Privacy, in plain words

The tools

Your answers in the readiness check and the cost comparison stay in your browser tab while you use them, so a refresh doesn't lose your place. They also go to our database as you answer, with what I looked up for you: the car behind your plate, fuel and electricity prices, and chargers near you. That's how I can see where people get stuck and what the answers turn out to be.

Each run through a tool gets a random number of its own, and nothing else. Unless you accept cookies (below), nothing in your browser ties one run to the next, and unless you give me your email, nothing ties them to you.

Your number plate

I use it to look your car up in the DVSA's MOT history and with the DVLA. It goes from our server to them and nowhere else, and it's kept in our database with your answers.

Your postcode

The readiness check only asks for it when you've nowhere of your own to charge, to count the public chargers near you. The cost comparison asks for it to find fuel and electricity prices near you. It goes from our server to the services that do that: postcodes.io, which turns it into a point on the map, Open Charge Map, which lists the chargers, and Octopus Energy, which prices electricity by region. It's kept in our database with your answers. If you ask for your results by email, only the first half (the “SW9” of “SW9 8AB”) goes with them.

Your email

When you leave your address, here is everything that gets kept with it:

• The address, which list you joined, the page you joined from, and the version of the wording you agreed to.
• Your readiness answers and verdict, if you asked for them by email. With the first half of your postcode at most, as above.
• Where you came from on the first page of your visit: any utm tags in the link you followed, and the site that linked here (without anything after the site's address). This tells me which places send people who find Clive useful.

That lives with Resend, which sends the emails. Your address is also kept in our database, linked to the runs through the tools you gave it in, and to your other runs from the same browser if you accepted cookies. Every email says what I'll send and how often, and I send one a week at the very most. To stop, reply to any email from Clive and say so, and you're off the list. The same reply is the way to ask what I hold about you, or to have it deleted.

How long

Everything on this page is kept until you ask me to delete it.

Analytics

If you tap Accept on the cookie banner, PostHog records which pages are read, which links and buttons get tapped, and in the tools each screen you see and the answers you give (never your plate, postcode or email), so I can see which tools help people and what breaks. If you give your email, PostHog knows you by a random number, not by the address. If the site throws an error, a report of it goes there too. Until you accept, none of that is recorded, and if you reject it, it stays off.

Accepting also gives your browser a random id of its own, sent with your runs through the tools, so I can see when the same person comes back to them. The cookies page lists what is stored in your browser and lets you change your mind.

Who else sees anything

Nobody. The services above are the whole list: the DVSA and the DVLA for your plate; postcodes.io, Open Charge Map and Octopus Energy for your postcode; Resend for your email; PostHog for analytics if you accepted; Neon, which runs our database; and Vercel, which hosts the site and so sees every request it serves. Each gets only the thing it's there for. Nothing is sold and nothing is shared for advertising. Where money comes from is on the how we make money page.