Privacy policy

Who we are

Cleave & Company Limited, registered in England and Wales under company number 04259273, of 1 Buckingham Place, London SW1E 6HR, is the controller of the personal information described in this policy. We are goldsmiths, medallists and court jewellers.

If you have a question about anything here, write to byappointment@cleave.com, telephone +44 20 7016 1499, or send a letter to the address above marked for the attention of Sanay Shah, who is our Data Protection Contact.

What we collect

What you choose to tell us. If you use the enquiry form, we receive your name, your email address, the kind of piece you have in mind, and whatever you write in your message. If you email, telephone or send a message by WhatsApp instead, we hold that correspondence in the ordinary way. If an enquiry becomes a commission, we will also need a delivery address and the details of the piece itself.

What the server records. Like any website, ours keeps a technical log of requests: the internet address a request came from, the time, the page asked for, and which browser asked for it. These logs exist so that we can keep the site running and see when something is wrong or when the site is under attack. They are not used to build a picture of you, and we do not try to identify visitors from them.

We collect no financial information through this website. We hold no card numbers and no bank details taken from it. Payment for a commission is arranged separately, in the ordinary course of business.

Cookies and measurement

This website sets no cookies of its own and measures nothing. There is no analytics, no advertising, no tracking pixel and no social media tag. Nothing here follows you to another website, and nothing here reports your visit to anybody. That is why you are not asked to agree to anything when you arrive.

If that ever changes you will be asked first, and this policy will say what changed before it happens rather than after.

Two things happen whatever you decide, because they are needed for the site to work at all. Our network provider, Cloudflare, may set a strictly necessary cookie to tell a person apart from an automated request and keep the site available; it is used for security and nothing else. The typefaces used to come from Google Fonts, which meant Google saw the address of every visitor before a word was read; they are now served from this website and Google is not involved.

The full list, cookie by cookie, with what each one does and how long it lasts, is on the cookies page.

Why we hold it, and on what basis

To answer you

We use your enquiry to reply to it and to arrange an appointment. Where you are asking about a commission, we are taking steps at your request before entering into a contract; otherwise we rely on our legitimate interest in answering people who write to us.

To carry out a commission

Once a piece is commissioned, we hold what we need to design it, make it, deliver it and stand behind it afterwards. That is the performance of our contract with you.

To keep proper records

Orders, invoices and payments are kept because the law requires a business to keep them. That is a legal obligation.

To keep the website working and secure

Server logs and the security measures described above rest on our legitimate interest in running a site that stays up and is not abused.

To write to you about our work

Only if you have asked us to. Making an enquiry does not put you on a mailing list, and we do not add customers to one without being asked. Where you have consented, you may withdraw that consent at any time.

Who else sees it

We do not sell personal information, we do not rent it, and we do not pass it to advertisers or to data brokers. It is seen by:

• The people at Cleave who need it to answer you or to make your piece.
• The companies that run our systems for us, and only in the course of running them: OVH, which hosts this website; Cloudflare, which carries traffic to it and protects it; Microsoft, which provides our email and document storage; and Backblaze, which holds our encrypted backups.
• Craftsmen and specialist workshops who work on part of a commission, where the work requires it.
• Carriers, where a finished piece is to be delivered to you.
• Our accountants, insurers and professional advisers, where they need it.
• A public authority, where we are required by law to provide it.

Where a supplier handles personal information on our behalf, they are bound to act on our instructions and to keep it confidential.

Information leaving the United Kingdom

Our website and its backups are held in Europe. Some of the suppliers named above are international, so information may be processed outside the United Kingdom. Where it is, we rely on the safeguards the law provides for such transfers, being the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK addendum to the European Commission standard contractual clauses, unless the country in question has been recognised as offering adequate protection.

How long we keep it

• An enquiry that does not lead to a commission: two years, then deleted. People often return to an idea long after first raising it, and we would rather remember the conversation than ask you to have it again.
• Records of a commission: seven years from the end of the financial year they fall in, which is what the tax and accounting rules require.
• Drawings, and the record of a piece we have made: kept as part of the archive of the house, because a piece may need repair, matching or replacement many years later. Tell us if you would rather we did not.
• Server logs: a short period, measured in weeks, and then overwritten.

Keeping it safe

This website is served only over an encrypted connection. Access to our records is limited to the people who need it, our systems require more than a password to sign in to, and our backups are encrypted before they leave our server. Nobody can honestly promise that a system is impregnable, but we treat a client confidence as part of the commission, and much of what we are told is told to us in confidence.

Please do not send card numbers, passwords or other confidential details by email or through the enquiry form. If we need something of that kind, we will arrange a proper way for you to give it to us.

Your rights

Under United Kingdom data protection law you may ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy of it;
• correct it, if it is wrong;
• delete it, where we have no continuing reason to keep it;
• stop or restrict what we are doing with it;
• provide it in a portable form, or send it to someone else, where that right applies;
• stop using it for direct marketing, which we will do at once and without question; and
• withdraw a consent you have given, which does not affect what was done beforehand.

Write to byappointment@cleave.com and we will answer within one month. There is no charge. We may need to satisfy ourselves who you are before handing over information about you, which is a protection for you rather than an obstacle.

If you are unhappy

Please tell us first, so that we can put it right. You are also entitled to complain to the Information Commissioner, who regulates this area in the United Kingdom: ico.org.uk, telephone 0303 123 1113, or Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Children

This website is meant for adults and we do not knowingly collect information about children. If you believe a child has sent us their details, tell us and we will remove them.

Other websites

Where we link to somewhere else, that place has its own policy, and we are not responsible for it.

Changes to this policy

If our practices change we will amend this page and change the date at the top of it. If a change is a significant one we will say so plainly, rather than rely on you noticing.