How we handle your data

Who is responsible

Chartered Developments is a trading name of Smart Trade Limited, registered in England and Wales (company number 3446373), 8 Kew Court, Pynes Hill, Rydon Lane, Exeter EX2 5AZ. Smart Trade Limited is the data controller for what you enter in The Architect of Needs. Contact us on 01392 247200 or at info@chartdev.co.uk.

What Architect AI is

Architect AI is the AI system that writes your plans. It is software, not a person, and no one at Chartered Developments reviews its plans. It runs on Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, which we use under Anthropic’s commercial terms.

What we send to Anthropic

When you build a plan or add follow-up questions, we send Anthropic your brief, your question method and the text of your sources (for follow-up questions, also the advantage they belong to). Scanned PDFs and screenshots you upload, and linked PDFs with no usable text, are sent to Anthropic to read. Word documents and text files are read in your browser. Links you add are fetched by our server, and their text is sent the same way. Leave out client names, other people’s personal data and anything confidential or privileged.

What Anthropic does with it

Anthropic acts as our data processor under its data processing addendum. It stores the data in the US and may process it in other countries where it operates. For transfers from the UK, its terms include the UK’s International Data Transfer Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses. Under its commercial terms, Anthropic deletes what we send within 30 days, unless it must keep it longer to enforce its usage policy or the law requires it. If its safety systems flag a request, it can keep the request for up to 2 years and its safety scores for up to 7 years. It does not use what we send to train its models. Anthropic describes this in its data retention article.

What we keep

Your plans, sources and question method are saved in your browser only. We don’t store them on our servers, and clearing your browser data deletes them. Anyone using the same browser profile can see them.

Vercel, a US company, hosts the app and acts as our data processor. The app’s server runs in London. Your text passes through it on the way to Anthropic and is not stored there. Vercel’s logs record errors and how much each plan used, with the time and your IP address, and are kept for up to a day.

Why we can use it

Our lawful basis is legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): providing a meeting-preparation tool to the advisers we invite to use it. The personal data involved is usually just your IP address in Vercel’s logs, plus anything personal you type in, which we ask you not to do. The access code is shared, so it doesn’t identify you.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct, delete or restrict it, and object to how we use it. Contact us as above. If you’re unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.