Privacy Notice | The Babysitting Collective

Privacy Notice

The Babysitting Collective

Last updated: 16 October 2026

Thank you for trusting us with your family, or with your career. Looking after people's information carefully is part of looking after people well. This notice explains, in plain English, what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what your rights are.

It covers families who use our services, sitters and nannies who work with us, people applying to join us, and anyone who visits our website or gets in touch.
1. Who we are and how to contact us

The Babysitting Collective is a small, independent childcare agency based in London. We arrange one-off babysitting, regular childcare and nanny placements.

For the purposes of UK data protection law, the "controller" responsible for your personal information is The Babysitting Collective Ltd, a private limited company registered in England and Wales (company number 15841898). When we say "we", "us" or "our" in this notice, we mean that business.

Address: Unity Chambers, 34 High East Street, Dorchester, DT1 1HA (our registered office)
Email: enquiries@thebabysittingcollective.com
WhatsApp: +44 7516 724434
Website: thebabysittingcollective.com
ICO registration number: ZB795965

If you have any questions about this notice or how we handle your information, please get in touch. We're always happy to help.
2. Families: the information we collect and why
What we collect

When you enquire, book or use our services, we may collect:

Your details: parents' or guardians' names, phone numbers, email addresses and home address.
Your children's details: names, ages, routines, likes and dislikes, and any additional needs you tell us about.
Health and allergy information: for example allergies, medical conditions, medication and emergency instructions.
Booking details: dates, times, the type of care you need, the sitter or nanny matched with you, and any notes or preferences.
Payment details: invoices, payments made and owed, and any placement fee for a nanny placement. We invoice families through Xero. Families can pay by card through Stripe (including Apple Pay or Google Pay) using the payment link on the invoice, or by bank transfer. Card payments are processed by our payment provider, Stripe, so we do not see or store your full card details.
Messages and feedback: emails, WhatsApp messages, social media messages, and any reviews you choose to give us.

Most of this comes directly from you, through our Contact Us and Book Online forms, by email, by WhatsApp or by phone. Your sitter may also add notes about a booking, such as how the evening went.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

The law requires us to have a "lawful basis" for each way we use personal information. Here is how that works for families:

To arrange and provide childcare (matching you with a suitable sitter or nanny, confirming bookings, sharing the details your sitter needs, and managing nanny placements). Our lawful basis is contract: we need this information to provide the service you have asked for, or to take steps you've asked for before entering a contract.
To invoice you and take payment, including any placement fee. Lawful basis: contract. We also keep financial records because the law requires it (legal obligation).
To answer enquiries and stay in touch about your bookings. Lawful basis: contract, or legitimate interests where you've contacted us but haven't yet booked (it is in both our interests that we can reply to you).
To run and improve our business (keeping good records, checking the quality of our service, handling feedback or complaints, and protecting our legal rights). Lawful basis: legitimate interests. We only rely on this where we are confident it doesn't override your own interests and rights.
To keep your children safe. We may need to share information with emergency services or the relevant authorities if we have a safeguarding concern. Lawful basis: legal obligation or vital interests, depending on the situation, and in some cases legitimate interests.

Your children's health information

Information about your children's health, allergies and medical needs is "special category" data, which the law protects more strongly. We only collect it so that your sitter or nanny can care for your children safely, and we ask for your explicit consent to collect and share it for that purpose.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us. Please be aware that if we don't have important health or allergy information, we may not be able to arrange care safely. In a genuine emergency, we or your sitter may share health information with medical professionals to protect a child's life or health, even where consent can't be given at that moment (vital interests).
Information about your children

Because children can't usually give us their own information, we rely on parents and guardians to provide it and to keep it up to date. We only ask for what we need to look after them well.
3. Sitters, nannies and applicants

This section is for anyone who applies to join The Babysitting Collective, and for the sitters and nannies who work with us.
What we collect

Application details: your name, contact details, address, date of birth, CV, experience, qualifications, training (such as first aid), availability and anything else you include in your application.
Interview notes: notes from your interview with us.
References: the details of the referees you give us, and what they tell us about you.
Identity and right-to-work documents: for example your passport, visa, biometric residence permit or share code, and copies of these where we're required to keep them.
Enhanced DBS check: the outcome of your Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, which may include information about criminal convictions and cautions.
Profile information: the information that goes on your sitter profile, such as your first name, photo, experience and a short description of you. A selection of profiles (first name, photo and a short description of the sitter's background and experience) appears on the Our Sitters page of our website, and when we suggest a sitter for a booking, we send the family that sitter's profile.
Work and payment details: bookings, timesheets, hours worked, bank details for paying you and, where relevant, tax and National Insurance information.
Feedback: reviews and feedback from families about the care you've provided.

Most of this comes directly from you. Some comes from other people: your referees, the DBS (we apply for DBS checks through uCheck, a DBS umbrella body), and the families you work with.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

To assess your application and carry out vetting (interview, references, identity checks and Enhanced DBS check). Lawful basis: legitimate interests, because families must be able to trust that everyone we introduce has been carefully checked, and contract, as steps needed before we work together.
To check your right to work in the UK. Our sitters and nannies are self-employed. Lawful basis: legitimate interests. It is in our interests, and those of the families we work with, to make sure that every sitter and nanny we introduce is legally allowed to work in the UK. These checks also help us meet our duties under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 to check the identity and suitability of the people we introduce, and to comply with UK immigration law.
To match you with families and show them your profile. Lawful basis: contract and legitimate interests.
To manage bookings, record your hours and pay you. Lawful basis: contract. We also keep payment and tax records because the law requires it (legal obligation).
To handle feedback, concerns or complaints, and to protect children. Lawful basis: legitimate interests and, where we must report a concern, legal obligation.

We use an AI-assisted tool, under a data processing agreement, to help us manage applications, references and vetting correspondence. A member of our team makes every vetting decision, and your DBS, identity and right-to-work documents are not processed by the AI tool.
Enhanced DBS checks and criminal offence data

Information from a DBS check about criminal convictions and offences is "criminal offence data", which has extra legal protection. We only process it where the law allows, under the conditions set out in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018. We rely on the condition in Schedule 1, Part 2, paragraph 18 (safeguarding of children and individuals at risk).

We have an appropriate policy document in place that explains how we handle this information safely and how long we keep it.

In practice, this means:

only the people who need to see DBS information can see it;
we use it only to decide whether someone is suitable to care for children;
we do not keep copies of DBS certificates for longer than we need them (see section 6); and
we never show your DBS certificate to families or share its content with them. We only tell families that you have a current, satisfactory Enhanced DBS check.

4. Who we share personal information with

We never sell personal information. We only share it where we need to, and only as much as is needed.
Sitters and families

Sitters and nannies matched with a family receive the information they need to provide safe, good care: for example the parents' names and contact details, the home address, the children's names, ages, routines and needs, and any health and allergy information.
Families are shown sitter and nanny profiles so they can choose the right person. When a booking is confirmed, families may also receive the sitter's contact details. We usually do this by adding the family and the sitter to a WhatsApp group chat.

Our service providers

We use carefully selected service providers, including AI-assisted tools, to help us manage enquiries and bookings. They act on our instructions and are bound by data protection agreements.

These include:

Gmail (Google) for email;
WhatsApp (Meta) for messaging;
Airtable for managing our records of families, sitters and bookings;
Xero for invoicing and accounting;
Stripe for processing online card payments;
uCheck for processing Enhanced DBS checks for sitters and nannies;
Wix for hosting our website and its contact and booking forms;
our sitter portal (app.thebabysittingcollective.com), which has been custom-built for us, is hosted by Vercel and uses Resend to send emails, for managing sitters' bookings and timesheets;
AI-assisted tools for helping us manage enquiries and bookings. A member of our team always makes the final decision on matching and bookings, and no decisions about you are made solely by automated means.

Social media

If you contact us through Instagram or Facebook, your messages will be handled on those platforms, and Meta will also process your information under its own privacy policy. We will never post photos or information about any family, child or sitter on social media without permission.
Others

We may also share information:

with our professional advisers, such as our accountant (Edwards & Keeping), insurers or legal advisers, where needed;
with HMRC and other authorities where the law requires it;
with the police, local authority children's services or other safeguarding bodies if we have a concern about a child's safety; and
with emergency services in an emergency.

5. International transfers

Some of our service providers are based outside the UK, or may store or access data in other countries, including the United States and the European Economic Area.

When personal information is transferred outside the UK, we make sure it is protected to the standard required by UK law, using appropriate safeguards. Depending on the provider, this usually means one of the following:

the country is recognised by the UK Government as having adequate data protection laws (for example the countries of the European Economic Area);
the provider is certified under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (the "UK-US data bridge"); or
the provider has signed the UK's International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

If you would like more information about this, please contact us.
6. How long we keep personal information

We keep personal information only for as long as we need it for the purpose we collected it for, and to meet our legal, accounting and safeguarding requirements. After that, we delete it securely.

Sometimes we may need to keep information for longer, for example if there's a complaint, a safeguarding concern or a legal claim. If you would like more detail about how long we keep particular information, please contact us.
7. How we keep your information safe

We take the security of your information seriously, especially information about children. The steps we take include:

using reputable service providers with strong security measures;
protecting our accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication;
limiting access to personal information to the people who need it;
sharing with sitters only the information they need for a booking; and
deleting information when we no longer need it.

No system is completely secure, but if something goes wrong, we will act quickly and, where the law requires, tell the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and anyone affected.
8. Your rights

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

access the personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it;
ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or incomplete;
ask us to delete your information;
ask us to restrict how we use your information;
object to us using your information where we rely on legitimate interests;
ask us to transfer your information to you or another organisation in a commonly used format (data portability);
withdraw your consent at any time, where we rely on consent (for example for your children's health information); and
not be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.

Some of these rights only apply in certain situations. For example, we may need to keep some information to meet our legal obligations.

To use any of these rights, email us at enquiries@thebabysittingcollective.com or message us on WhatsApp on +44 7516 724434. There's normally no charge, and we will reply within one month. We may need to ask you to confirm your identity first.
Making a complaint

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so we can try to put it right.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator:

Website: ico.org.uk
Helpline: 0303 123 1113

9. Cookies

Our website is hosted on Wix, which uses essential cookies (small text files stored on your device) to make the site work and keep it secure. These cookies are strictly necessary, so we don't need your consent to use them. We do not use analytics or marketing cookies. If we start using analytics cookies in the future, we will add a cookie banner to our website so that you can choose whether to accept them, and we will update this notice.
10. Changes to this notice

We may update this notice from time to time, for example if we start using a new service provider or the law changes. The latest version will always be on this page, and if we make important changes we will let you know.

Last updated: 16 October 2026