Privacy policy
Last updated: 20/08/2026
This policy explains what we do with personal information when you contact us, ask us for a quote or use this website. We have tried to write it in plain English. If anything here is unclear, please ask us and we will explain it.
Who we are
This website is operated by Mr Gates Fabrication Specialists Ltd, which trades as Mr Gates. We are the data controller for the information described in this policy, which means we decide what is collected and what happens to it.
| Registered name | Mr Gates Fabrication Specialists Ltd |
|---|---|
| Registered in | England and Wales |
| Company number | 06883838 |
| Registered office | Oxford House, Northbridge Road, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 1EH |
| Our office | Valley House, Northbridge Road, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 1TA |
| VAT number | GB 995 2341 90 |
| ICO registration | ZA277313 |
| Data protection enquiries | privacy@mrgates.co.uk |
| sales@mrgates.co.uk for new work, service@mrgates.co.uk for faults and servicing | |
| Phone | 01442 506 390 (office), 07391 668114 (emergency) |
Our registered office and the office we work from are two different addresses, which is normal for a limited company. Post about your data protection rights can go to either, although email to privacy@mrgates.co.uk will reach us fastest.
One company, two brands. We also trade as MG Group at mggroup.uk. That is the same company as this one, Mr Gates Fabrication Specialists Ltd, company number 06883838. It is not a separate business, a parent or a subsidiary. If you contact us through either brand, you are contacting the same company, and this policy describes how that company handles your information.
What we collect, and why
When you ask us for a quote
The quote form on this website is the main way people contact us online. It asks for the following.
| What we ask for | Do we need it | Why we ask |
|---|---|---|
| Whether the job is commercial or residential | Yes | It changes which questions we ask you and which of our teams picks the enquiry up |
| What you need (new gate, automation, repair, service contract, bollards or barrier, access control, fencing or railings, or not sure yet) | Yes, at least one | So the right person answers you |
| Site postcode | Yes | To work out whether we cover you and how long it takes to reach you |
| Town | No | Same reason |
| Company name | Only on commercial enquiries | We do not ask homeowners for this |
| Site or property reference | No | Useful on larger sites with several gates or barriers |
| Number of gates, barriers or bollards on site | No | Helps us scope a service contract |
| Timescale and budget | No | Helps us tell you honestly whether we can help |
| A description of the job | Yes | It is the most useful thing you can give us |
| Photographs of the gate, barrier or site | No | See "Photographs you send us" below |
| Your name, phone number and email address | Yes | So we can reply, and so we can ring you if we need to ask something |
Our lawful basis for handling this is that you have asked us to take steps with a view to a possible contract. In the wording of the law that is Article 6(1)(b) of the UK GDPR, taking steps at your request before entering into a contract. We are not relying on consent for this, because you have actively asked us to quote and it would be odd to treat your enquiry as something you have to opt in to.
The tick box on the form is there so that you know where to find this policy before you send us anything. It is not the thing that makes the processing lawful, and ticking it does not sign you up to marketing. There is no marketing sign up on this website.
Where your enquiry goes. Enquiries are routed automatically to one of two of our inboxes, based on what you told us you need. If you told us something is broken, your enquiry goes to service@mrgates.co.uk. Everything else, including service contracts and "not sure yet", goes to sales@mrgates.co.uk. You also get an acknowledgement email from whichever address handled it. Those two inboxes are Microsoft 365 mailboxes, so Microsoft receives and stores the email. Your enquiry is then recorded in Airtable, which we use to keep track of enquiries and follow them through to the work. Both are described under "Who else sees your information" below.
Photographs you send us
You can attach photographs to a quote request. Most people send a picture of the gate, the motor or the driveway, and photographs make a quote much more accurate, which is why we ask.
Because these are pictures of your property, we treat them with a bit more care than the rest of the form.
- We use them to prepare and discuss your quote, and for nothing else.
- We do not publish them. They do not go on this website, on social media, into a case study, into an advert or into a brochure unless we ask you separately and you say yes. If we ever want to use one, we will ask, and you are free to say no without it affecting your quote or your job.
- We remove location data. Photographs taken on a phone often carry the exact GPS coordinates of where they were taken inside the file. We strip that from any photograph you upload before it is stored.
- We store them privately. They are not put in the public part of this website, and they cannot be reached by anyone who does not work here.
- We delete them when we no longer need them, on the timescales in the retention table below, and sooner if you ask. Deleting an enquiry deletes its photographs with it.
- If your photograph happens to include a person, a vehicle number plate or a neighbouring property, please only send it if you are content for us to see it. Please do not send us anything you do not have the right to share.
When you ring us or email us
If you call either number or email us directly, we handle whatever you choose to tell us, for the same purpose: answering you and, if it goes ahead, doing the work. Our lawful basis is the same as above, or our legitimate interests in responding to people who contact our business.
When you become a customer
If your enquiry turns into work, we keep the job record: contact details, the site address, what we did, what parts went in, engineer job reports, invoices and payment records. Our lawful basis is performance of our contract with you, and, for the accounting and tax records, our legal obligations.
Once an enquiry becomes a job it stops being a website matter and becomes a business record. Those records are held in our email and in the job management and accounting systems we use to run the work and keep our books. They are ordinary business software used under our instructions, none of it is connected to this website, and none of it is used to market to you. If you want to know which systems hold a record about you, ask us at privacy@mrgates.co.uk and we will tell you.
When you simply visit this website
Our web server keeps standard technical logs, which include IP addresses, the pages requested, timestamps, and browser and device information. These are used to keep the site running, to investigate faults and to protect the site from abuse. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interests in keeping our website secure and working. We do not use these logs to build a profile of you.
There is no website analytics on this site at the moment. We do not currently measure visitors, and nothing on this site tracks you for advertising. If that changes, this policy and our cookie policy will be updated before it happens, and you will be asked for consent first. That is set out properly in the cookie policy.
Nothing on this website is loaded from anyone else. There are no advertising or marketing pixels, no social media trackers, no chat widget, no booking tool, no embedded maps or videos, and no spam checking service from another company. Even our fonts are served from our own server. Opening a page here does not tell any other company that you were here.
How we keep the quote form free of spam
Our quote form is how people tell us their gate has stopped working, so it needs protecting from automated junk. If it is left open to that, a real fault enquiry gets buried underneath the rubbish.
We protect it with checks built into our own website rather than by using an outside service. In plain terms: a hidden field that a person never sees and a script usually fills in; a check on how quickly the form was completed; a security token tied to your visit; a limit on how many times the same connection can submit; and full checking of everything you send on our own server before we accept it.
None of this contacts any other company, and none of it stores anything on your device. It does mean we briefly handle your IP address in order to apply the submission limit, and our lawful basis for that is our legitimate interests in keeping the enquiry route working for the people who need it. If you would rather not use the form at all, ring us on 01442 506 390, or on 07391 668114 out of hours.
Who else sees your information
We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for anyone else's marketing. We do use a small number of suppliers who handle information on our behalf and under our instructions. These are the ones involved in this website and in your enquiry.
| Who | What they do for us | Where they are |
|---|---|---|
| Hostinger, our website hosting provider (Hostinger International Ltd, of Larnaca, Cyprus, operating from Lithuania) | Runs the server this website sits on, and stores quote form submissions and uploaded photographs until we move them into our own systems | European Union |
| Microsoft, our email provider (Microsoft 365, provided to customers in the United Kingdom by Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, One Microsoft Place, South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland) | Receives and stores the enquiry emails sent to sales@, service@ and privacy@, and sends the acknowledgement email back to you. Our staff read your enquiry in their Microsoft mailboxes | Our mailboxes are held in Microsoft's data centres in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe. See the note below |
| Airtable (Formagrid, Inc., trading as Airtable, of San Francisco, California) | The system we record website and email enquiries in, and track them through from the enquiry to the point where it becomes a job, so that nothing gets lost in between | United States. See the note below |
We also share information where we have to: with our accountants and professional advisers, with insurers if there is a claim, and with the police, a regulator or a court where the law requires it.
We do not use your information to make any decision about you automatically, and we do not profile you.
Information that goes outside the UK
Airtable. Airtable is a United States company and stores its customers' information on servers in the United States, so recording your enquiry there means it leaves the UK. Airtable's data processing terms include the European Commission's standard contractual clauses together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, and we rely on those safeguards for this transfer. Airtable's own privacy policy is at airtable.com/company/privacy.
Microsoft. Our email runs on Microsoft 365, which is provided to customers here by Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited in Dublin. Microsoft holds the mail in its data centres in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe, both of which the UK recognises as offering an equivalent level of protection. Microsoft is part of an American group, and its engineers and support staff outside the United Kingdom and Europe can occasionally need access to the service, for example to fix a fault. For those occasions Microsoft's data protection terms include the European Commission's standard contractual clauses together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, and we rely on those safeguards. Microsoft's privacy statement is at microsoft.com/privacy/privacystatement.
Nothing else on this website sends your information out of the UK.
How long we keep things
| What | How long | Why |
|---|---|---|
| An enquiry that does not turn into work | 12 months from your last contact with us | People often come back the following season, and it saves you repeating yourself |
| Photographs attached to an enquiry that does not turn into work | 6 months, and never longer than the enquiry itself | We only need them while the quote is live, and they are pictures of your property |
| Customer and job records, including engineer job reports | 6 years after the end of our relationship with you | We may need them if a question arises about work we did, and the law gives claims a time limit |
| Accounting and tax records | 6 years after the end of the financial year they relate to | HMRC requires it |
| Website server logs | Kept by our hosting provider only for as long as they are needed to keep the site secure and to investigate faults. We do not keep our own copy of them and we do not use them for anything else | Security and fault finding |
When a retention period ends, we delete the information or anonymise it so it can no longer identify you. Deleting an enquiry also deletes any photographs attached to it.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
- have it corrected if it is wrong or incomplete;
- have it deleted, where we no longer have a good reason to keep it;
- ask us to restrict what we do with it while a question about it is sorted out;
- object to us handling it where we are relying on our legitimate interests;
- ask for it in a portable format, where we hold it because of a contract with you or with your consent and we hold it electronically;
- withdraw consent, where we have asked for your consent for something, without that affecting anything done before you withdrew it.
To use any of these, email privacy@mrgates.co.uk, ring 01442 506 390, or write to us at our registered office: Mr Gates Fabrication Specialists Ltd, Oxford House, Northbridge Road, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 1EH.
We will respond within one month. It is free. We may ask you to confirm who you are first, so that we do not hand your information to somebody else.
We do not have a Data Protection Officer, because the law does not require a business like ours to appoint one. Your request will be handled by our office.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first, because we would rather put it right. If you are still not satisfied, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, which is the UK's independent data protection regulator.
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF
Helpline: 0303 123 1113
ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
Complaining to the ICO does not cost you anything and does not stop you taking your own legal action.
We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a data controller. Our registration number is ZA277313, and anyone can check it on the ICO's public register at ico.org.uk.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle personal information, we update this page and change the date at the top. Anything significant, such as adding website analytics, will be flagged on the site at the time rather than slipped in quietly.
How to contact us
| Data protection, and anything about this policy | privacy@mrgates.co.uk |
|---|---|
| New enquiries and quotes | sales@mrgates.co.uk, 01442 506 390 |
| Servicing, faults and emergencies | service@mrgates.co.uk, 07391 668114 |
| Our office | Valley House, Northbridge Road, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 1TA |
| Registered office | Mr Gates Fabrication Specialists Ltd, Oxford House, Northbridge Road, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire HP4 1EH |
You can also see our cookie policy and our terms of use, or use our contact page.