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 her council when it asks.
Last updated .
Who is responsible for what
The council's record is the council's. Councillors and their details, attendance, agendas, minutes and everything else a meeting produces belong to the council, which 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.
The account you sign in with is ours. Your email address, your password, your sessions and the record of what you did to the council's record exist so that Quorate can let the right person in and keep everybody else out. For those we are the controller, and this notice is our notice to you.
So if your question is about a councillor's address, a set of minutes or anything else on the council's record, the council's own privacy notice covers it and the council answers it. We help the council answer. If your question is about your sign-in, it is ours, and the rest of this page is the answer.
Who we are
[MJ: registered company name], registered in [MJ: Companies House, England and Wales] under company number [MJ: company number], registered office [MJ: registered office address]. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under [MJ: ICO registration number].
Privacy questions and any request about your own data: [MJ: privacy contact email address]. 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: an account nobody can sign into is no use to a clerk, and one anybody can sign into is a hazard to the council. None of it is used for marketing, none of it is sold, and 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. [MJ: what happens to the account and its address when a clerk leaves or a council stops using Quorate] |
| Your password | So nobody else can sign in as you. We hold a scrambled form of it (Argon2id) and never the password itself, so nobody here can read it or tell you what it was. | With your account, until you change it. |
| 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, so 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 a fingerprint of each link, not the 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 we can tell you whether a sign-in link was sent and whether it arrived, when one does not turn up. | 90 days. |
| What you did to the council's record, and when | So the council can answer a challenge to its minutes years later: who signed them, who moved a meeting, who changed the roster. | For as long as the council uses Quorate. |
| 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. |
For completeness, this is what the council's own record keeps and for how long. The council decides these periods, not us. The ones with a term to them are applied by a job that runs every night, so a former councillor's address goes when it is due whether or not anybody 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. |
| 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. | Permanently. Nothing here is ever deleted, by us or by the clerk. |
| Draft minutes, before they are approved | They are working papers, and only the signed set is the council's record. | Deleted at the moment the minutes are signed. |
Who else can see it
Four companies are involved in running Quorate. The council's record and your account are held in London and stay there.
| Company | What it does for us | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Fly.io, Inc. | Runs the application itself. | London (Fly region lhr). Fly.io, Inc. is incorporated in the United States. |
| Neon Inc. | Holds the database: the council's record and your account. | London (AWS eu-west-2). Neon Inc. is incorporated in the United States and is part of Databricks. |
| Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL | Sends our email: sign-in links, password resets and address confirmations. | London (AWS eu-west-2). The contracting entity is in Luxembourg. |
| GitHub, Inc. | Holds the source code Quorate is built from, and the list of work still to do. | No council record and no clerk account data is held there. It is named because it is part of how Quorate is built. |
Two of those companies are incorporated in the United States even though the data sits in London. The terms that govern that, and any transfer of data outside the UK, are [MJ: state the transfer mechanism agreed with Fly.io and Neon, or say that no data leaves the UK].
No artificial intelligence service sees any of it. Quorate has no feature that sends a council's record, or anything about you, to an AI provider. If that ever changes, this notice changes first, the council is told before it happens, and no draft anything 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, and if it happens we tell the council unless we are forbidden to.
Cookies
Quorate sets three cookies and no others. None of them is for advertising, and we run no analytics.
- 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.
What you can ask us for
For the data we control, which is your account, 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, and we will either stop or explain why we cannot. Write to [MJ: privacy contact email address] and we will answer within one month.
For the council's record, the same rights exist but the council answers them, because the council is the controller. Ask the council, and it will ask us for whatever it needs.
One thing we cannot do, and neither can the council: signed minutes cannot be deleted or edited. They are the council's statutory record and the law requires them to be kept and made available for inspection. A mistake in them is corrected by the council resolving to correct it at a later meeting, which Quorate records as a correction rather than by changing what was signed.
If you are not happy with how we have handled it
Tell us first, at [MJ: privacy contact email address], and we would rather put it right than have you take it further. You do not have to: you can 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 rather than after.