When you ask us to delete your data, it goes
Short answer: Email info@harveywjames.com and one request searches our systems for your phone number and email address: chats, calls, our job board, emails and notes. What is yours is deleted once our team confirms it. Anything shared with someone else only loses your details. We normally reply within one month.
Renting a home means handing over a lot about yourself: your ID, your income, your references, your phone number and your messages. Most people never find out what happens to all of that afterwards. Here is how we handle it.
Where do your details end up?
In more places than you might expect. A single enquiry can leave a trace in a chat with James, our AI assistant, a phone call and its recording, a job on our board, an email to the landlord and a note from our team. Deleting "your file" is not enough if copies live in five other places.
How long do we keep your data?
We set our rules to run on a timer, so tidying up never depends on someone remembering to do it.
| What | How long we keep it |
|---|---|
| Recordings of calls to our office line | 90 days from the call, then deleted |
| Recordings of video calls with James | 90 days from the call, then deleted |
| Finished jobs on our job board | Removed 60 days after the job is finished; we keep a record of the job without your personal details |
| Enquiry, viewing and valuation records | 12 months from your last contact with us |
| Conversations with James | Up to 24 months, then anonymised |
On 27 September 2026, its first night, the job board clean-up took personal details out of 100 finished jobs. Some records, such as tenancy, deposit and money-laundering records, the law requires us to keep for longer. Our privacy policy lists each one and the reason for it.
What happens when you ask us to delete it?
Since 27 September 2026, one request starts a search across our systems for your phone number and email address. Our team goes through what it finds with you where needed. What is yours is deleted once a member of our team has confirmed it. The few places the tool cannot reach, such as our calendar, our team clears by hand, and we tell you when everything is done. If the law requires us to keep something, we tell you which rule applies.
Why don't we just delete everything with your number in it?
Because your number in someone else's message is still their message. If another tenant writes "my landlord is on 07…", that message belongs to them. We won't delete someone else's record because it mentions you: we take your details out of it and leave the rest alone. A record is only deleted outright once our team has confirmed it is yours.
How do we know it works?
Before the tool was allowed to delete anything, a separate reviewer that had not written it went through it round after round. Its only job was to break it: to make it delete the wrong person's data, miss yours, or report a job as finished too early. Every problem it found was fixed and tested before the next round. Only then did we switch it on, and we recorded the date in our build log.
What does this mean for landlords?
Your tenants' and applicants' data is handled with the same care as your property. If a former tenant asks us to delete their data, it is done properly, and we can show how. Talk to us about letting your property.
To ask us to delete your data, email info@harveywjames.com with your name and the phone number or email address you used with us.
Sources
- Our privacy policy, sections 2.8 to 2.12, 7, 8 and 11, last reviewed 27 September 2026.
- The job board clean-up's first live night, 27 September 2026: 100 finished jobs cleaned of personal details, 7 held (our own log).
- The switch-on of our erasure tool, 27 September 2026, recorded in the build log.