Last updated: 19 October 2026
1. Who we are
Current Living (currentliving.co.uk) publishes independent UK guides, news and tools about electric cars, charging, plug-in solar, home batteries and energy bills. It is a Cragside Media publication.
The controller of your personal data is NorthPoint Projects t/a Cragside Media.
In this notice, “we”, “us” and “our” mean NorthPoint Projects t/a Cragside Media. We decide how and why your personal data is used and are responsible for it under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
How to contact us
| What it is about | Contact |
|---|---|
| Privacy questions, or using any of your rights | gdpr@cragsidemedia.co.uk |
| General enquiries about Current Living | currentliving@cragsidemedia.co.uk |
We have not appointed a Data Protection Officer because we are not required to have one. Please send any privacy question to gdpr@cragsidemedia.co.uk.
2. What this notice covers
This notice covers personal data we collect through currentliving.co.uk (the “site”). It explains what we collect, why, who we share it with and what your rights are.
It does not cover other websites. Our site links to other websites, including government sites, regulators and retailers such as Amazon. When you follow a link and leave our site, that website’s own privacy notice and cookie policy apply. Other Cragside Media websites have their own privacy notices.
3. The data we collect and why
| Why we use your data | What data | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Replying to emails you send us | Your name, email address, your message and anything else you choose to tell us | Legitimate interests: replying to you and running our site |
| Advertising, sponsorship, partnership and other business enquiries, sent through the form on our Advertise page or by email | Your name, email address, company (if you give it), your message and any other details you give us | Legitimate interests: responding to and managing business relationships |
| Analytics, only if you accept analytics cookies: understanding how the site is used so we can improve it | Pages visited, how you reached the site, approximate location (town or country, worked out from your IP address), device and browser type, and cookie identifiers | Consent, given through our cookie banner |
| Affiliate links, including Amazon | We place the link. If you click it, the retailer sets its own cookies on its website. We receive commission reports, not your identity | Legitimate interests: funding our site through commission. The retailer is responsible for its own cookies |
| Recording your cookie choices | Your consent choices and a record of which version of our cookie settings you agreed to | Legal obligation: we must be able to show that you consented |
| Server logs and security | IP address, date and time of visit, pages requested, browser and device details, referring page and error records | Legitimate interests: keeping the site secure, preventing abuse and fixing faults |
| Legal and admin | Any of the data above, where relevant | Legal obligation, where the law requires it. Legitimate interests: protecting our rights and dealing with legal claims |
Where we rely on legitimate interests, we have weighed our interests against yours and think the use is reasonable and something you would expect. You can object at any time (see section 9). Where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time. This does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it.
Emails and our Advertise form
If you email us at one of the addresses on our Contact page, we use what you send only to deal with your message.
Our Advertise page has an enquiry form. It runs on our own website. When you send it, your details and message are emailed to the Cragside Media sales inbox (sales@cragsidemedia.co.uk). The form does not store your message on our website and does not set cookies.
Please do not send us sensitive information (for example, about your health) unless you need to.
Newsletter
We plan to offer a monthly email newsletter, but it has not launched yet and we are not collecting sign-ups for it. Before it launches, we will update this notice to explain how it works.
Analytics
We use, or may use, Google Analytics 4, provided by Google and added to the site through Google’s Site Kit plugin, to understand how visitors use the site, for example which pages are popular. Google Analytics only loads if you accept analytics (statistics) cookies in our cookie banner. If you do not accept, it does not load and does not set analytics cookies. Google processes this data for us as our analytics provider. The reports we see are aggregated and do not tell us who you are. Our Cookie Policy lists the analytics cookies. Google’s privacy policy is at policies.google.com/privacy.
Advertising
We do not show adverts at the moment. If we add them, advertising cookies will only be set if you accept marketing cookies in our cookie banner, and we will update this notice and our Cookie Policy before they start.
Affiliate links and Amazon
Some links on our site are affiliate links. If you click one and then buy something, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. We take part in the Amazon Associates programme for amazon.co.uk, and we may also use other affiliate programmes and networks that work in the same way.
When you click an affiliate link, the retailer or affiliate network may set cookies on its own website to record that you came from our site. Our links do not set cookies on our site. We do not see what you buy in a way that identifies you. We receive reports that show clicks, orders and commission in total, for example how many orders a link produced. We do not receive your name, contact details or payment details. Amazon and other retailers and networks are responsible for the data they collect, under their own privacy notices.
You can read more in our affiliate disclosure.
Calculators
Our calculators (such as the eVED calculator and the plug-in solar savings calculator) run in your browser. They do not send what you type to us or to anyone else, and we do not store it. If you use “Copy link to this result”, your inputs are saved in the part of the page link after the # sign. Your browser does not send that part to our server, but anyone you share the link with can see your inputs. Please do not put personal details, such as your car registration or full address, into a result you plan to share.
Cookie consent
We use Complianz, a consent management plugin, to run our cookie banner. When you first visit, the banner lets you accept, deny or choose your preferences, and each option is just as easy to use. Complianz saves your choices in cookies on your device so we respect them on every page. These cookies are set by our own site and are not shared with Complianz or anyone else. You can change your choices at any time using the Cookie settings link at the bottom of every page.
Display preferences
If you use the dark mode switch, your browser remembers your choice in local storage on your device. During a visit, our site also uses session storage to remember small display choices, for example that you closed a price bar. This information stays on your device and is not sent to us.
Server logs and security
Our hosting provider, 20i, and its content delivery network (StackCDN), automatically record technical details when you visit, such as your IP address and the pages you request. We use these records to keep the site running, to spot and block attacks or abuse, and to fix problems.
Emoji
On older browsers that cannot show emoji, WordPress may load emoji images from s.w.org, a WordPress.org service, which receives your IP address.
If you do not give us your data
You can browse the site without giving us any personal data, apart from the technical data described above. If you do not give us your contact details, we cannot reply to you.
4. Cookies
Cookies are small files placed on your device when you visit a website. Local storage and session storage work in a similar way. We use:
- Strictly necessary cookies and storage, which the site needs to work, to stay secure, to remember your cookie choices and to remember display choices you make. These are always on.
- Analytics (statistics) cookies, set by Google Analytics, only if we use it and you accept them.
- Marketing cookies, only if we add advertising or other marketing features in future and you accept them.
We do not show adverts or use advertising cookies at the moment. We do not set analytics, marketing or other non-essential cookies until you have made a choice in our cookie banner. You can change your choices at any time using Cookie settings at the bottom of every page.
Our Cookie Policy lists the cookies and similar storage we use, who sets them, what they do and how long they last.
5. Who we share your data with
We share personal data only where we need to, with:
- Service providers who process data for us: our hosting and email provider (20i, which hosts this site and the cragsidemedia.co.uk inboxes) and, if you accept analytics cookies, our analytics provider (Google). They may only use your data on our instructions and under a contract that protects it.
- Retailers and affiliate networks, such as Amazon, when you click an affiliate link. They collect data directly on their own websites under their own privacy notices.
- Professional advisers, such as accountants, lawyers and insurers, where they need it to advise us.
- Police, regulators, courts and other authorities, when the law requires it or when we need to protect our rights or someone’s safety.
- A buyer or successor, if our business or a site is sold or restructured. They would have to use your data in line with this notice.
We do not sell your personal data.
6. International transfers
Some of our providers, including Google and WordPress.org, are based in, or store data in, the United States or other countries outside the UK. When your data is transferred outside the UK, we make sure it is protected by one of these:
- UK adequacy regulations: the UK government has decided the country gives an acceptable level of protection. This includes the UK-US data bridge, where the US provider is certified under it.
- Contract terms approved for the UK: the ICO International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
Contact us at gdpr@cragsidemedia.co.uk if you would like more information about the safeguards for a particular provider.
7. How long we keep your data
We keep personal data only for as long as we need it for the purposes in this notice, then delete or anonymise it.
| Data | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Emails you send us | 24 months after our last contact with you |
| Advertising form messages and other business and partnership enquiries | 24 months after our last contact or, if we enter into a contract, 6 years after it ends, whichever is later |
| Analytics data, if we use Google Analytics | 14 months |
| Records of your cookie choices | As set out in our Cookie Policy |
| Server and security logs | 90 days, unless needed longer to investigate a security problem |
We may keep data for longer if the law requires it, or if we need it to deal with a complaint or legal claim.
8. Children
Our site is not aimed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you think a child has given us personal data, please contact us at gdpr@cragsidemedia.co.uk and we will delete it.
9. Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- Access: ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
- Rectification: ask us to correct data that is wrong or incomplete.
- Erasure: ask us to delete your data.
- Restriction: ask us to limit how we use your data, for example while we check a correction.
- Objection: object to us using your data where we rely on legitimate interests. You have an absolute right to object to direct marketing. If you object to direct marketing, we will stop.
- Portability: ask for data you gave us to be sent to you, or another organisation, in a common digital format, where we rely on consent or contract and process it automatically.
- Withdraw consent: where we rely on consent, you can withdraw it at any time, for example by changing your cookie settings.
Some rights only apply in certain situations. If we cannot do what you ask, we will explain why.
To use any of these rights, email gdpr@cragsidemedia.co.uk. We may need to ask you for information to confirm your identity. We will respond within one month. If your request is complex, or you have made several requests, we may extend this by up to two further months, and we will tell you if we do.
Using your rights is usually free. We may charge a reasonable fee, or refuse, if a request is clearly unfounded or excessive.
10. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have used your data, please complain to us first at gdpr@cragsidemedia.co.uk. We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days and respond without undue delay.
You also have the right to complain to the Information Commission, the UK data protection regulator, which is still known as the ICO:
- Website: ico.org.uk
- Helpline: 0303 123 1113
11. Automated decisions
We do not make any decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
12. Security
We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your data, such as secure (HTTPS) connections, access controls and reputable providers. No website can be completely secure, so please take care when sending information online.
13. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time, for example if we start using a new provider, launch our newsletter or the law changes. The “Last updated” date at the top shows when it last changed. If we make an important change that affects you, we will tell you on the site or by email where appropriate.