Privacy Notice

Publica is committed to protecting and safeguarding your personal data. This Privacy Notice explains how we collect and use your personal data, the legal basis for doing so and the rights you hold in respect of your personal data.

We may need to update our Privacy Notice in the future. This is version 7, which was updated in May 2025. The latest version will always be available on our website.

1. Who we are

Publica is both the controller and processor of the personal data that we hold. We are responsible for all personal data given to us under data protection law.

We have two registered companies which are:

  • Publica Associates Ltd (7225685)
  • Publica Community and Research CIC (7694159)

Our contact details are:

  • Suite M, 1 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT
  • +44 (0)20 7490 3986
  • mail@publica.co.uk

2. The personal data we collect

We collect the following personal data in order to undertake our business activities:

  • Personal data about clients and other business contacts, such as name, job title, pronoun preferences, postal address, telephone number, and email address.
  • Personal data about suppliers, such as name, job title, pronoun preferences, postal address, telephone number, and email address. This data also includes information necessary for due diligence procedures, processing payments and other related billing information.
  • Personal data about employees, such as name, job title, gender, pronoun preferences, postal address, telephone number, email address, and education and employment history. This data also includes information necessary for due diligence procedure, and processing payments.
  • Personal data about visitors to our website such as IP address, length of visit to pages on our website, number of visits and page views and navigation paths, time zone settings and the browser and other technology on the devices used to access our website.
  • Personal data about participants in our research work such as name, age, profession, gender, pronoun preferences, relationship to geographic areas under research, and email address. Our research work includes surveys and interviews. We also do research in creative and experimental ways that involve spending time with people to understand their experiences. We record the output using writing and photographs.
  • Further business information voluntarily provided to, and necessary for the furthering of a client or project contractual relationship with, Publica.

We receive this personal data in the following ways:

  • Directly from you through direct contact (via email, telephone or social media), a procurement process, or attendance at a Publica-led event.
  • From publicly available sources - such as Companies House, a website or a public social media profile.
  • From suppliers and service providers - such as analytics providers like Google, or advertising networks like Facebook.

3. How we use your data

We may use your personal data for the following purposes:

  • Providing our services

We need to use certain personal data to manage our relationships with our clients. This includes ongoing communication, contract management, payment processing, record-keeping, and ensuring compliance with financial and legal regulations. Our legal basis for processing this data is to fulfil our contractual obligations to our clients.

  • Business administration

We need to use certain personal data to manage our relationships with our suppliers and our employees. This includes ongoing communication, contract management, payment processing, health and safety procedures, security measures, record-keeping, and ensuring compliance with financial and legal regulations. Our legal basis for processing this data is fulfilling our contractual obligations to our suppliers and our employees.

  • Research

We collect certain personal data for research purposes to better understand people’s needs and preferences for the use of urban spaces. We use this research to inform specific projects that we are working on, and to advance the discipline of urban design and city planning. Our legal basis for processing this data is the consent of the people who participate in our research.

  • Communications and marketing

We may contact you to provide information including updates relevant to our on-going business relationship and invitations to Publica and other industry events. Our legal basis for processing this data is our legitimate interest in networking and sharing information with our existing industry contacts.

We may also contact you by email with other updates about our events, projects, and services if you have given consent and have not opted out. (We use Mailchimp to record your consent and provide a way for you to opt out.)

  • Our website

We may use information about visitors to our website to help us understand the effectiveness of our website and other communications activities and support relevant decision-making. Our legal basis for processing this data is our legitimate interest in providing public-facing information that is relevant and useful.

4. Sensitive personal data

We collect the following special category data and criminal offence data:

  • We organise workshops, seminars and events on behalf of clients, and for our own purposes. When we do this, we may ask for information in relation to health in order to be considerate of any disabilities or dietary requirements. We may also ask for information in relation to health, racial or ethnic origin, or religious or philosophical beliefs, to make sure we are representing marginalised communities in our work.
  • Although we do not ask about this directly, participants may choose to share their personal experiences with us during our research work which can reveal information about their sexual orientation or political opinions.
  • We sometimes work in contexts (such as schools) where we are required to provide a DBS certificate for any employees, suppliers or partners involved in the project.

In these cases we collect and use this information on the basis of consent. We will keep a record of your consent using a paper or online form. If you choose not to give your consent, we will modify the event or project to include you as much as we can.

5. How we share your data

We may share your personal data with the following types of organisations:

  • Suppliers and partners who work with us to deliver our client projects.
  • Service providers who provide IT and system administration services, such as processing payroll, keeping financial records, and sending and receiving email.
  • Professional advisers including lawyers, bankers, auditors and insurers who assist us in running our business, and may also require information for regulatory reasons.
  • Government bodies that require us to report processing activities.

We do not share any personal data publicly or with our clients unless you give us your explicit consent to do so. If we don’t have your consent, any personal data that forms part of our research and design work will be anonymised before we share it.

Most of the data we process is stored in the UK and EEA. If any data is transferred to any other countries, then we keep that data secure by using either the Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK Addendum, or an International Data Transfer Agreement..

We sometimes work as facilitators for other organisations as part of events that they are running. In these situations, your personal data is controlled by the other organisation and they share it with us. We will use it in line with their Privacy Notice.

6. How long we keep your data

Data will be reviewed periodically to check whether it is still needed for its original purpose. If your personal data is no longer required for that reason, or if you have withdrawn your consent and we are not legally required to retain it, we will delete it.

Data that has been collated and made anonymous for research or statistical purposes may be used indefinitely, as it is no longer considered personal data.

7. Your rights

You have legal rights over the collection and use of your personal data. These include:

  • Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. You can request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with and the safeguard we apply when sharing personal information internationally.
  • Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information.
  • Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information (for instance, if you think the data is inaccurate).
  • Your right to object to processing - You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.
  • Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you.
  • Your right to withdraw consent – When we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

You also have the right to not be subject to wholly automated decision making (although we do not currently do this), and to be notified of any data breaches which are likely to result in a high risk of harm to you.

You can contact us to exercise your rights. Requests can be made verbally or in writing. Our contact details are listed at the top of this notice. We will respond within one month unless your request is particularly complex.

To ensure your information remains secure, we may ask for a valid form of identification to confirm your identity before granting access to your personal data.

There is no charge for accessing your data. However, if a request is excessive or made without valid reason, we may apply a reasonable administrative fee. We will tell you if this is the case.

8. How you can complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, please let us know by writing to us at mail@publica.co.uk.

If you are not satisfied with our response or you are unhappy with how we have used your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO):

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House, Water Lane Wilmslow

Cheshire, SK9 5AF

+44 (0)303 123 1113

www.ico.org.uk