Privacy notice.
How information is used when you discuss a website with DESGN DEPT.
Last updated: 27 September 2026.
Contact about privacy
Karma Pierrel, a sole trader trading as DESGN DEPT, is responsible for your personal information.
Business correspondence address: 10 Wakerley Drive, Peterborough, PE2 7WF, United Kingdom.
For privacy questions, email hello@desgndept.com.
Website enquiries
The enquiry form asks for your name, email address, project type and message. Business name and current website are optional. Please avoid including sensitive information in your initial message.
We use enquiry details to answer questions, discuss requirements, prepare proposals and follow up about the project you asked us about. Where you ask us to take steps towards a contract with you personally, we rely on those pre-contract steps. For general questions or enquiries on behalf of a company, we rely on our legitimate interest in responding to people who contact the studio.
You choose whether to enquire. We need enough information to understand your request and a way to reply. Business name and website address are optional. An enquiry does not subscribe you to marketing emails.
Hosting and delivery
The website and business email use IONOS Cloud Ltd. The form sends a message to the studio mailbox. It does not create a separate database of enquiries on the website. Hosting and mail providers may keep operational and security logs.
IONOS's provider list identifies 1&1 Mail & Media GmbH in Germany for Mail Basic email services and Open-Xchange GmbH in Germany for its webmail service. IONOS maintains the current provider information with its Data Processing Agreement.
Karma also accesses the IONOS mailbox through Google's Gmail app using IMAP and SMTP. The mailbox remains hosted by IONOS. Email correspondence is available in the app on the connected device. Google's handling of information through its services is described in its privacy policy.
The form uses your IP address and submission details to calculate keyed hashes for rate limits and duplicate detection. The private control file stores hashes, counters and timestamps, rather than the original IP address or message. We rely on our legitimate interest in protecting the contact service against abuse.
Storage and access
We keep enquiry correspondence while discussing your project or waiting for a follow-up date agreed with you. Karma reviews inactive enquiries once a month to decide whether further contact is reasonably expected and whether the information is still needed. Once there is no ongoing purpose, we delete it unless specific records are needed for a legal obligation or dispute. Sending another unanswered follow-up does not by itself justify keeping an enquiry indefinitely. If you become a client, we will explain the retention of project and accounting records as part of setting up the project.
Abuse-control entries expire from use after their short protection windows and are removed on a later valid submission. They can remain in the private file when there are no further submissions; this is not a promise of immediate automatic deletion.
IONOS publishes an eight-week retention period for its Web Hosting visitor data. This does not establish the retention of our mailbox or every other IONOS service. Its Data Processing Agreement forms part of the service contract where IONOS processes personal data on our behalf. The agreement states that processing takes place in the UK or European Economic Area unless a transfer elsewhere is necessary to provide the service, in which case IONOS must meet the applicable data-protection requirements. This is not a promise that all information remains in the UK.
Google explains that information processed through its services may be handled outside the UK and describes the applicable adequacy mechanisms and contractual safeguards in its data-transfer information. You can contact us for further information about the safeguards relevant to your correspondence and how to obtain a copy.
Cookies and measurement
The website code does not set advertising or analytics cookies or include third-party visitor-tracking scripts. IONOS processes technical visit information to provide and protect the hosting service. This can include the requested page, browser information, access time and IP information; IONOS describes anonymising visitor IP addresses in its Web Hosting data-processing information.
Your rights
You can contact hello@desgndept.com to request access to your personal information, corrections, deletion or limits on its use. A right to receive certain information in a portable format may also apply. These rights depend on the processing and applicable legal exceptions.
You can object to processing based on legitimate interests. Contact us using the email address above so we can consider your request.
If you have a concern, please contact Karma Pierrel first so it can be investigated. You can also raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office.