Privacy & Cookies Policy

Last updated: September 2026

We take your privacy seriously. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, how we look after it, and your rights. We’ve tried to keep it clear and straightforward – if you have any questions, please just ask.

Who we are

Dales & Shires Ltd (“Dales & Shires”, “we”, “us”) is an estate agency, registered in England and Wales (company number 06876490). Our registered office is Windsor House, Cornwall Road, Harrogate, HG1 2PW.

We are the “data controller” for the personal information described in this policy, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) under registration number Z2747319.

You can contact us about anything in this policy by email at sales@dalesandshires.com, by phone on 01423 206060, or by post at the address above.

The information we collect

When you contact us – through the form on our website, by email or by phone – we collect the details you give us, such as your name, email address, phone number and message. For website enquiries, we also record which page you sent it from.

When you become a client, or buy through us, we collect the information needed to provide our services: for example, your contact details, details of the property, your buying or selling position, and correspondence about the sale.

Identity checks. As estate agents, we are required by the Money Laundering Regulations to verify the identity of our clients (and, when a sale is agreed, of buyers). This means we collect proof of identity and address, and sometimes information about the source of funds. We may use a specialist identity-verification service to do this.

When you visit our website, our hosting and security providers automatically process technical information, such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you visit – see “Our website, cookies and analytics” below.

How and why we use it

We only use your information where the law allows us to:

To reply to your enquiry and provide the information or service you’ve asked for (our “legitimate interests” in running our business, or taking steps at your request before entering into a contract).
To provide our estate agency services – valuations, marketing, arranging viewings, negotiating and progressing sales (to perform our contract with you).
To meet our legal obligations – including anti-money-laundering checks, keeping proper records, and dealing with complaints.
To let you know about suitable properties, if you’ve asked to go on our mailing list (with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time).
To keep our website secure and working properly, and to prevent spam and misuse (our legitimate interests).

We never sell your information, and we never pass it to other businesses for their own marketing. We also never take referral fees for recommending other service providers.

Who we share it with

We only share your information where it’s needed, and only with:

the other people involved in a sale, where appropriate – for example, the buyer or seller, and their solicitors, conveyancers or mortgage brokers;
other professionals, but only if you ask us to put you in touch with them;
identity-verification providers, for the checks described above;
the companies that host and run our website, email and IT systems, who act only on our instructions;
our professional advisers, The Property Ombudsman (if a complaint is referred to them), and regulators or law enforcement agencies where the law requires it.

When we advertise a property on Rightmove, Zoopla, PrimeLocation and elsewhere, we publish details of the property – not the owner’s personal information.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it:

general enquiries that don’t lead to any further business: up to 2 years;
records of property sales and the clients involved: 6 years after the sale or instruction ends, in case of any later questions or legal claims;
identity-check records: 5 years after our business relationship ends, as required by the Money Laundering Regulations.

Keeping it safe

We use appropriate technical and practical measures to protect your information, including secure (encrypted) connections to our website, and limiting access to those who need it. Some of our service providers may process data outside the UK; where they do, we make sure appropriate safeguards required by UK data protection law are in place.

Our website, cookies and analytics

Cookies are small files that websites store on your device. Our website does not use advertising or tracking cookies, so we don’t need to ask for your consent to cookies.

Analytics: we use Cloudflare Web Analytics to understand how many people visit our website and which pages are popular. It doesn’t use cookies and doesn’t track you across other websites.
Security: our website is protected by Cloudflare, which may set a strictly necessary cookie to tell genuine visitors apart from automated traffic. It isn’t used for tracking.
Spam protection: to prevent abuse of our enquiry form, we briefly keep an anonymised (scrambled) version of your IP address, for about 10 minutes.
Fonts: our website’s fonts are stored on our own server, so no information is sent to font providers such as Google.
Links to other websites – such as Rightmove, or Google Maps for a property’s location – are governed by those websites’ own privacy policies once you click through.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law, you have the right to:

ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
ask us to correct anything that’s wrong or incomplete;
ask us to delete your information, or to restrict how we use it (where we don’t need to keep it for legal reasons);
object to us using your information on the basis of our legitimate interests, and withdraw consent at any time (for example, to our mailing list);
ask for information you gave us to be transferred to you or another organisation.

To use any of these rights, please contact us using the details above. There’s normally no charge, and we’ll respond within one month.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled your information, please tell us first so that we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office: ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint, or 0303 123 1113.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version will always be on this page, with the date it was last updated at the top.