Privacy
Quorate helps a parish or town council run its meetings. This notice says what we hold about you, why we hold it, who else can see it and how long it stays. It is written for the clerk who has to answer their council when it asks.
Last updated .
Who is responsible for what
Councillors and their details, attendance, agendas, minutes and everything else a meeting produces belong to the council. The council is the data controller for them. We hold that record on the council's instructions and do nothing else with it. In the language of the law, we are the processor and the council is the controller.
Your email address, your password, your sessions and the record of what you did to the council's record exist so that we can let the right person in and keep everybody else out. For those we are the controller. This notice is our notice to you.
The council's own privacy notice covers a councillor's address, a set of minutes and anything else on the council's record. The council answers questions about them, and we help it answer. The rest of this page answers questions about your sign-in.
Who we are
Quorate Software Ltd, registered in Companies House, England and Wales under company number 17426317, registered office 12 Ellis Close, Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton TA2 8NG. Our reference on the Information Commissioner's Office register is ZC245155. We have been on it since 11 September 2026.
Send privacy questions and any request about your own data to privacy@quorate.org. Our full service details are on the service details page.
What we hold about you, and for how long
Our lawful basis for all of it is legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). The interest is running a service a council has asked us to run and keeping the accounts on it secure. We do not use any of it for marketing or sell any of it. Nothing about you is decided by an automated process.
| What | Why we hold it | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Your email address | It signs you in, and it is where a sign-in link or a notice about your account goes. | For as long as you have a Quorate account. Leaving a council does not close it. Neither does the council leaving Quorate. Nothing removes an account after a period of time. Ask us and we remove it. That clears your address and your password. Only the account's number stays, and the council's record uses it to say who did what. Your name stays on the notices and summonses you issued as proper officer. They stand as they were issued. |
| Your password | So nobody else can sign in as you. We hold only a scrambled form of it (Argon2id). Nobody here can read it or tell you what it was. | With your account, until you change it. |
| Your passkeys, if you add any | So a passkey can sign you in. For each we hold the name you gave it, the public half of its key, the web address it was made on, and when it was added and last used. Your fingerprint, face or PIN never leaves your device, and we never see it. | With your account, until you remove the passkey on Your account. |
| Sessions: the browser cookie that keeps you signed in | So you do not sign in again on every page. We store only a fingerprint of the cookie's value. A copy of our database contains nothing anyone could sign in with. | 30 days from when you last used it, or until you sign out, whichever comes first. |
| Sign-in links, password reset links and invitations | So you can get back in without a password the night before a meeting. We hold only a fingerprint of each link. | A sign-in link lasts 30 minutes, a password reset an hour, an invitation seven days. The record of it is deleted a day after it expires. |
| Failed sign-in attempts: the address typed and the internet address it came from | So nobody can sit and work through a list of password guesses at your account. It slows guessing down and never locks you out. | 24 hours. |
| What happened to the emails we send you about your account | So when a sign-in link does not turn up, we can tell you whether it was sent and whether it arrived. | 90 days. |
| When you signed in, when you signed out, and any sign-in we refused | So you can be told whether anybody else has been in your account. | 90 days. |
| What you did to the council's record, and when | So the council can answer a challenge to its minutes years later. The record shows who signed them and who moved a meeting. | For as long as the council uses Quorate. This is the council's record. Even at your request, we cannot delete any of it. |
| Whether you prefer light or dark, and which colour theme | So the screen looks the way you left it, including on your next device. | On your account until you change it, and in a cookie for a year. |
This is what the council's own record keeps and for how long. The council decides these periods. The ones with a term to them are applied by a job that runs every night. A former councillor's address goes when it is due even if nobody has signed in.
| What | Why we hold it | How long |
|---|---|---|
| A councillor's home address and email address | To serve the summons, and to keep the register of interests the law requires. | Emptied as soon as their term of office ends. |
| The rest of a councillor's record, and declarations of acceptance of office | They evidence that the people who sat at the meeting were entitled to. | Six years after their term ends. |
| Items written down for a future agenda, including a resident's request | So nothing raised between meetings is lost before the agenda is built. | Twelve months from being written down. |
| Actions arising, once reported done | So the council can show an action was carried out. | Six years after the action was done. |
| Written records of decisions taken under delegation, including any member named as having declared a conflict of interest | The clerk must make a written record of a decision taken under a delegation, and it must be available for the public to inspect (regulations 7 and 8, Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014). | Six years from the day the decision was taken. |
| Inspection reports for a play area, everything each report found, and the actions those findings became | They are how the council shows it took reasonable care of its play equipment. | Twenty-one years from the next inspection of the same play area. A child hurt on play equipment can bring a claim until they are twenty-one. The latest report stays until a newer one replaces it. |
| Meetings, agendas, attendance, signed minutes and the minute book | This is the council's statutory record. Signed minutes must stay available for inspection by local government electors (s.228 Local Government Act 1972), and the minute book is a permanent record. | For as long as the council uses Quorate. The clerk can delete a meeting nobody was summoned to. When the council leaves, we return its record first. We delete it once the council confirms it has the copy. If six months pass with no confirmation, we give the council 30 days' notice and then delete it. |
| What Amazon reported back about each summons email: whether it was delivered, bounced or complained of | It shows each councillor was sent the summons. That is what answers a challenge to a meeting. | For as long as the council uses Quorate. No shorter period has been set yet. |
| Draft minutes, before they are approved | They are working papers. Only the signed set is the council's record. | Deleted at the moment the minutes are signed. |
If you ask us for a trial
When you send the Ask for a trial form, we keep what you typed: your council's name, its parish, your name, your email address, how often your council meets, how you heard about Quorate and when you ticked to accept the data processing terms for the trial. We also note the website that sent you to us, when your browser says, and which page of ours you came from. We are the sole controller of all of this.
Our lawful basis is legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)). You have asked us about a trial, and we need these details to answer you and set one up. We email them to our own inbox so one of us can reply. We use them for nothing else. We never add them to a mailing list, use them for marketing or sell them. If your address is on your parish's own .gov.uk domain and your council is not yet on Quorate, we set the council up straight away and email that address an invitation to sign in. Otherwise we do not email the address you typed until one of us replies.
We keep a request for twelve months from when it arrives. Then the job that runs every night deletes it. The copy emailed to our inbox is deleted by hand on the same timetable. If your council goes on to use Quorate, what we hold about your account from then on is in the table above.
Who else can see it
Three companies process the council's record or your account on our behalf. Everything they hold of yours is held in London and stays there. In the language of the law they are our sub-processors. The list below is the one your council's data processing agreement points at.
See the companies, our sub-processors
| Company | What it does for us | Where | The terms it does it under |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fly.io, Inc. | Runs the application itself, and holds the log it writes of each request. | London (Fly region lhr). Fly.io, Inc. is incorporated in the United States. | Fly's own data processing agreement. Support reaching what is held here from outside the United Kingdom rests on Fly's certification under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. |
| Neon, LLC, contracting as Databricks, Inc. | Holds the database: the council's record and your account. | London (AWS eu-west-2). Neon, LLC is part of Databricks, Inc., and both are incorporated in the United States. | The Databricks data processing addendum, which applies without signature under the Neon platform terms of 05/08/2026. Support from outside the United Kingdom rests on the EU standard contractual clauses with the Information Commissioner's addendum to them. |
| Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL | Sends our email: sign-in links, password resets and address confirmations, and the summons and papers the clerk sends to councillors. It also holds what it reported back about each message, and the list of addresses that bounced or complained so that we do not write to them again. | London (AWS eu-west-2). The contracting entity is in Luxembourg. | The AWS data processing addendum and its UK GDPR addendum, which apply automatically under the AWS service terms without either of us signing anything. |
This list last changed .
We change this list and write to the council's clerk at least 30 days before we add one of these companies or swap one for another. The council can object in that time and say why. If we cannot settle the objection between us, the council can end the service without charge and we export its record and hand it back.
Fly.io and Neon are both incorporated in the United States. What they hold sits in London. We have checked where it is held and can show you. The application runs in Fly's London region. The database and our email both run in Amazon's London region, AWS eu-west-2. Each was verified when it was set up.
Somebody working for one of these companies outside the UK may be able to reach what is held here while helping us with a fault. The terms in the last column govern that access, and the transfer rests on them.
Two companies we depend on are not on that list. Our source code and the jobs that run every night are held at GitHub. Better Stack checks every few minutes that Quorate is still up. Neither holds any of the council's record or anything about your account. Neither processes anything on the council's behalf.
One page draws a map. When you confirm your council's parish boundary on Council set-up, your browser fetches the street map under the outline from OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap sees the request and your internet address the way any website you visit would. No page anywhere else in Quorate loads a map. Nothing about your council is sent with the request.
No artificial intelligence service sees any of it. We have no feature that sends a council's record or anything about you to an AI provider. If that ever changes, this notice will change first and the council will be told before it happens. No AI draft would ever publish itself without a clerk approving it.
We would also hand something over if the law required it of us. That has never happened. If it happens, we tell the council unless we are forbidden to.
Cookies
We set only three cookies. None of them is for advertising or for counting visits.
We count how often each kind of page is opened and whether it worked. The counts show us what to make better. The counting happens on our own servers and involves nobody else. It uses no cookie or script. A count says which kind of page it was and whether a clerk, a councillor or a member of the public opened it. It never says who, which council, or from which internet address. On quorate.org we also count how many requests for a trial started from each of our pages. Each day's counts are kept for a year. After that we keep only a total for each month.
- quorate_session keeps you signed in. It lasts 30 days. Your browser will not hand it to another site, and script on the page cannot read it. Signing out deletes it.
- quorate_theme remembers whether you chose light or dark. It lasts a year.
- quorate_palette remembers which colour theme you chose. It lasts a year.
A volunteer's routine inspection pages also keep a copy of themselves on the volunteer's phone. The form then opens at a site with no signal. An inspection sent without signal stays on the phone until it reaches the council.
While a clerk types into a box and has not yet saved it, the browser keeps a copy of the typing on that computer. The typing comes back if the page is closed by accident. The copy never reaches us. Nothing from business closed to the public is kept. Neither is any password or sign-in detail. The copy is deleted when it is saved, when you choose Discard and when you sign out. One older than 24 hours is deleted the next time anyone signs in on that browser. On a computer others use, sign out when you finish.
What you can ask us for
We control your account and any trial request you sent us. For that data, you can ask us to give you a copy of it, correct it, delete it, restrict what we do with it or hand it to somebody else in a portable form. You can object to us holding it on the basis of our legitimate interests. We will then either stop or explain why we cannot. Write to privacy@quorate.org and we will answer within one month.
The same rights apply to the council's record. The council is its controller and answers them. Ask the council, and it will ask us for whatever it needs.
While minutes stand signed, nobody can edit or delete them, us included. They are the council's statutory record. The law requires them to be kept and made available for inspection. A mistake is normally caught at the meeting that approves the minutes and put right before they are signed. Where one is found after that, the council resolves a correction at a later meeting. We record the correction beside the signed minute. If a signing was recorded in error, the clerk can take it back with a reason. The audit trail keeps it.
If you are not happy with how we have handled it
Tell us at privacy@quorate.org and we will try to put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at any time.
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. Helpline 0303 123 1113. ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint.
Changes to this notice
When this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change affects what we do with a council's record, the council is told before it takes effect.