This notice explains what personal information The Speaker Handbook collects, why, and what we do with it. It's based on the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) privacy notice generator for small businesses, with details added for this website.
Who we are
The Speaker Handbook is run by Nelson Carter Consultancy Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 10708337). We are the controller of your personal information. You can contact us by email at hello@thespeakerhandbook.com or by post at 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London W1W 5PF.
What information we collect, use, and why
When you ask for a recommendation or suggest a business, we collect your name, your email address and what you tell us, such as the kind of help you need, dates, location and budget, or the details of the business you're suggesting. We use it to reply to you and, for recommendations, to suggest people who may be able to help.
When you email us with a question, correction or complaint, we collect your name, contact details and our correspondence, so that we can answer and put things right.
When we feature a business in the handbook, we publish business information: its name, website, services, and where and how it works with clients. For a sole trader or small business, this can identify a person. We get it from the business itself, from someone who recommends it, or from the business's own website and public profiles.
When you use the website, our hosting and security providers process technical information such as your IP address to deliver the site and protect it from attacks. If, and only if, you agree to analytics cookies, Google Analytics collects information about how you use the site. See our cookies page.
We don't collect special category information (such as health or religious beliefs), and the site isn't intended for children.
Our lawful bases
Under UK data protection law, we must have a lawful basis for using your personal information. We rely on:
- Consent for replying to the messages you send through our forms (you tick a box to agree) and for analytics cookies. You can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing us or using the cookie settings; this doesn't affect anything we did before.
- Legitimate interests for answering questions, corrections and complaints, and for publishing accurate, useful information about businesses that serve professional speakers, so that speakers can find suitable help. Any business can ask us to correct or remove what we publish about it.
- Legitimate interests for keeping the website secure.
Your rights
You have the right to ask for a copy of your personal information, to have it corrected or deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, to have it transferred to you or another organisation, and to withdraw consent where we rely on it. Some rights depend on the lawful basis and may have exemptions. We'll respond without undue delay and within one month. To make a request, email us.
How long we keep information
- Form entries stored on this website are deleted automatically 12 months after we receive them.
- Emails, including the copy of each form entry sent to us, are kept in our email system (Google Workspace). We don't delete emails on a fixed schedule: we keep them as a record of our dealings with people and businesses. If you'd like us to delete emails about you, ask us and we will, unless we need to keep them, for example to deal with a legal claim.
- Business listings stay published while the business is featured, and are removed when it's no longer featured or asks us to remove it.
- Records of your cookie choice (an anonymous reference, your choice, the version of the cookie banner you saw and the date) are kept for 24 months, so that we can show what you chose. They contain no IP address and can't be linked to your name.
- Analytics data: if you agree to analytics cookies, Google Analytics keeps event-level data for 2 months and user-level data for 14 months.
Who we share information with
We don't sell your personal information or share it for advertising. We use these service providers (data processors) to run the site, under contracts that require them to protect it:
- Rocket.net hosts the website and its form entries, on servers in London.
- Cloudflare delivers the website and protects it from attacks.
- Google provides our email (Google Workspace) and, only if you agree to analytics cookies, Google Analytics.
- SendLayer sends emails from the website, such as form notifications and automatic replies.
We publish business information on this website, as described above. We may also share information where the law requires it.
Sharing information outside the UK
Some of our providers are based in the United States or may process information there. Where that happens, a transfer safeguard recognised by UK law applies: Google is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (the UK-US data bridge), and Cloudflare relies on its Data Privacy Framework certifications and on standard contractual clauses with the UK addendum. We are finalising a data processing agreement with Rocket.net, our host, and have asked for it to include standard contractual clauses with the UK addendum for any access from outside the UK. We are also moving the email sent by this website from SendLayer to Google Workspace, which is covered by the Google safeguard above. We will update this notice when both are done.
If you're outside the UK
The Speaker Handbook is run from the UK and follows UK data protection law for everyone who uses it, wherever they are. The rights above apply to you wherever you live. If you're in the European Union or European Economic Area, the EU General Data Protection Regulation may also apply, and you can complain to the data protection authority in your country. If you're elsewhere, you may have rights under your local law; contact us and we'll help. We don't sell personal information. We don't respond to browser "Do Not Track" signals, because we don't use analytics or tracking without your consent in the first place.
How to complain
If you have concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact us first at hello@thespeakerhandbook.com or by post at the address above. If you're still unhappy, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: ICO Head Office, 4th Floor, No.3 Circle Square, 5 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester M1 7BL; helpline 0303 123 1113; ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
Changes to this notice
We review this notice at least once a year and update it when our practices change. Last updated: 30 October 2026.