Privacy

What stays in your browser

Three things are kept in your browser’s local storage. None of them is a cookie, none is sent to our server, and none can identify you.

Your shortlist

The schools you have saved. Kept until you clear it, or until you clear your browser data.

Your last search

The area and filters you last used, so links back to your results still work. Expires by itself after thirty days, and there is a “forget” button on the home page.

Your cookie choice

Whether you accepted or rejected analytics and advertising, so you are not asked again on every page.

Clearing your browser’s site data for localschool removes all three permanently.

Analytics

We count which pages are viewed, using PostHog, so we can tell what is worth improving. It is deliberately narrow: no session recording, no automatic capture of what you click, no IP address stored, and nobody is identified or followed between sites. It is hosted in the EU.

It stores nothing on your device. No cookie, no entry in your browser’s storage, nothing that survives closing the tab. That is why there is no banner asking about it: the rules that require consent for analytics are about storing things on your device, and we do not. The trade is ours rather than yours, and worth being open about: every page load looks like a new visitor to us, so we cannot tell whether anyone comes back.

The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in knowing which pages are used. If you would rather not be counted at all, a tracker blocker or your browser’s do-not-track setting will stop it, and nothing on the site depends on it.

Advertising

Ads pay for the site, and they do set cookies. Google collects consent for that through its own consent message, which appears the first time you visit and lets you accept, reject, or choose in detail. Rejecting does not stop you using anything here.

Google decides which ads to show and what it collects is governed by Google’s privacy policy (opens in a new tab) rather than ours. Ads never affect which schools appear or in what order, and no school can pay to be listed, promoted or removed.

To change your mind, use the privacy or consent link Google’s message leaves on the page. We do not hold that choice ourselves, so it is not ours to reset.

Who else sees a request

Some parts of the page are loaded from other people’s servers, and those servers necessarily see your IP address, as any website you visit does.

• Map tiles come from OpenFreeMap as you pan and zoom.
• Postcode lookup goes through our server to postcodes.io, so what is shared is the postcode you typed, not your IP address.
• Street View is a plain link by default - nothing reaches Google until you choose to click it.

Google, whose advertising runs only if you accept it, is based in the United States, so accepting means some data leaves the UK. Google relies on the UK’s international data transfer agreement and its own safeguards for this; what it does with the data is governed by Google’s privacy policy rather than ours.

What our server keeps

Ordinary web server logs: the page requested, the time, a browser user-agent and an IP address. These are what any web server writes, and they are used to keep the site running and to investigate faults. They are not combined with anything else and are not used to build a profile of you.

We keep these for 7 days and then they are deleted. The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in keeping the site available and secure; there is no way to run a website without them.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you have the right to ask what personal data an organisation holds about you, to have it corrected or erased, and to object to how it is used. In practice we hold very little: almost everything is in your browser, and clearing your site data removes it without asking anyone.

For anything else contact us at info@localschool.co.uk.

School data

The information about schools on this site is public data published by the Department for Education and Ofsted. It is not personal data about visitors. Where it comes from, how old it is and what it cannot tell you is set out under data sources and limits.

Who is responsible

localschool.co.uk is run by Tom Blackwell, the data controller for this site. For anything on this page, write to info@localschool.co.uk.