Proper Blocks Ltd (company number 17301605, registered in England and Wales), trading as Proper Blocks, is the data controller for this website at properblocks.co.uk. Our professional indemnity cover is in the name of Big Brain Ltd (Co. No. 11209610), a sister company. We also build and run the leaseholder portal at dennishouse.properblocks.co.uk, and where that portal holds information about you, we act for the company that manages your block, as set out next.
Dennis House is a block that uses the portal. Dennis House RTM Company Ltd (company number 11620031, registered office Dennis House, Roman Road, London E3 5ER) is the right-to-manage company for that block, and it is the data controller for the personal data about its leaseholders, tenants, and contractors. That is true of the data in the portal and of the records it keeps outside it, such as paper files, board minutes, and correspondence with its professional advisers. For the portal we are its data processor: we hold and handle that data on its written instructions, under the services agreement between us. In plain terms the RTM company decides what is held and why, and we run the system that holds it. There is one exception, and we say it plainly: the record of which menu pages you open, described below, is ours. We use it to decide which parts of the portal earn their place, which is our own purpose, so for that one record we are a controller alongside the RTM company. You can raise anything in this notice with either of us.
You can contact us at [email protected].
When you register or are invited, we collect:
As you use the portal we also log the actions you take (raising issues, uploading documents, posting messages) in an immutable audit log. This is a legal protection for both you and the block - it lets us prove what was done and by whom, if a dispute arises.
We also record which menu pages you open, with your account against them, so we can see which parts of the portal are used and remove the ones that are not. That record holds the name of the page and nothing from inside it - never which document, demand or message you looked at. It is deleted automatically after 35 days, it is in your own data download, and it goes when your account does.
When you visit the public website at properblocks.co.uk, Cloudflare Web Analytics counts the visit: the page you viewed, the site that sent you there, your country, your browser, your device type and operating system, and how fast the page loaded. It sets no cookie, and we see only totals, such as how many visits each page had. It does not run if your browser sends Global Privacy Control (a browser setting that asks websites not to share your data), or if you switch it off on our cookies page. The portal does not use it.
We rely on:
The block has a public QR code that opens a registration page at dennishouse.properblocks.co.uk/register. Anyone passing through Dennis House can use it to ask for an account.
The page asks for your name, email, mobile, and the unit you live in or own. The unit dropdown only shows unit numbers, never the name of the leaseholder. Nothing about the existing residents is revealed before you submit.
When the unit you select has a leaseholder on file with a working email address, that leaseholder is normally sent a one-time link to confirm they recognise you, and the directors take their response into account before granting access. The link works once. Where no leaseholder is on file, or for managing-agent and building-level requests, the directors review and decide the request themselves. They may contact you to verify your identity before granting access.
Registration tokens are stored as a one-way hash; the raw token only ever appears in the email we send. Submissions are rate-limited per IP and the audit log records each request, the leaseholder's decision, and the eventual finalisation.
If you ask for a demo login in the Portal section of properblocks.co.uk, we ask for your email address and nothing else. We use it to email you the login, and to tell Howard that a demo account was opened. The email is sent from Proper Blocks' Google mailbox.
The login itself is a made-up address on an example block, so nobody else using the demo can see yours. We never use your address for marketing. We erase it from the portal's records two months after your demo login closes, and logins close after 30 days. Your network address is kept with the request, to limit how many logins one connection can ask for, and is erased at the same time. The email telling Howard about your login names your address and stays in his mailbox.
We only share your data with:
We do not sell your data and we do not use it for marketing.
We keep active account data for as long as you have a relationship with the block (lease, tenancy, employment as managing agent or contractor). After that we retain financial and audit records for the periods required by law - typically six years for service-charge accounting, longer for matters that are live or reasonably foreseeable (e.g. Building Safety Act records).
Documents that a director deletes from the portal are held for a 30-day retention period before being permanently deleted from our storage. During that window the directors can restore the document on request. After 30 days the file is gone. The audit log entry recording the deletion is kept indefinitely.
The record of which menu pages you open is deleted after 35 days, automatically, every night.
We keep no visit records of our own from the public website. The totals stay in our Cloudflare account.
The email address given for a demo login is erased from the portal's records two months after the login closes, automatically, every night.
Under UK GDPR you have the right to:
The public website sets no cookies. The portal uses two, both strictly necessary for signing in: one keeps you signed in, and the other, only if you ask, remembers your device for 30 days. We set no analytics cookies, no advertising trackers, and no third-party cookies. See the cookies page for detail.
If we change this notice we will update the "Last updated" date above and, for material changes, tell you in the portal.