Privacy policy

The simple version

Little North Explorers is a directory of family-friendly activities across North East England. Here’s what may happen to your information when you browse the site, use “near me” or get in touch.

Using “near me”

If you choose “near me”, your browser will ask if it can share your current location. We use those coordinates to work out distances to activities and show you what’s nearby. You can say no and still use the site as normal.

The site does not send your location to Little North Explorers, store it in an account or attach it to your name. You can deny permission or change the permission in your browser settings at any time. Map services may receive technical information, such as your IP address, when map tiles are loaded.

What the site uses

• Activity information and images managed through Sanity, our content management system
• Technical information that may be recorded by the website hosting provider when pages are requested
• Your name, email address and message if you contact us through the contact form or by email
• Details you choose to send through the activity and event suggestion form, such as the name and location, website link, dates, session times and useful notes

There’s no account to create. If you choose to accept analytics, we use Google Analytics 4 to understand aggregate website usage. Analytics is optional and is not used for advertising or personalised marketing.

Analytics cookies

Google Analytics 4 may use an analytics cookie and collect information such as pages viewed, approximate location, device and browser details, referring website and interactions with site features. We use this to understand which guides, activities and tools are useful.

We remove search terms, postcode searches, precise coordinates, location labels and other query details from page addresses sent to Google Analytics. We do not send full addresses, names, email addresses, user IDs or other information intended to identify you. Interaction reports use stable content identifiers and broad result or distance bands rather than the words or locations you enter. We do not use Google Ads, remarketing, Google Signals or advertising personalisation.

You can accept or reject analytics when the consent message appears, and change your choice later using “Analytics settings” in the footer. If you reject analytics, the Google Analytics tag is not loaded.

Google may process analytics data under its own terms and privacy policy. Please see Google’s privacy policy for more information.

Adding the site to your home screen

If you choose to add Little North Explorers to your phone, tablet or computer home screen, your browser may install it as a web app. The site uses a small service worker to support that installation. It does not give us access to your files, contacts or other information on your device.

If you dismiss the install suggestion, we may store that choice in your browser’s local storage so we do not keep showing the same prompt. This preference stays on your device and is not sent to us. You can remove it by clearing the site data in your browser.

Suggestions and corrections

If you suggest an activity, venue, event, class or correction, we use the information you provide to check it and decide whether it should be added to or updated on Little North Explorers. Suggestions are reviewed by us before anything is published. We do not publish your name or email address.

You can leave an email address if you would like us to reply or ask a follow-up question. It is optional and is not used for marketing unless we separately ask for your permission.

Forms and service providers

The contact and suggestion forms are provided through Netlify Forms. Netlify receives and stores the form submission so it can be delivered to us. We use the information only to respond, review suggestions and maintain the site. Netlify may process technical information as part of providing the form service; please also see Netlify’s privacy policy.

Links and maps

Activity pages may link to venue websites. Maps use OpenStreetMap data and tiles. That service has its own privacy policy and may process requests independently of Little North Explorers. Please check its policy before using the maps.

Your choices

You can browse without sharing your location. We keep contact and suggestion submissions only for as long as they are useful for responding, checking information or maintaining an accurate site. We aim to delete submissions that no longer need action within 12 months, unless we need to keep them longer for a legal or safeguarding reason. You can ask what personal information we hold about your messages or suggestions, or ask us to correct or delete it where appropriate.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to littlenorthexplorers@gmail.com.