Data retention & deletion
For the records your charity keeps in its workspace, your charity is the controller and sets the retention rules. We keep that data only as long as you keep it, plus the backup window below. Each charity's data lives in its own separate database, so export and deletion act on your charity's data as one unit and never touch anyone else's.
How long we keep each kind of data
| Data | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Workspace data (people, meetings, registers, documents, finances) | As long as your charity keeps it in the workspace. You control this. |
| Account and billing contact data | The life of the account. Billing records are then kept 6 years after the tax year they relate to, as HMRC requires. |
| Sign-in and security logs | 12 months, to secure the service and investigate incidents. |
| Anonymous Charity Control Check answers | Deleted after 12 months of inactivity. Linked to you only if you save your results or sign up. |
| Support and contact-form messages | 24 months after the conversation closes. |
| Off-site backups | A rolling 30 days, then gone for good. |
Backups
We stream continuous off-site backups, held on encrypted storage, off-site (Cloudflare R2, EU) with a 30-day retention window and daily snapshots. When you delete something, copies persist in backups until they age out of that 30-day window, after which they cannot be recovered by anyone, including us.
When a charity leaves
- We make your workspace data available as a single export, on request, for 30 days.
- We then delete your active database.
- Backup copies age out on the 30-day rotation above.
- We keep data beyond this only where the law requires it, and only for that purpose.
Your requests
The service lets you access, correct, export and permanently delete a person's data yourself. For anything you can't complete in the product, email dpo@charitycontrol.co.uk and we'll help.
This page states our current practice. It is not legal advice. See also the Trust Centre and our privacy policy.