Last updated: 6 October 2026
1. Introduction
RiE-Store Ltd, company number 8128617, is responsible for the personal information described in this policy. Our registered office is 41b Beach Road, Littlehampton, West Sussex BN17 5JA. Contact stuart@rie-store.com or 07887 794928 with privacy questions or requests.
This policy covers workshop enquiries, customer projects, the website and subscriptions to The Workshop Companion. We do not operate CCTV or record telephone calls.
2. What Information We Collect
When you contact us or submit an intake form, we receive the information you provide: name, email address, telephone number, contact preference, vehicle details, condition, project description, budget, timing, additional-work allowance and any uploaded photographs. We also record your terms acknowledgement and filming choice. Correspondence, approvals, job records and invoices may contain further personal information.
We receive most of this information directly from you.
Required form fields help us assess and respond to your enquiry. If you do not provide necessary information, we may need to request it before progressing. Uploading photographs is optional. You must answer the filming question, but may choose No without affecting your workshop service.
When your browser requests a website page or an externally hosted image, the server receives technical information such as your IP address and browser details to deliver the content. Hosting and security services may also process this information to protect the website and investigate faults or misuse.
3. How We Use Your Information
We use enquiry and project information to respond, assess the work requested, agree recommendations and spending limits, communicate progress, arrange authorised services and administer payments and records.
Where you give permission, we photograph and film your vehicle and the work for publication on The Workshop YouTube channel and RiE-Store’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Registration plates may appear and the vehicle may identify its owner; VINs will not be shown. Featuring you personally or publishing your name or voice requires separate permission, obtained by email beforehand. Published photographs and videos are public and can be viewed and shared worldwide.
You can withdraw photography and filming consent by emailing stuart@rie-store.com. We will stop further photography, filming and use based on that consent and remove identifiable material published under our control where consent is the only basis for retaining or publishing it. We cannot guarantee removal of copies shared by others. Withdrawal does not affect earlier lawful use.
The Workshop Companion newsletter
If you subscribe to The Workshop Companion, RiE-Store Ltd will use your email address to send a weekly story about our workshop episode, a link to watch it, and occasional news and offers for our digital workshop guides. Signing up is optional and is not a condition of making an enquiry, booking work or buying from us. We do not automatically add workshop customers or people who contact us to the newsletter.
We rely on your consent to send these emails. After you sign up, we send a confirmation email and ask you to confirm your subscription before receiving the newsletter. We keep a record of your subscription and confirmation to demonstrate your choice.
We use Kit to manage subscriptions and send the emails. Newsletter records include your email address, subscription source and status, and available records of your signup, confirmation, delivery and unsubscribe activity. Technical information, such as your IP address, may also be processed when you use the signup form or confirmation links.
You can withdraw your consent at any time by using the unsubscribe link in any newsletter or emailing stuart@rie-store.com. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier use. Unsubscribing from marketing does not stop necessary communications about an enquiry, agreed workshop work or a purchase.
We keep your active subscription details while you remain subscribed and we continue to provide the newsletter. If you unsubscribe, we stop using your details for newsletter marketing. We retain only the information needed to record your preference, prevent unwanted marketing and demonstrate how your request was handled, for as long as it remains necessary for those purposes. These records are not used to continue marketing to you.
4. Legal Basis for Processing
We use the following lawful bases under UK data-protection law:
| Purpose | Lawful basis |
|---|---|
| Responding to a request for workshop services, preparing an agreement and performing it | Steps requested before a contract / performance of a contract |
| Tax and accounting records required by law | Legal obligation |
| General correspondence, proportionate website security, maintaining evidence and handling disputes | Legitimate interests in running and protecting the business and resolving claims, balanced against individuals’ rights |
| Identifiable photography, filming and publication on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram | Consent |
| Sending The Workshop Companion and occasional digital-guide news/offers | Consent |
| Keeping proportionate subscription evidence and a record of marketing objections | Legitimate interests in demonstrating permission and respecting preferences; legal obligation where applicable |
Routine enquiry handling is not made dependent on consent to marketing or filming. A privacy-notice acknowledgement is not blanket consent for every use of information.
5. Sharing Your Information
Our business mailbox, stuart@rie-store.com, is hosted by Names.co.uk. We use Apple Mail to access that mailbox, and customer email is also received in Gmail, provided by Google. Copies of correspondence and attachments may therefore be held by both email providers and on devices used to access the mailboxes. We use QuickBooks for customer records, invoicing and accounting, and PayPal for relevant payment transactions and records. Photographs and videos are kept on local computers. Copies received or sent as email attachments may also remain in the mailbox.
The website forms send information through our hosting and email-delivery services to the workshop. On the rare occasions when we arrange third-party vehicle transport, we provide the transporter with details of the vehicle to be collected, the collection contact’s name, collection address and mobile telephone number, so they can carry out the collection. We do not otherwise routinely pass customer records to outside businesses, apart from the service providers described in this policy.
We use Kit, an email platform operated by Kit, Inc., for The Workshop Companion. Kit processes subscriber information on our behalf to provide the service and also processes certain service-usage information for its own purposes as described in its Privacy Policy. Its Data Processing Addendum sets out subscriber-data processing and international-transfer arrangements. Kit’s published processing terms provide for standard contractual clauses together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum for restricted UK transfers. Kit lists processing in the United States. You can ask us for information about the safeguards or a copy of the relevant terms by emailing stuart@rie-store.com.
Published videos are hosted on YouTube; selected photographs are also published on Instagram and Facebook. These platforms process information under their own privacy notices and make published content available internationally.
Some providers process information outside the UK. The applicable safeguards depend on the provider and service: they may include UK adequacy arrangements or approved contractual safeguards. Further information is available in the providers’ notices: Google, Intuit/QuickBooks, PayPal and Kit. Contact us for information about transfers affecting your data.
6. Security and Retention
Our computers are password-protected. The external hard drive holding master copies of published videos is accessible only to Stuart Spicer. We do not back up local files to cloud storage. This does not mean that all information is stored locally: email, customer records and newsletter information are also processed by the online services described above.
The intake form temporarily saves text in browser session storage while you complete it. It clears this saved text after successful submission or when you use Clear saved details. Photographs are not saved in this browser storage.
Uploaded photographs are temporarily processed on the server and removed after the form’s send attempt. Copies attached to emails remain subject to email and customer-record retention. The theme does not provide a separate enquiry inbox; hosting, email and plugins may hold additional records.
Photographs and video
We normally delete unused photographs and raw video footage associated with an episode within one month after the completed episode is published. Selected photographs used in Instagram or Facebook posts and videos published on YouTube may remain available for longer. We also retain a master copy of each published video on an external hard drive as part of our workshop video archive, without a fixed deletion date. We review the continuing need for identifiable material and consider requests to withdraw consent or remove personal information. Unused material from episodes that are not published is reviewed and deleted when no longer needed.
Enquiries and customer records
We retain enquiries that do not become jobs for 24 months after the last substantive contact. We retain essential project records, approvals and related correspondence for six years after completion of the work. Where particular records must be retained longer to meet an accounting or other legal requirement, or to deal with an ongoing claim or dispute, we retain the necessary records for that purpose and review them when it ends.
Accounting records generally need to be kept for six years from the end of the last company financial year they relate to, or longer in specified circumstances. This is not a universal deletion date for every record. A continuing need for vehicle service history or a published film should be assessed separately from a need to retain former owners' contact details or unused footage.
7. Your Rights
Depending on the circumstances and lawful basis, you may have rights to access your personal information, correct it, request deletion or restriction, and receive or transfer certain information. These rights are not absolute; we will explain any applicable limits when responding.
Right to object: You may object to processing based on legitimate interests on grounds relating to your particular situation. You have an absolute right to object to use of your information for direct marketing.
Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time. Contact stuart@rie-store.com to make a request or raise a concern. You may also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ICO complaints page.
8. Website Storage and Email Tracking
Kit uses technologies that can record email opens and link clicks, including tracking images and redirected links. These can associate activity with a subscriber. Where non-essential tracking requires consent, that consent is separate from permission to receive the newsletter; subscribing alone is not permission for every use of tracking technology.
The intake form uses browser session storage as described above.
9. Third-Party Links
Links to YouTube and other external services take you to services with their own privacy information. Some workshop thumbnails currently load from YouTube’s image servers, which receive a request when those images load, even before you click a video. The theme uses links rather than embedded video players.
10. Changes to This Policy
We will update this policy to reflect relevant changes to our practices and show the revised date. Where required, we will bring significant changes to your attention or obtain fresh consent. Publishing a revised notice does not itself authorise a new use of your information.
11. Contact Us
RiE-Store Ltd, Unit 50 The Vinery, Arundel Road, Poling, West Sussex BN18 9PY.
Email: stuart@rie-store.com. Telephone: 07887 794928.