Privacy policy

Surrey Kids Parties is a children's entertainment business run by Mark Hawley, covering Surrey and West Kent. We're the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at mark@surreykidsparties.co.uk or 07891 159018.

• Your name
• Your email address — everything reaches you here: the confirmation, the payment link, your invitation and the link to your booking page
• Your phone number, so Mark can give you a quick ring after you book and reach you on the day
• Whereabouts the party is — a town is enough to work out travel time when you book, and the exact venue once you know it
• Details of the party itself — type, date, time, length and any add-ons
• The birthday child's first name and how old they're turning, if you tell us
• Anything else you tell us, such as a character request or a note about what you're after

We ask about the birthday child because it's the whole point of the booking — knowing it's Ruby's 5th lets us pitch the games right and make a fuss of her on the day. A first name and an age is all we ever need: please don't send us surnames, dates of birth, or photos of your children. We use it to run the party and nothing else, and it's deleted along with the rest of your booking.

If you use the date checker without going on to book, we keep what you typed into it — your email address, the date and time you asked about, and whereabouts you are — so we can answer you, and so we can follow up once or twice if we haven't heard back. Ask us to delete it and we will, and we stop either way if you tell us to.

If you ask our AI assistant a question, we keep the question so Mark can see what the site isn't answering, and it's sent to Anthropic to be answered. Please don't type anything into it you wouldn't put in an email.

We never see your card details. Payments go directly to our payment provider, who handle the card side entirely — no account needed, just a card. We only ever see that a payment succeeded.

Almost all of it is because we need it to do the job you've booked us for— we can't turn up to a party without an address, or send you a confirmation and a payment link without an email address. In data protection terms that's performance of a contract.

Checking a date isn't a booking, so there's no contract there yet — answering you and following up is us relying on legitimate interests, on the basis that you asked us a question and would like an answer. Tell us to stop and we will, immediately and for good.

If we ask you for a review afterwards, that's us relying on legitimate interests too, and you can tell us to stop at any time and we will.

We don't sell your details, and we don't pass them to anyone for their own marketing. We do use a handful of services to actually run the business, and your information passes through them:

• Airtable — where your booking is stored
• Stripe — payments, refunds and invoices
• Resend — the emails we send you about your booking
• Twilio — the text messages we send you about your booking
• Google— your party goes in our calendar, your name and number go into Mark's contacts so he knows who's calling, we use Google Maps to work out travel time from your postcode, and Google Ads tells us which advert brought you here
• Anthropic — answers the questions you ask our AI assistant
• Meta — only if you agree to marketing cookies: Facebook and Instagram adverts are measured the same way, and Meta is told that a booking happened, matched to you by a scrambled version of your email address rather than the address itself
• postcodes.io — checks your postcode is real as you type it
• Vercel — hosts this website

We'd also share information if the law required us to.

We use Google Ads to advertise, which sets a cookie so Google can tell us whether an advert led to an enquiry. It records that a booking came from an advert — not who you are or what else you do online.

We also have Meta's advertising pixel on the site for Facebook and Instagram adverts. It does nothing at all unless you agree to it — until then no Meta cookie is set and nothing is sent. Those are the only two, and there is nothing else here following you around the internet.

We keep your booking for as long as we need it for our accounts and tax records — usually six years, which is what HMRC expects. If you'd rather we didn't keep the rest, say so and we'll strip it back to the bare minimum we're legally required to hold.

You can ask us to show you what we hold, correct anything wrong, delete it, or stop using it in a particular way. Just email and we'll sort it — there's no form to fill in and it won't cost you anything.

If you think we've handled your information badly, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.