Privacy notice

Ask The DGSA, a trading name of DGSA Solutions Limited · Version 1.1 · 11 October 2026

1. Who we are

DGSA Solutions Limited is the data controller for personal data processed through Ask The DGSA. We are a company registered in England and Wales, company number 15727825, registered office 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, based in Wales. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office as a fee-paying data controller, registration number ZC247414.

For anything to do with your personal data, email question@askthedgsa.online or call 0330 223 8377.

2. What we collect

When you use the service we collect:

• Your identity and contact details. Your name, email address, phone number if you give it, and your company name if you give it.
• Your question and documents. The question you type into the form, and anything you upload, such as safety data sheets, label photographs or transport documents.
• Payment confirmation. PayPal tells us who paid, how much and the email address used. We never see your card number or bank details; those stay with PayPal.
• Correspondence. Emails between us about your question, and the answer we send you.
• Technical information. Like every website, our hosting provider keeps short-lived server logs of visits, including IP addresses, for security and to keep the site running.

3. Why we use it, and the legal basis

UK data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for everything we do with your data. Ours are:

• To answer your question and run your subscription, because we have a contract with you (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(b)).
• To keep accounting and VAT records, because the law requires it (Article 6(1)(c)).
• To keep a record of the advice we gave and what it was based on, and to establish or defend legal claims if we ever need to, on the basis of our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)). Advice is only as defensible as the record behind it, so we keep the question, the documents and the answer together.
• To send you marketing, only where you have opted in, on the basis of your consent (Article 6(1)(a)). You can withdraw it at any time and nothing else changes.

4. Please don't send us more than we need

Upload only what relates to your question. Please do not send documents or photographs containing other people's personal data, faces or vehicle registration marks. If you do, we may delete them and ask for clean copies. Safety data sheets rarely contain personal data, which is one of the reasons we like them.

5. Who we share it with

We do not sell or rent your data to anyone. A small number of service providers process it on our behalf, under contracts consistent with UK data protection law:

• Tally, which provides our question form and holds your submission and uploads. Tally is based in Belgium and hosts its data in Europe.
• PayPal, which processes your payment under its own privacy policy, and confirms the payment to us.
• Hostinger, which hosts this website and provides our email service.
• HubSpot, which we use as our customer contact system.

Some pages also show content supplied by other companies: YouTube videos (provided by Google) and our newsletter sign-up form (provided by Substack). These companies are not processing your question on our behalf. When you choose to load their content, they receive some information about your visit directly, under their own privacy policies. Section 9 explains what that involves.

Beyond that, we would only disclose your data where the law requires it, for example to HMRC or a court, or to our professional advisers under confidentiality.

6. Where your data goes

Your data is held in the UK and the European Economic Area wherever possible. Some of our providers, including HubSpot and PayPal, and the companies behind embedded content (Google for YouTube, and Substack), process data in the United States. Where that happens, transfers are protected by safeguards recognised by UK law, such as the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the ICO's international data transfer agreement.

7. How long we keep it

• Questions, uploads, answers and related correspondence: six years from the date of the answer, in line with the limitation period for professional advice, then deleted.
• Form submissions with no matching payment: deleted after three months.
• Accounting and VAT records: six years, as tax law requires.
• Marketing details: until you unsubscribe or ask us to stop.
• Server logs: kept briefly by our hosting provider, then automatically deleted.

8. Marketing

We only send marketing, such as regulatory updates or news about the service, where you have opted in. Every message includes an unsubscribe link, and you can also just reply and say stop. Asking a question never signs you up to anything.

9. Cookies

This website does not set cookies of its own. There is no analytics tracking on these pages, and the embedded question form is provided by Tally, which does not use cookie tracking.

Two things involve other companies' technology. The PayPal payment buttons are provided by PayPal, and when you use them PayPal may set cookies that are strictly necessary for processing your payment securely and preventing fraud; once you are on PayPal's own pages, PayPal's cookie policy applies. And our pages load their typefaces from Google Fonts, which means Google receives your IP address in order to send the font files; no cookies are set by this.

Embedded YouTube videos. Some pages, including our free resources page and our guides, can show videos from YouTube, which is run by Google. These are not loaded when the page opens. Instead you see a panel with a button, and nothing is requested from YouTube until you click it. When you do, we use YouTube's privacy-enhanced mode, your browser connects to Google, and Google receives your IP address and details of your browser. YouTube may also store cookies or use similar technologies on your device. Google's own privacy policy applies to what it does with that information. If you would rather avoid this, don't click the button: each video also has a direct link to YouTube, and you can block cookies in your browser settings.

Newsletter sign-up form. The DGSA Insights sign-up form is provided by Substack. Like the videos, it is shown only when you click the button, and nothing is requested from Substack before then. When the form loads, Substack receives your IP address and may use cookies or similar technologies. If you subscribe, Substack holds your email address under its own privacy policy. Subscribing is entirely optional and is separate from asking a question. There is also a direct link to subscribe on Substack's own site.

Because we set no cookies of our own and use none for tracking or advertising, we don't show you a cookie consent banner. If that ever changes, this notice will change first.

10. Your rights

UK data protection law gives you rights over your data, free of charge in almost all cases:

• Access. Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction. Ask us to put right anything inaccurate or incomplete.
• Erasure. Ask us to delete your data. We will, unless we are required to keep it, for example accounting records within the six year period.
• Restriction. Ask us to hold your data but stop using it while a dispute or check is resolved.
• Objection. Object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and to marketing at any time. An objection to marketing is always honoured.
• Portability. Ask for the data you gave us in a machine-readable format.

To exercise any of these, email question@askthedgsa.online. We will respond within one month. We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling.

11. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, tell us first and we will do our best to put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

12. Changes to this notice

If we change how we handle personal data, we will update this notice and change the version number and date at the top. The version on the site when you use the service is the one that applies.