Privacy Policy
Last updated: 31 August 2026
Who we are
House of The People ("HoTP", "we", "us") is the data controller for the personal information collected through this platform. For any privacy query, contact charlie@houseofthepeople.com.
What we collect
- Email address, to sign you in and to contact you about your account.
- Postcode, and the areas we derive from it: your constituency, ward and council, with the people who represent each.
- Your profile, which identifies you by constituency rather than by name.
- Your votes on bills, and the alignment figures calculated from them.
- What you post: comments, forum posts, polls and petitions.
- Other actions: likes, and the bills you follow.
- Citizenship status and document type, to establish voting eligibility.
- Device tokens, if you turn on push notifications.
- Subscription state, if you buy Pro. We never see or store your card details.
- Page views and performance data, described under Cookies and analytics.
We do not collect your device location. The app never asks for location permission, and your postcode is only what you type in.
Your political opinions
How you vote on legislation says what you think about it, so your voting record on HoTP is information about your political opinions. Under UK GDPR that is special category data and gets stronger protection than ordinary personal data.
We rely on your consent to hold it, given when you accept this policy on signing up. You can withdraw it at any time by deleting your votes or your account, and your votes are private by default: showing them on your public profile is a setting you have to turn on yourself.
We never sell this data, never share it with a political party or campaign, and never use it to target advertising. Aggregate figures we publish, such as how a constituency voted, contain no individual record.
What other people can see
You are identified by your constituency, never by your name. A comment appears as "Islington South and Finsbury constituent", and your profile shows the same. We do not ask for your real name, there are no usernames, and nothing you post carries one.
What is public: comments, forum posts, polls and petitions you create, and the constituency attached to them. Anyone using the platform can see these, and so can search engines where the page is public.
What is never shown to anyone: your email address, your postcode, and your citizenship details. Your voting record is also hidden unless you turn it on in Settings.
How we use it
- To sign you in and keep your account working.
- To match you to your constituency, ward and council, and to the people who represent them.
- To record your votes and show you how they compare with your MP, your area and the country.
- To publish, under your constituency rather than your name, the parts of your activity you have chosen to make public.
- To send notifications about the bills you follow, if you turn them on.
- To produce anonymous aggregate statistics.
- To establish UK voting eligibility.
- To take payment for Pro and to keep your subscription in the right state.
- To keep the platform safe: moderating content, and handling reports and blocks.
Who we share it with
Only what each one needs to do its job.
- Supabase: our database and sign-in. Holds your account, profile, votes and posts.
- Vercel: hosting, plus the cookieless analytics described below.
- Amazon Web Services: storage for the parliamentary and local government data the site is built on. No personal data.
- Stripe: card payments made on the website.
- Apple and Google: in-app purchases made in the iOS and Android apps.
- RevenueCat: checks those in-app purchase receipts and tells us whether a subscription is active.
- Apple Push Notification service and Firebase Cloud Messaging: delivering notifications to iOS and Android devices respectively.
- MySociety MapIt: turns your postcode into a constituency. Your postcode is sent, nothing else.
- Anthropic and OpenAI: plain-English bill summaries. No personal data is sent.
We do not sell your data. We do not run advertising and we do not use advertising or cross-site tracking pixels.
Legal basis
For most of your data we rely on consent, given when you create an account. For your voting record we rely on explicit consent, as described above. For taking payment we rely on performance of a contract, and for keeping the platform safe from abuse we rely on our legitimate interests.
You can withdraw consent at any time by deleting your account in Settings, Account, Delete Account.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 you have the right to:
- Access: request a copy of your personal data. Settings, Privacy, Export my data.
- Rectification: correct anything inaccurate by editing your profile.
- Erasure: delete your account and everything attached to it. Settings, Account, Delete Account.
- Portability: export your data as JSON, from the same place.
- Objection: object to a particular use of your data.
- Withdraw consent: at any time, without giving a reason.
Use the tools in Settings or email charlie@houseofthepeople.com. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
How long we keep it
We keep your data for as long as your account exists. When you delete your account we permanently remove your profile, votes, notification subscriptions, device tokens and authentication record.
Posts and comments you made in public discussions are deleted with your account. Where a reply of somebody else's depends on one of your posts to make sense, we may keep the post with your name removed.
Security
All data is sent over HTTPS, in the apps as well as on the web. Passwords are hashed and never stored in plain text. We use Supabase Row Level Security so an account can only read its own records, and administrative operations use a separate service role key that the app itself never holds.
Children
HoTP is intended for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 13. If you believe a child has given us personal data, email charlie@houseofthepeople.com and we will delete it.
Changes
We may update this policy. Material changes will be notified by email, and the date at the top of this page always says when it last changed.
Contact
For any privacy question, or to exercise any of the rights above, contact charlie@houseofthepeople.com.