Who we are
Homestead is a neighbourhood app that helps people get to know and connect with others in their community. Homestead is run by Josh Thackeray, a sole trader in the UK. In this policy, “Homestead”, “we” and “us” means Josh Thackeray trading as Homestead, the data controller for the personal information described here.
You can contact us about privacy, or anything else, at hello@joinhomestead.co.uk. Our postal address is available on request.
The information we collect
When you use the app
| Information | Why we need it |
|---|---|
| Your mobile number or email address | To send you a one-time sign-in code. Homestead has no passwords for residents. |
| Your full name and date of birth | Your name is shown to neighbours. Your date of birth is used only to check you’re 16 or over and to work out your age range; it’s never shown to anyone. |
| Your home address | To place you in the right community. It is never shown to other residents. |
| Profile details you choose to add: photo, bio, interests, occupation, how long you’ve lived locally, local work you offer | To help neighbours get to know you. |
| Posts, photos, comments, likes and group activity | To provide the community feed and groups. |
| Reports and blocks you make | To keep the community safe. |
| The day you last used the app | To understand how many people are active. We store the date only, not times or what you did. |
When you register interest on this website
Your first name, email address, the town or community you gave us, whether you asked for news about Homestead (and, if you did, the wording you agreed to and when), and when you registered.
How we use it, and why we’re allowed to
| What we do | Our lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Run your account, sign you in, and show your profile, posts and groups to residents of your community | Contract: it’s what you sign up for |
| Work out which community you belong to, and check you’re 16 or over | Contract |
| Keep Homestead safe: review reports, remove content, suspend accounts that break our rules, and keep a record of it | Legitimate interests: keeping residents safe and the community trustworthy |
| Understand how Homestead is used, from counts such as how many people were active | Legitimate interests: improving Homestead |
| Tell you when you can join Homestead in your area, after you’ve registered interest | Legitimate interests: you asked us to |
| Send you news about Homestead, such as new features and communities | Consent: only if you ticked the box. You can withdraw it at any time by emailing us or using the unsubscribe link |
Who can see what
- Other residents of your community can see your name, profile photo, community (“Swinton resident”), and the profile details you choose to share. They never see your address, date of birth, email address or phone number.
- The People directory only lists adults who haven’t hidden themselves. Residents aged 16 and 17 never appear in it.
- Homestead’s moderators can see reports and the content they’re about, so that they can act on them. Access to account details such as email addresses and home addresses is limited to a small number of administrators, and looking up a resident’s address is recorded.
- Nothing you share on Homestead is public on the web.
Photos
Photos are re-encoded when you upload them, which removes hidden information such as the location they were taken. They’re stored privately and shown to residents through links that expire.
Service providers
We use carefully chosen providers to run Homestead. They process information on our behalf and only as we instruct:
- Laravel Cloud: hosting for the Homestead service, its database and stored photos, in its London region.
- Brevo: sending sign-in codes and account emails.
- Twilio: sending sign-in codes by text message.
- Ideal Postcodes: looking up addresses when you enter your postcode.
This website is a set of static pages. The only information it collects is what you enter in the early-access form, which goes straight to the Homestead service above.
Our information is stored in the UK. Some of our providers, or their support teams, are based outside the UK, so they may access or process it elsewhere. When that happens, we rely on the UK’s adequacy regulations or on the safeguards approved under UK data protection law, such as the International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum.
How long we keep it
- Sign-in codes are deleted shortly after they expire.
- Your account is kept until you delete it. When you do, we delete your profile, photos, posts and comments (with the replies under them), your blocks, and your address (unless someone else still lives there).
- Moderation records, meaning reports and the decisions made about them, are kept for 2 years and then deleted. If you delete your account, reports you made or that were about you are kept for that period, no longer linked to you.
- Backups are kept for a limited period and overwritten on a rolling basis.
- Early-access registrations are kept until Homestead launches in your area and we’ve told you, then for no more than 12 months. You can ask us to remove yours at any time.
Cookies and tracking
This website doesn’t use cookies, analytics, advertising or tracking. The Homestead app uses no advertising or tracking either.
Your rights
You have the right to access, correct or delete your personal information, to object to or restrict how we use it, and to data portability. You can delete your Homestead account at any time from the app. To exercise any other right, email hello@joinhomestead.co.uk. We’ll reply within one month.
If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Changes to this policy
We’ll update this page if anything changes and, where the change is significant, let you know in the app.