Privacy policy

The Party Department is run by Mark Hawley, providing DJs, hosted quizzes and music bingo for office parties and company events. We're the data controller for everything on this page. Email mark@thepartydepartment.uk, message Mark on WhatsApp or use the enquiry form. All three come straight to Mark.

What you type into the enquiry form:

• Your name and email address, the two we need to reply at all
• Your phone number, if you give one. It's optional
• The occasion, the date, the venue, the company the invoice goes to, and roughly how many people
• Rough times and what you'd like on the night, if you tick or fill those in
• Anything else you tell us in the notes box
• Your IP address, briefly, so the form can't be flooded by a script. It isn't stored with your enquiry

Once you've booked, Mark sends you a private link to your booking page, with your invoice and the option to add the Megashow. Opening it signs you in with a cookie, and if you add the Megashow, it's saved to your booking. A separate link for your venue shows only our insurance and safety paperwork, nothing about you or the price.

No payments happen on this site, so we never see a card number. You're invoiced, and the bank details on the invoice are ours rather than yours.

You asked us about an event, so answering you is taking steps at your request before a contract. Once it's booked we keep the same details to run it and invoice it, which is performance of that contract, and we keep the invoice because HMRC requires it.

We don't sell your details or pass them to anyone for their own marketing. A short list of services runs the business, and your details pass through them:

• Airtable, where your enquiry and booking are stored, alongside the diary that stops a date being sold twice
• Vercel, which hosts this site and runs the form
• Resend, which sends our emails about your enquiry and booking
• WhatsApp, if you message Mark there: your number and what you send reach his phone through it
• Google: a confirmed booking goes into our calendar, and if you give a phone number, your name and number go into Mark's phone contacts so he knows who's calling
• Apple or Google's notification service: an enquiry pings Mark's phone with your name, the venue and the date, so he knows what it is

We'd also share information if the law required us to.

Only one, and only once you've booked: opening your booking page sets a cookie that keeps you signed in to your booking page, and nothing else reads it. We don't use analytics or advertising tags, so nothing follows you around the internet. If you arrive from an advert or a link we've tagged, we keep a small note of it on your device for 90 days so an enquiry sent later is still credited to it; it stays with us. If that ever changes, this page will say so.

An enquiry that doesn't turn into a booking is deleted whenever you ask. A booking is kept for six years, because HMRC expects it of the invoice. Ask and we'll strip it back to the bare minimum we're required to hold.

You can ask to see what we hold, correct anything wrong, have it deleted, or tell us to stop contacting you. Email us and we'll sort it. There's no form to fill in and it costs nothing.

If you think we've handled your information badly, tell us first so we can put it right. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.