Privacy policy

Version 20 October 2026

PreparedBritain ("we", "us") is an independent UK publisher at preparedbritain.co.uk. This policy explains what personal data we collect, why, and the rights you have over it under UK data protection law (UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018).

Who we are

PreparedBritain is run by TMR Digital, 73 Stoneleigh Broadway, Stoneleigh, Epsom, KT17 2HP. The data controller for the personal data described below is Tom Rowland, trading as TMR Digital, 73 Stoneleigh Broadway, Stoneleigh, Epsom, KT17 2HP. Our registration number with the Information Commissioner's Office is ZC285102. Contact: hello@preparedbritain.co.uk.

Buying from our shop, and The Family File

If you buy The Family File or another file from our shop, the payment is taken by Stripe, which acts as our payment processor. We never see or store your card details. Stripe gives us your email address, the amount paid and the billing details it collects, which we keep as a record of the sale for as long as tax law requires. We add your email address to our customer list at MailerLite so that we can send your personal download link and tell you about updates to the file; you can unsubscribe at any time. Anything you type or write in the file stays on your own device — it is never sent to us.

Hearing about things we make

Our signup forms have an optional box, unticked by default: “Also tell me when PreparedBritain makes a new guide or tool.” If you tick it, we may email you about our own products. If you don’t, we won’t — you will only get the briefings described on the form. Either way you can unsubscribe from any email in one click. If you ask to be told when a particular product is ready, we email you once about that product.

What we collect, and why

Email address — only when you sign up for our briefing, checklists or price/availability alerts. Alongside it we record which page and form you signed up from, the referring site, and any campaign tags on the link you arrived by. We use this to send you what you asked for and to understand which of our pages people find useful.
Kit-builder inputs — if you use our kit builder and ask for your checklist by email, we store the household numbers you entered (adults, children, pets, days) so the checklist we send is sized to them. Nothing else.
Alerts on this device — only if you say yes when we ask ("Want the big ones as they happen?") or press "Alert me when this changes" on one of our trackers, and then allow notifications. Your browser then creates a push subscription: a web address at your browser's push service (for Chrome, Google's; for Firefox, Mozilla's; for Safari, Apple's) and keys that let us send alerts to that browser. It contains no name or email address. We store it with the page you said yes on, and use it only to send these alerts: named storms, amber or red weather warnings, severe flood warnings, and our biggest stories, at most one a day. Every alert goes to everyone who has turned alerts on. We also count each new subscription, with the page's name, in Vercel Web Analytics. If you say "Not now", your browser remembers that for 30 days, on your device only. To stop the alerts, block notifications for this site in your browser settings.
Usage analytics — we use Vercel Web Analytics, from our hosting provider Vercel, to count which pages people read and how they find them. It doesn't use cookies: Vercel tells visits apart using a hash (a scrambled code) made from your browser's request, and each visitor session is discarded after 24 hours. Each page view, and each click we count, may be stored with the time, the page's address (Vercel filters its query parameters), the address of the site that sent you, your approximate location (country, region and city), your device type, your operating system and browser with their versions, and the version of Vercel's script. Vercel records these counts anonymously, and we only see them added up. See our cookie notice for more.
Where a retailer click came from — when you click a link to a retailer or installer, we count the click with Vercel Web Analytics, along with the product and whether the link goes through Amazon, the Awin network or straight to the shop. We also count a one-word label for how you reached the page you clicked on, such as google, bing, chatgpt, social, email or none, so we can see which kinds of visit lead people to the products we recommend, and improve the pages and topics that help most. Your browser works the label out from the site that sent you and any campaign tag in the address you arrived at (ChatGPT, for example, adds utm_source=chatgpt.com), and keeps it only in the open page, never in a cookie or browser storage. If you've moved between pages on our site first, the label is usually internal, because your browser then reports our own page as where you came from. The label is never a web address. Like every Vercel count, it is stored with the details listed above, including the address of the site that sent you. We don't add it to the retailer's link, and we don't pass it to retailers or affiliate networks.
To turn the label off, press the button below. We then save one setting in your browser so we remember your choice, and nothing else. We also leave the label off if your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track. Turning it off doesn't stop the Vercel counts described above.
Kit builders — in our kit builders we count, with Vercel Web Analytics, when a builder opens and which kind of page on our site you came from (a guide, a kit page, the home page) or whether you came from elsewhere. When you click through to a retailer from a builder, we also count the household size you entered, grouped as 1, 2, 3–4 or 5 and over. We use this to see which pages send people to the builders and which households find them useful. The household size isn’t stored anywhere else, apart from your personalised checklist and the email that delivers it, which state it; it’s removed from page addresses before they reach our analytics, and never goes to a retailer. If you’ve turned the source label off (above), or your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, we record where you came from as unknown.
Home Alerts waitlist — if you join the list on our Home Alerts page, we keep your email address, your postcode and any answers you choose to give (how you would like alerts, what matters to you) at MailerLite, our email service. We use them to invite you to Home Alerts, to tell you when it opens, and to decide where to start. To keep the invites in the order people joined, our own database keeps a scrambled code (a hash) of your address, the time you joined and whether we told you that you were in the first places; never the address itself. You join the briefing only if you tick its separate box. See “The Home Alerts waitlist” below for when each part is cleared.
Fuel price lookup — if you use the “cheapest fuel near you” check on our fuel price tracker, your browser sends the postcode you type to postcodes.io, an open-data lookup service, to find its coordinates; postcodes.io processes it under its own privacy policy, and it never reaches us. Our server then receives only those coordinates, rounded to about 100 metres, and the fuel you chose, to pick the nearest forecourts from our copy of the national price list. We keep none of it ourselves; the request does appear briefly in our host’s standard server logs, coordinates included, like any other page address (see “Server logs” below). We count each check in Vercel Web Analytics with one detail: whether a result was found (a list of forecourts, none nearby, an unrecognised postcode, or an error) — never the postcode or the coordinates.
Postcode check — if you check your postcode in the Home Alerts bar, your browser keeps it only for the next page (in its session storage, not in the page address) and sends it to postcodes.io, as above, to find its area. Our server then receives only your council area's code and coordinates rounded to about 1 kilometre (about 100 metres for the fuel prices) to look up warnings, flooding, water and fuel near you; the list of power cuts is fetched whole and matched in your browser. We keep none of it, apart from the host's standard server logs described below. Analytics records only whether the check worked and whether anything was happening, never the postcode.
Water company lookup — if you use the “which water company supplies my address?” tool, your browser sends the postcode to our server in the body of the request (not in the page address, so it isn't in our host's logs or our analytics). Our server sends it to postcodes.io, as above, to find its map reference, matches that to the water supply zones, and keeps nothing. Analytics records only the kind of answer (a company found, an unrecognised postcode or an error), never the postcode.
Server logs — our hosting provider (Vercel) records standard technical logs (IP address, request time, user agent and the address requested, which for the fuel lookup includes the rounded coordinates) for security and reliability. These are retained briefly and automatically.

Apart from Home Alerts accounts (below), we do not run user accounts. We do not collect payment details, and we never buy, sell or rent personal data.

Home Alerts accounts

If you have a Home Alerts account (My home, at preparedbritain.co.uk/my-home), we keep:

Your email address, to send you alerts and sign-in links.
A new email address you asked to change to, while the link we sent it is waiting: we keep it with your account until you press the link's button, cancel the change, ask for a different one or delete your account. We use it only for that link, which stops working after 24 hours. My home shows it to you with most of it hidden.
Your home postcode, and what we work out from it once, when your account is set up: its postcode sector, council area, region and country, its Met Office warning region, its power network, and the map point at the centre of the postcode (from postcodes.io, open data). We use these to check whether a power cut, a Met Office warning or an Environment Agency flood warning affects your address.
Your settings: which alerts you want.
Your setup answers (optional): how many adults and children live at home, whether anyone is under 5 or 75 or over, whether you have pets, how you heat your home and cook, the emergency kit you have, how much water you've stored, any power station (the model or its capacity), whether you have solar panels or a home battery (and its size, if you say), whether you own or rent your home, any of the “anything else” boxes you tick (a car or van, and what it runs on if you say, someone commutes, a caravan or campervan, near a river or the coast or flooded before), and the list items you set aside with Not for me. We use them only to size your kit list and shopping list, suggest kits, show the grants and installer quotes that fit your home, open your fuel prices on the right fuel, and fill in My home. You can change them or clear them at any time on My home, under Account.
When you use Buy on your list: which item and which of our product picks you went to, and when, so we can ask later whether you got it. It's deleted when you answer Yes or No thanks. After 60 days we stop asking, and it's deleted the next time you use Buy, Not for me or Put back, when you clear your setup answers, or when you delete your account. We don't see what you buy at the shop.
Your alert and delivery log: each alert we sent you, held for you, or (while your account was in test mode) would have sent you, with when and why; and for each email, when our email service accepted it and whether it was delivered or bounced. You can see your alerts on My home.
Your consent record: when you pressed Start my alerts, the versions of the terms and this notice you agreed to, that you confirmed you're 18 or over, and whether you ticked the optional box for kit picks, offers and new tools, and which wording of it you saw; and the same each time you stop or start the emails again, or turn that optional box on or off on My home. It holds times and versions, never your IP address.
When you signed in, most recently.
A list of addresses we must not email: when an email to an address bounces for good, or someone marks one of our emails as spam, we keep a scrambled code (a hash) of the address so we never email it again. It can't be turned back into the address.
One cookie, ha_session, set when you sign in, to keep you signed in on that device for 30 days. It holds a signed code for your account and nothing else. Signing out removes it.

Home Alerts is for people aged 18 or over. We never ask for your name or anything about your health. There are no passwords: you sign in with a link we email you, which works once and lasts 30 minutes. The link carries a random code and your account number, not your email address. Like every web address on this site, it is recorded in our hosting provider Vercel's request logs. My home pages load no advertising and no analytics from other companies apart from Vercel's cookieless count of visits, which never sees the link, and no other site is told which My home page you came from.

Fuel prices on My home. My home works from the details above, so your browser doesn't look your postcode up anywhere. To show fuel prices near you, your browser asks our own server for the forecourts nearest the map point of your postcode, rounded to about 1 kilometre, in the same way as the fuel price lookup described above. We keep none of it, apart from the host's standard server logs.

The map on My home. The live map on Your area is drawn in your browser from OpenStreetMap data, served by OpenFreeMap. Your browser asks only our own server for the map's pieces, and our server fetches them from OpenFreeMap, so OpenFreeMap never sees your device or which part of the country you are looking at. We keep none of it, apart from the host's standard server logs, which record the map pieces asked for like any page address.

Shop links on your list. The Buy buttons on your shopping list are affiliate links, like the others on this site: once you follow one, the shop may set its own cookies and handle your visit under its own privacy policy. See Affiliate links below and our cookie policy. We don't send the shop your email address, your postcode or anything else from your account.

Who handles it for us, and where.

Hetzner: our own servers, rented in Germany and Finland (both in the EU). Home Alerts accounts are kept in Germany, and alerts-on-this-device subscriptions in Finland.
Resend: our email delivery service, which sends alert, sign-in and invite emails. It processes your email address to deliver them, in the United States, under standard contractual safeguards.
Vercel: hosts this website and My home. Its functions that read your account run in London.
MailerLite: the waitlist, and the briefing if you join it. If you ticked the optional box for kit picks, offers and new tools, your email address is on its own list there, “Home Alerts offers”, which we use only for those emails. Before 20 October 2026 that box asked only about launch emails; those ticks sit on a separate list, “Home Alerts launch emails”, and still mean launch emails only. To leave either, turn it off under Updates on My home's Account tab, or use the unsubscribe link in any of those emails. Unsubscribing from all Home Alerts emails, or deleting your account, takes you off them too.
postcodes.io: looks up your postcode's area when you start or change it. It is sent the postcode only, never your email address.
Healthchecks.io: tells us when our checker or sender stops. It is sent no personal data.

Lawful basis. Contract: we use this data to provide the alerts and My home, the service you asked us for. Legitimate interests: we use it to keep the service secure, to limit abuse and to check the service is working. Consent: for the optional box for kit picks, offers and new tools, which you can withdraw at any time. Those emails carry links to shops and installers, some of which pay us a commission; we never give them your details. Your alert emails never carry offers.

How long we keep it.

An active account: while the account exists.
If you stop the emails, or your address bounces: we note the day, keep your account for 12 months from then, and then delete it with your alert log, setup answers, list choices and buy records.
An invite you never started is deleted 30 days after it was sent; a sign-up never confirmed, after 72 hours. Neither leaves anything behind.
The record of each email we sent you: 13 months, then deleted, or sooner with your account.
The scrambled codes of addresses we must not email: kept, so the opt-out keeps working.
Our backups hold deleted data for up to 35 days, including the copy we keep off the server, and then it's gone from them too.

“Delete my account” on My home deletes it straight away: your email address, your postcode and everything worked out from it, your settings, your setup answers, kit list, list choices and buy records, your alert and delivery log and your consent record. All that is left is an empty record with the date it was deleted and no email address or postcode, so our checker knows that account is gone. If a check was running at that moment, anything it noted for you is removed too, at the latest the next day. You can also email hello@preparedbritain.co.uk to ask.

The Home Alerts waitlist

If you joined the waitlist on our Home Alerts page, MailerLite holds your email address, your postcode and any answers you gave, like our other email lists, and deleting a Home Alerts account doesn't remove it. When we invite you, we clear your postcode from MailerLite (your account has its own copy from then on). We clear the other waitlist postcodes 30 days after Home Alerts opens to everyone, and the answers about how you'd like alerts and what matters to you once we've used them to plan what to build next, by 31 January 2027 at the latest. Earlier sign-ups were also copied, with the postcode, into our own lead system; we clear those postcodes after the first invites and again after opening, and it no longer receives your address, postcode or answers. The record of when you joined is deleted 30 days after opening. To leave the waitlist, use the unsubscribe link in any of those emails, or email hello@preparedbritain.co.uk.

Our power-cut record. We keep a record of the power cuts the networks list (the postcodes and areas each one covered, and its times), built from their public feeds. It holds nothing about you; My home reads it for your area to show the cuts on record there.

Where the alerts come from. Met Office Weather Warnings. Environment Agency flood data (Open Government Licence). Supported by Northern Powergrid Open Data. Supported by NGED Open Data. UK Power Networks and SSEN open data (CC BY 4.0). Home Alerts is independent and not an official warning service: official warnings come first.

Lawful basis

Email signups are processed on the basis of consent — you can withdraw it at any time using the unsubscribe link in any email, or by writing to us. Alerts on this device are also sent on the basis of consent: you turn them on, and your browser asks your permission first. Block notifications for this site in your browser to withdraw it. Headlines you send us to check, and an email address if you give one with them, are processed on the basis of consent: you choose to send them, and you can ask us to delete either at any time. Home Alerts accounts are processed mainly on the basis of contract, as described above. Analytics and server logs are processed on the basis of our legitimate interest in running a secure, working website and improving it.

Where your data goes

Signup data, alert subscriptions and headlines you send us to check are stored in our own lead-management system. Signup data is processed by MailerLite, the email service we use to send you the briefing and checklists, and each alert reaches you through your browser's push service. The website is hosted by Vercel Inc., which also provides our analytics and may process technical data outside the UK under standard contractual safeguards. Home Alerts accounts are kept on our own server at Hetzner in Germany, and Home Alerts emails are sent through Resend (see Home Alerts accounts above). We share personal data with no one else, other than where the law requires it.

Other things we handle

Checklists and PDFs by email. When you ask for one of our printable checklists or PDFs by email, Resend sends it to the address you give, in the United States under standard contractual safeguards.
Enquiries from organisations. If you contact us through our page for organisations, we keep what you send (your name, your organisation, your email address and your message) in our own lead system and our email inbox, to answer you. We never add it to our email lists.
Headlines you ask us to check. Our headline checker finds a match in your own browser, against a list of our checks that it downloads from us, so what you paste stays on your device. If JavaScript is turned off, or the page hasn't finished loading, your browser sends what you pasted to our server to find the match instead; we use it for that and keep none of it. We count each check in Vercel Web Analytics with whether we found a match and which of our checks it was, and each request sent with whether an email address came with it, never what you pasted. Only if you press Send it to us does the headline reach us: we keep it, with the page you sent it from and the time, in our own lead system so that we can check it, and your email address if you choose to give one, which we use only to tell you when it's checked. We never add it to our email lists. On My home we don't ask for your email address, and none is sent with the headline. We keep each request as a record of what readers asked us to check, for as long as we run the checker. Email hello@preparedbritain.co.uk at any time and we'll delete your request, or just your email address from it.
Emails you send us. Messages to hello@preparedbritain.co.uk are held in our mailbox at Zoho Mail, in the EU, for as long as we need them to answer and to keep a record of what was agreed.

Advertising and analytics cookies

When you first visit, a consent screen from Cookiebot (by Usercentrics) asks before anything that needs consent runs. It is a Google-certified screen that lists every purpose and partner, and you can say yes or no to each group. Choose "Deny" and the site works exactly the same, with ads that aren't personalised.

Statistics: Google Analytics 4 shows us which pages help people and which don't (its _ga cookies last up to two years; IP anonymisation is on). Microsoft Clarity shows us anonymously where readers click and scroll (its _clck and _clsk cookies last up to a year and a day); anything typed into a box is hidden from it. Marketing: Google AdSense and its partners may set cookies to show ads relevant to you on our guides. The Meta Pixel lets us show our own adverts on Facebook and Instagram to people who have visited (its _fbp cookie lasts up to 90 days); it never sees what you type. Analytics and the Meta Pixel run only if you allow both Statistics and Marketing. Nothing here runs on your My home pages, search or checkout.

Cookiebot stores your answer in a cookie called CookieConsent for 12 months, so we don't ask again. You can change it here at any time:

Affiliate links

When you click a retailer or installer link on our site (Amazon, or merchants on the Awin network), those companies may set cookies and process your data under their own privacy policies. We only learn that a purchase or quote request happened — never who made it. When a link goes through Awin, it also carries the name of our page and the product you clicked (for example "kit-power-stations" and "jackery-explorer-1000"), so Awin's sales reports show which of our pages led to a sale. Nothing about you is added to it. See our affiliate disclosure.

How long we keep it

We keep your email address until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it, after which it is removed from our list. Vercel keeps our analytics for at least our plan's 12-month reporting window, and says it may keep them for longer. Home Alerts accounts and the waitlist have their own periods, set out above, and so do headlines you send us to check (under Other things we handle).

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, restrict or object to processing, and take your data elsewhere. Email hello@preparedbritain.co.uk and we will respond within one month: that is also how to ask for a copy of your Home Alerts data. You can delete your Home Alerts account yourself at any time, on My home. If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Changes

If we change how we handle personal data, we'll update this page and the version date at the top. If the change affects Home Alerts, we'll ask you to agree to the new version before you start your alerts again.