PAI Privacy Notice
Last updated: 6 July 2026
1. Who we are
PAI ("we", "us") is a service operated by Techzoom Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 15539411, registered office 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. We are registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), registration number ZB847890.
PAI is an AI assistant that helps planning and property professionals search and analyse UK planning appeal cases. It is a business tool and is not intended for children.
For questions about this notice or your personal data, contact privacy@pai.archi.
Our role. For your account and your use of PAI, we are the data controller. Where your organisation uses PAI to process information about its own clients or other people, we act as a processor on your organisation's behalf under our Data Processing Agreement. That content is governed by your organisation's own privacy notice and our DPA rather than by this notice.
2. The personal data we collect
- Account and identity (handled by our authentication provider, Clerk): your name, email address, a unique user identifier and sign-in metadata. We never see or store your password.
- Content you provide: the search queries you run, your conversations with the AI assistant, any files you upload, and feedback you submit.
- Technical and usage data: log data and limited diagnostic and error information generated as you use the service.
- Billing data (on paid plans, handled by our payment provider, Stripe): billing name and email, your plan, invoices and payment status. Card details go directly to Stripe; we never see or store full card numbers.
The case records PAI searches are public records published by the Planning Inspectorate and local planning authorities. They may incidentally contain personal data about third parties, such as the names of appellants or planning officers. PAI is not designed to collect special category data (such as health information).
3. How we use your data, and our lawful basis
| What we do | Why | Lawful basis (UK GDPR) |
|---|---|---|
| Create and secure your account; provide search, the AI assistant, and storage of your conversations and files | To deliver the service you signed up for | Contract (Art 6(1)(b)) |
| Analyse usage, and review queries and conversations, to improve PAI's accuracy, prompts and features | To maintain and improve the service | Legitimate interests (Art 6(1)(f)). You can opt out: see section 9 |
| Security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting and logging | To keep the service safe and reliable | Legitimate interests (Art 6(1)(f)) |
| Send you service and account emails | To operate your account | Contract (Art 6(1)(b)) |
| Process payments and keep billing and accounting records (paid plans) | To charge for the service and meet tax and accounting rules | Contract (Art 6(1)(b)) and legal obligation (Art 6(1)(c)) |
| Send marketing, if any | To tell you about the service | Consent (Art 6(1)(a)); unsubscribe at any time |
Our legitimate interests balancing tests are recorded internally and available on request.
4. AI features
PAI's AI features are powered by third-party AI providers, currently including Anthropic and OpenAI; our sub-processor list shows the up-to-date set. We access all of them through their business APIs, and under those terms your inputs and outputs are not used to train their models. PAI does not make decisions with legal or similarly significant effects about you by solely automated means (Art 22): the AI assists your own judgement.
5. Who we share your data with
We share personal data with the sub-processors that help us run PAI: authentication, AI, file storage, email, error monitoring and hosting. See our current sub-processor list. We may also disclose data where the law requires it or to protect our rights. We do not sell personal data.
6. International transfers
Our backend and database run on our own dedicated servers in the UK, with backups held with Cloudflare R2 in Western Europe, encrypted at rest. The web application is delivered through Vercel's network, with server functions running in London, UK. Some of our sub-processors process data in the United States or are US-headquartered companies; where personal data leaves the UK, or a provider is subject to US law, we rely on the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, together with a transfer risk assessment.
7. How long we keep your data
| Data | Retention |
|---|---|
| Account data | Life of your account, then erased or anonymised within 30 days of closure |
| Conversations, queries, uploaded files | While your account remains open, including after a trial or subscription ends; deleted when you delete them in the app, close your account, or ask us (section 9) |
| Logs, including search logs | 30 days |
| Error diagnostics (Sentry) | 90 days |
| Backups | Rolling, deleted within 30 days |
| Billing records and invoices (paid plans) | 6 years after the relevant tax year, as required by UK tax law |
8. How we protect your data
All traffic between you and PAI is encrypted in transit (TLS). Access is authenticated and access-controlled. Uploaded files are held in access-controlled storage that is encrypted at rest and served only through short-lived signed links. We apply least-privilege access internally and are working to strengthen at-rest protections across the rest of our infrastructure.
9. Your rights
Under UK GDPR you can ask us to: give you access to your data; correct it; erase it; restrict how we use it; provide it in a portable format; and stop processing that is based on legitimate interests (including the service-improvement analysis described above) or on consent. To exercise any of these, email privacy@pai.archi. We respond within one month, free of charge; for complex requests we can extend by up to two further months and will tell you if so. You can ask us to exclude your data from service-improvement analysis at any time.
10. Cookies
We use only the essential cookies needed to sign you in and keep the service working. We do not use advertising or cookie-based analytics. If that changes, we will update this notice and ask for your consent where the law requires it.
11. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice. We will post the new version here, update the date above, and tell you about material changes.
12. Complaints
You can complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113. We would welcome the chance to sort out your concern first, so please do contact us.
13. Contact
Techzoom Ltd, 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ, privacy@pai.archi