Legal
Privacy notice
How Solas Studio handles the personal information you share with us, why we hold it, who helps us process it, and the rights you have over it.
Last updated: 21 July 2026
Who we are
Solas Studio designs and builds websites and AI assistants for established businesses. The site is operated by James O’Sullivan trading as Solas Studio, a sole trader based in the United Kingdom. For anything in this notice, or to exercise any of your rights, contact us at info@solasstudio.co.uk. Solas Studio is the data controller for the personal information described here.
The short version
- We only collect what we need to reply to you and, if you become a client, to deliver and account for our work.
- The contact form emails your enquiry to our studio inbox. It is not saved to any database.
- The “Ask Solas” chat sends your messages to Anthropic to generate a reply. Please do not type sensitive personal information into it.
- We never sell your data, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.
- You can ask us for a copy of your data, or to correct or delete it, at any time.
What we collect, why, and our lawful basis
Under UK GDPR we need a lawful basis for using your personal data. The table below sets out what we collect, why, and the basis we rely on.
| What | Why | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry details: your name, business name, email address and the message you send through the contact form. | To read your enquiry and reply to it, and to follow up about the work you asked about. | Legitimate interests (responding to a request you made and running our business). If we go on to work together, our correspondence supports a contract with you. |
| Chat messages you type into the “Ask Solas” assistant. | To generate a helpful answer about our services. The conversation is sent to our AI provider to produce the reply; Solas Studio does not store the chat. | Legitimate interests (answering questions about our services). Please do not share sensitive personal information in the chat. |
| Booking, feedback and payment details, if you book or pay for a session or send feedback: for example the email address on an order, an attendee email, and any feedback you give. | To provide the session, take payment, and improve our service. Payment card details are handled by our payment provider, not by us. | Performance of a contract with you, and legitimate interests for feedback we use to improve. |
| Anti-abuse and technical data: a security check on our forms, plus the standard request data (such as IP address) that any web host records. | To keep the site and forms working and protect them from spam and abuse. | Legitimate interests (security and reliability). |
We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. Our anti-abuse check (Cloudflare Turnstile) may set a strictly necessary cookie to tell real visitors from bots.
Who processes your data for us
We use a small number of established service providers to run the site and our business. Each only receives the data it needs for its role, and acts on our instructions.
| Provider | What they do for us |
|---|---|
| Vercel | Website hosting and the serverless functions behind our forms and chat. |
| Anthropic | The AI model that powers the “Ask Solas” chat assistant. |
| Resend | Sends the enquiry email to our inbox and the acknowledgement back to you. |
| Supabase | Our database, used for any booking, order or feedback records. |
| Stripe | Processes payments if you pay for something. Stripe handles the card details directly. |
| Cloudflare | The anti-abuse check (Turnstile) on our public forms. |
| GitHub | Hosts our site’s code and signs in the site administrator. It does not receive visitor enquiry data. |
Sending data outside the UK
Some of these providers are based in, or store data in, the United States or other countries outside the UK. Where your personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on appropriate safeguards, such as the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or a UK adequacy decision (including the UK-US Data Bridge), depending on the provider.
How long we keep it
- Enquiries. We keep enquiry emails while we are in contact and for a reasonable period afterwards (up to around 24 months), then delete them, unless they relate to work we are delivering.
- Chat messages. Solas Studio does not store your chat. Our AI provider processes the messages to generate a reply and holds them only for its own limited retention period.
- Orders and payments. Where we have a paid transaction, we keep the associated records for six years to meet UK tax and accounting requirements.
- Feedback. We keep feedback only for as long as it is useful and remove it periodically.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you have the right to:
- ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you;
- ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
- ask us to delete your data, or to restrict or object to how we use it;
- ask us to transfer certain data to another provider;
- withdraw any consent you have given, without affecting earlier processing.
To exercise any of these, email info@solasstudio.co.uk. We will respond within one month.
Complaints
If you have a concern about how we handle your data, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.
Changes to this notice
We may update this notice as our services change. When we do, we will update the date at the top of this page.
Questions about your privacy? Email info@solasstudio.co.uk and we will come straight back to you.