Privacy

Two, and neither is used to track you between sites. There is no advertising on this site and no tag manager. Cookies set by the third parties in the next section — including the Google Analytics cookies described there — are theirs, not ours, and the Google ones are not set unless you allow that category.

cc_cookie — strictly necessary

Records the choice you made in the cookie banner, so you are not asked again on every page. It holds the categories you accepted and the date you accepted them, nothing else.

Session and preference storage

Keeps the site working while you move around it — your current search, and anything you have set on this device.

Everything else on this site is served by us. Three things are not. Two of them — the map and the property photos — are how this site works rather than extras on top of it, so they are not offered as a choice: they load for everybody, and they are described here and in the cookie dialog so that you know who your browser is talking to. The third, Google Analytics, is a genuine choice, and nothing is requested from Google while it is refused.

Maps — required

The maps on search results and property pages are drawn from map images supplied by OpenFreeMap. Your browser fetches those directly, which means OpenFreeMap receives your IP address and can see roughly which area you are looking at. This one cannot be switched off: searching by area, and seeing where a property actually is, are most of what this site does.

Property photos — required

We do not host any listing photography. Each photograph, thumbnail and floorplan is loaded from the estate agent who published that listing — or from the image service they use — so your browser contacts that agent directly, and they receive your IP address and can see which property you looked at. Different listings mean different agents, and across the properties we currently hold that is roughly a dozen and a half separate hosts. This cannot be switched off either — nobody chooses a home from a paragraph of text, and a version of this site without the pictures would be one nobody could use.

Analytics — optional

We use Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages get looked at. When you allow it, your browser downloads Google's measurement script and reports each page you open, so Google receives your IP address, the page address, and roughly where you are; it also stores cookies beginning _ga on this device so that repeat visits are recognised as the same person. We use this to decide what to work on next. We have not enabled Google Signals, so it is not used to follow you across devices, and the advertising features of the product are switched off in the code on every request — there is no advertising here to serve. Leave this off and nothing is downloaded from Google at all. Turn it off after allowing it and collection stops immediately and the _ga cookies are deleted. Worth stating plainly: Google Analytics sends data to a US company, and whether that is lawful under UK and EU data-protection law is genuinely contested — several European regulators have ruled against it. That is one of the things the real privacy policy below has to address.

They are listed separately on purpose. The two required ones involve different people — one map supplier we chose, and every estate agent whose listing you open — and telling you about both is not the same as telling you about one. Analytics is the only one you decide, and it can be withdrawn at any time.

Listed rather than left blank, so the gaps are visible to anyone reading this and to whoever writes the real thing:

• Who the data controller is, and how to contact them.
• The lawful basis for each processing purpose.
• What the server logs, and for how long it is kept.
• Which processors receive data, and where they are.
• Whether Google Analytics is an acceptable transfer to the US, and on what basis.
• The lawful basis for the map and listing-photo fetches, which are made for everybody rather than on consent.
• How to exercise access, correction, erasure and objection rights.
• Who to complain to (in the UK, the ICO).