you tick the box to hear from us, we’ll add you to our Mailchimp list.
- We delete entries straight after the draw. Once a winner has been picked, we delete the entry data, including the details of everyone who didn’t opt in to our mailing list. We keep the winner’s details only for as long as we need to deliver the prize and deal with any follow-up.
Each competition or draw may also have its own terms, which we’ll link to from the entry form.
9. Who we share your information with
We don’t sell, rent or trade your personal information.
We share it only where we need to, with:
Service providers who help us run Love Bedford. These act as our data processors, which means they can only use your information on our instructions and must keep it secure. They include:
| Provider | What they do | Where data is processed |
|---|---|---|
| Intuit Mailchimp | Email newsletters and mailing list management | United States |
| Jotform | Online forms and form submissions | Europe |
| Digital Ocean | Website hosting | Europe |
| Google Analytics | Website analytics | Europe |
| Google Workspace | Email and file storage | Europe |
Social media platforms. When you interact with our Instagram or Facebook pages, Meta Platforms also processes your information under its own privacy policy. For some data relating to our Facebook and Instagram pages (such as page insights), we and Meta may be joint controllers.
Our professional advisers, such as accountants, lawyers and insurers, where they need it to advise us.
Authorities and regulators, where the law requires it, or to protect the rights, property or safety of Love Bedford, our users or others.
A future owner. If Love Bedford or Dream Digital is ever sold, merged or restructured, your information may be transferred to the new owner so the service can continue. We’d tell you if this happened, and the new owner would have to respect this policy.
Publicly, where you’ve asked us to. Business listing information, event details and anything you’ve submitted for publication will appear on our website and may be shared on our social channels. That’s the point of a directory, but please only send us information you’re happy for us to publish.
10. International transfers
Some of our service providers, including Mailchimp are based in the United States or process data there.
Where your personal information is transferred outside the UK, we make sure it’s protected by appropriate safeguards. These include:
- The UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, where the provider is certified under it
- The International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA), or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses
- A UK adequacy regulation, where the country has been recognised as providing adequate protection
You can ask us for more details about the safeguards we use by emailing hello@lovebedford.co.uk.
11. Cookies and tracking
Cookies are small text files a website saves on your device when you visit. We also use similar technologies that work in the same way, such as tracking pixels, tags and scripts. In this section, we call all of these “cookies”.
Your choice
UK law says we need your consent before setting any cookie that isn’t strictly necessary. When you first visit, our cookie banner lets you accept all cookies, reject all non-essential cookies, or choose which types you’re happy with. Rejecting is just as easy as accepting, and the site still works if you say no.
The types of cookies we use
- Strictly necessary. These keep the website working and secure, for example remembering your cookie choices and protecting our forms from spam. They don’t need your consent.
- Analytics. These help us understand how people use the website, such as how many people visit, which pages are popular and how people find us. Only set with your consent.
- Behaviour and experience. These show us how visitors interact with pages, such as where people click and how far they scroll, so we can fix problems and improve the design. Only set with your consent.
- Advertising and social media. These are set by social media and advertising platforms. They measure how our social media activity and any adverts perform, and may be used to show Love Bedford content or adverts to people who’ve visited our website (remarketing). These platforms may combine this with what they already know about you, especially if you’re logged in, and use it under their own privacy policies. Only set with your consent.
The services we use
We use, or may use, tracking codes from the services below. Not every service is active at all times, and none of them set non-essential cookies unless you’ve agreed.
| Service | Provider | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Tag Manager | Strictly necessary | Manages the other tracking codes on our website and only loads them in line with your cookie choices. It doesn’t set cookies or collect personal information itself. | |
| Google Analytics | Analytics | Measures visits, pages viewed, time on site, device and browser, and approximate location (town or region). | |
| Hotjar | Hotjar Ltd | Behaviour and experience | Creates heatmaps and anonymised recordings of how visitors use our pages, and may run short feedback surveys. Text typed into forms is hidden. |
| Meta Pixel | Meta Platforms | Advertising and social media | Measures visits from Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and may be used for remarketing and measuring adverts. |
| X Pixel (formerly Twitter) | X Corp | Advertising and social media | Measures visits from X, and may be used for remarketing and measuring adverts. |
| LinkedIn Insight Tag | Advertising and social media | Measures visits from LinkedIn, gives anonymous insights about visitors, and may be used for remarketing. | |
| TikTok Pixel | TikTok | Advertising and social media | Measures visits from TikTok, and may be used for remarketing and measuring adverts. |
Cookies you might see
Providers change their cookies from time to time, so this list may not be complete. Our cookie banner shows what’s currently in use.
| Cookie | Set by | Purpose | Typical duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Cookie banner cookie] | Love Bedford | Remembers your cookie choices | [12 months] |
| _ga, ga[ID] | Google Analytics | Tells visitors apart and tracks sessions | 2 years |
| hjSessionUser[ID] | Hotjar | Recognises returning visitors | 1 year |
| hjSession[ID] | Hotjar | Holds data for the current visit | 30 minutes |
| _fbp, fr | Meta | Delivers and measures adverts | 3 months |
| personalization_id, muc_ads | X | Measures and targets adverts | Up to 2 years |
| li_sugr, bcookie, lidc | Identifies browsers and measures adverts | 1 day to 1 year | |
| _ttp, _tt_enable_cookie | TikTok | Measures and improves adverts | 13 months |
Most of these providers are based in, or process data in, the United States. See section 10 for how we protect international transfers. Each provider also has its own privacy policy: Google (policies.google.com/privacy), Hotjar (hotjar.com/legal/policies/privacy), Meta (facebook.com/privacy/policy), X (x.com/en/privacy), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy) and TikTok (tiktok.com/legal/privacy-policy).
Email tracking
Our newsletters contain small tracking pixels and trackable links, which tell us whether an email was opened and which links were clicked. We use this to see which content readers find most useful and to keep our list healthy. If you’d rather this didn’t happen, you can set your email app to block images, or unsubscribe.
Embedded content
Some pages include content from other sites, such as YouTube videos, Google Maps, or posts from Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X or TikTok. These services may set their own cookies when you view or interact with that content, just as if you’d visited their site directly.
Controlling cookies
As well as using our cookie settings, you can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, usually under “Privacy”. Blocking all cookies may stop parts of the site working properly. You can also opt out of specific services:
Interest-based ads generally: youronlinechoices.com/uk
Google Analytics: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Google ad personalisation: adssettings.google.com
Facebook and Instagram ads: your ad preferences in Meta Accounts Centre
12. Your rights
Under UK data protection law, you have a number of rights over your personal information. You can:
- Access it. Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
- Correct it. Ask us to fix anything that’s inaccurate or incomplete. Listed businesses can also ask us to update their listing at any time.
- Delete it. Ask us to erase your information. We’ll do this unless we have a legal reason to keep it.
- Restrict it. Ask us to pause using your information, for example while we look into a concern you’ve raised.
- Object to it. Object to us using your information based on legitimate interests. You have an absolute right to object to direct marketing, and we’ll stop straight away.
- Take it with you. Ask for information you’ve given us in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, or ask us to send it to another organisation, where this applies.
- Withdraw consent. Where we rely on your consent, such as for our newsletter, you can withdraw it at any time. This doesn’t affect anything we did before you withdrew it.
- Not be subject to automated decisions. We don’t make decisions about you based purely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects.
How to use your rights
Just email hello@lovebedford.co.uk. We may need to ask you for information to confirm your identity before we act on your request, to make sure we’re not giving your information to the wrong person.
We’ll respond within one month. If your request is complex, or you’ve made several requests, we may extend this by up to two further months, and we’ll let you know if we need to.
There’s usually no charge. We may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse, if a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.
If your information came to us from BedfordBID
Your rights are exactly the same. If you’d like to know what we hold about you, update it, or have it deleted following the handover, just ask.
13. How long we keep your information
We only keep personal information for as long as we need it for the purposes it was collected for, including any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.
| Type of information | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Newsletter subscribers | Until you unsubscribe. We regularly review our lists and may remove people who haven’t engaged with our emails for [24 months]. |
| Unsubscribed email addresses | Kept on a suppression list indefinitely, so we don’t email you again. |
| Business directory listings and contacts | For as long as the business is listed with us, plus [12 months] after the listing is removed. |
| Enquiries and correspondence | [2 years] after our last contact with you. |
| Form submissions | [2 years] after submission, unless they relate to an ongoing listing or relationship. |
| Competition and prize draw entries | Deleted straight after the draw. Winners’ details are kept only until the prize is delivered and any follow-up is dealt with. Entrants who opted in are added to our mailing list and kept until they unsubscribe. |
| Records relating to the BedfordBID handover | [6 years], so we can show how and when data was transferred. |
| Financial and accounting records | 6 years from the end of the financial year they relate to, as required by law. |
| Website analytics data | [14 months], or as set in our analytics tool. |
When we no longer need your information, we’ll securely delete it or anonymise it so it can no longer identify you.
As part of the handover, we’re reviewing the information inherited from BedfordBID and deleting anything we don’t need.
14. How we keep your information safe
We take the security of your information seriously and use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect it. These include:
- Secure, encrypted (HTTPS) connections across our website
- Strong passwords and two-factor authentication on the systems and accounts we use
- Limiting access to personal information to people who need it
- Keeping software, plugins and systems up to date
- Regular backups
- Only using service providers who meet appropriate security standards
No system is completely secure, but if something goes wrong, we have procedures in place to deal with it. Where a personal data breach is likely to put your rights at risk, we’ll report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours, and where the risk is high, we’ll tell you directly.
15. Children
Love Bedford is aimed at adults, businesses and visitors. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you think a child has given us their information, please let us know and we’ll delete it.
If you’re under 18, please check with a parent or guardian before entering a competition or submitting information to us.
16. Links to other websites
Our directory and content link to lots of other websites, including the websites of local businesses, event organisers and partners. We’re not responsible for how those sites handle your information, so please check their privacy policies before sharing anything with them.
Being listed in our directory doesn’t mean we endorse a business’s privacy practices.
17. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy from time to time, for example if we change how we use your information, start using new tools, or if the law changes.
We’ll always post the latest version on this page and update the “last updated” date at the top. If we make significant changes, we’ll let you know by email or with a notice on our website.
Previous versions
Before [DATE], Love Bedford’s privacy policy was issued by BedfordBID as data controller. This version replaces it following the handover to Dream Digital.
18. Complaints
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your personal information, please tell us first at hello@lovebedford.co.uk. We’d really like the chance to put things right.
19. Contact us
Questions, requests or just want to check something? Get in touch:
Email: hello@lovebedford.co.uk