Business Rate Checker helps UK businesses check whether their property's rateable value — and therefore their business-rates bill — looks too high, by comparing it against similar properties in the official rating list. This policy explains what personal data we collect when you use the site, why, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it.
We keep this deliberately plain. If anything here is unclear, contact us using the details at the end.
The data controller for the personal data described here is:
A data controller is the organisation that decides what personal data is collected and why. That is us, for everything described below.
We collect three kinds of data. We try to collect as little as possible.
When you type a postcode or address to look up a property, we process that search term and the property identifier it resolves to (the VOA reference) so we can return your assessment. On its own a postcode or business-address lookup is not usually personal data about you — but because it can sometimes identify a sole trader at their premises, we treat lookups carefully and apply the retention limits below.
We do not ask you to log in, and we do not require your name to produce an assessment.
If you ask us to help with your case — for example by entering your email address to receive a report, or clicking "Get help" / "Start my appeal" — we store the details you provide. In practice this is:
This lets us send you what you asked for and, where you've consented, follow up about your case.
To understand whether the product works and where people get stuck, we record funnel events — for example: a search was run, an assessment was produced, a report was unlocked, an intent button was clicked. Each event stores the event type, the property reference, a link to your lead record if one exists, a small set of technical properties about the event, and a timestamp. We use this to improve the service. We do not sell this data or use it to build advertising profiles.
We explain the cookie/consent position for analytics in section 5.
Under UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for each use of personal data. Ours are:
| What | Lawful basis | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Producing your assessment from an address lookup | Legitimate interests | You asked for the result; processing your search is necessary to give it to you, and you would reasonably expect it. |
| Storing your email and case details so we can send the report you requested | Legitimate interests (to deliver the service you asked for) | Necessary to fulfil your request. |
| Sending you marketing / follow-up about your case or the service | Consent | We only do this where you have actively opted in. You can withdraw at any time. |
| Non-essential analytics (usage measurement that relies on cookies/similar) | Consent | We only run this once you accept on the cookie banner. |
| Essential, privacy-light operation of the site (security, load balancing, remembering your consent choice) | Legitimate interests | Strictly necessary to run the site safely; no marketing use. |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we've weighed our interest in running and improving a useful service against your privacy, and limited what we collect and how long we keep it accordingly. You can object to legitimate-interests processing — see section 6.
We don't keep personal data longer than we need it.
| Data | Where it lives | We keep it for |
|---|---|---|
| Lead — email, property reference, source | lead table | 24 months from your last interaction, then deleted or anonymised. If you withdraw consent or ask us to delete sooner, we act on that promptly. |
| Analytics events — event type, property reference, lead link, event properties, timestamp | event table | 14 months in identifiable form (long enough for year-on-year usage comparison), then aggregated/anonymised or deleted. |
| Assessment / report-unlock records (the figures we generated for a property) | assessment, report_unlock tables | Retained while needed to support a case you've asked us about, and otherwise aligned to the lead above. These hold a property reference and may link to a lead, but no contact details of their own. |
If you have an open enquiry or case with us, we may keep the relevant records for as long as that case is live plus a short period afterwards, even if the windows above would otherwise have elapsed.
We use a small number of strictly necessary items needed to run the site and to remember your consent choice — these don't need your permission.
Non-essential analytics that rely on cookies or similar technologies only run after you accept on our cookie banner. If you reject, we don't set them and we fall back to privacy-light, essential measurement only. You can change your mind at any time via the cookie settings link in the footer.
Trustpilot reviews. Some pages display our Trustpilot star rating and reviews. This is functional content shown to help you judge whether to trust us — it is not analytics or advertising. Trustpilot is an independent third party and may set its own cookie to display the widget; their use of any data is governed by Trustpilot's own privacy policy.
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
To exercise any of these, contact us (section 8). We'll respond within one month. There's normally no charge.
If you're unhappy with how we've handled your data you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk — though we'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.
If we change this policy we'll update the date at the top and, for material changes, flag it on the site.
Business Rate Checker compares your property against the official published rating listThe public register listing every business property's Rateable Value. The current list is the '2026 list', based on rental values from 1 April 2024.. We are an independent service. The Valuation Office AgencyThe government body that sets every property's Rateable Value. From April 2026 the VOA is part of HMRC (see below), but 'VOA' is still the common name for the valuation side of the work. (now part of HMRCHis Majesty's Revenue and Customs — the UK tax authority. Since 1 April 2026 it also includes the VOA's valuation function.) does not endorse, back or verify this site, and our estimates are not official VOA figures. This note is about the source data — it's not personal-data processing — but we include it here so it's easy to find.