Privacy Policy

Who we are

Kidshive is an Ofsted-registered childcare setting (URN EY540826) and is the data controller for the information described in this policy. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under registration number ZB524163.

For any question about this policy, or to exercise any of the rights described below, contact Kidshive Support Team at contact@kidshive.co.uk. Parents and carers already registered with the setting can also raise anything in person at handover.

The Kidshive app is a tool for childcare staff and for parents and guardians. It is not designed for or directed at children, and children do not hold accounts on it.

What information we hold

About children in our care

• Name, any name they are known by, date of birth, and a profile photograph.
• Home address, who the child lives with, and any school or other nursery they attend.
• Allergies, medical notes, immunisation status, dietary needs, and the details of their GP and health visitor.
• Emergency contacts — the name, phone number and address of people you nominate.
• Daily records of attendance, including check-in and check-out times and who collected the child.
• Daily care records: meals, naps, nappy changes and activities.
• Learning and development records: observations, termly reviews of your child’s progress in each area of learning (with next steps and the plain-English summary we share with you), EYFS progress reports, and the statutory progress check at age two.
• Records of accidents, incidents, existing injuries, and any medication administered.
• Photographs taken during sessions (no video at present), the tags that say which child is in each, and the choices you make about how they may be shown.

About parents, guardians and carers

• Name, email address, telephone number and postal address.
• Which children you are the guardian of, and your relationship to them.
• Whether you are the billing contact, together with invoices, payments and any funded-hours entitlement.
• Consents you have given or withdrawn, including the date and method they were recorded.
• Messages you exchange with the setting through the app.
• Signatures captured in the app for enrolment agreements, incident records and medication authorisations.

About staff

• Name, email address, telephone number, postal address and employment start date.
• DBS certificate number, application and clearance dates, and Ofsted suitability correspondence.
• Qualifications, including certificate details and expiry dates.
• Duty rota, hours worked, and records of unsupervised periods.

Technical information

• A description of the device you sign in from, so you can see and revoke your own active sessions.
• A push notification token, if you allow the app to send you notifications on your device — used only to deliver notifications relevant to you (for example, a new message), and removed when you sign out or turn notifications off.
• An audit log of changes made to records, showing who changed what and when. Where a record is edited, the previous value is retained in that log.

Health and other sensitive information

Information about a child's health — allergies, medical conditions, medication, immunisations, and details of their GP and health visitor — is 'special category data' under UK GDPR and is treated with additional care.

We hold it because we cannot safely care for a child without it: staff need to know about an allergy before offering food, and about a medical condition before responding to an emergency. Our lawful bases are Article 6(1)(c) and Article 9(2)(b) and (h) — compliance with our legal obligations under the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework, and the provision of care.

Access to this information within the app is limited to staff who need it for their role, and every access route is controlled by the permissions your setting configures.

Finding faces, blurring and facial recognition

When a photograph shows more than one child, we protect the children whose families have not agreed to appear in photographs that other people can see. To do that, the staff member’s own phone or computer finds where the faces are in the picture. This happens on that device, using software that only works out where a face is: it does not work out who anyone is, and the picture is not sent anywhere for this step.

A member of staff then says which child each face is, or draws a box round a child who is facing away. In any photograph that another family or the public can see, the app blurs every face that has not been named and every child whose family has not agreed to be shown. Staff can always see the original photograph.

Facial recognition, which is software that works out who someone is from their face, is not used at the moment. No facial recognition of any kind is performed, and no biometric data is created, stored, or sent to any third party. We do not identify any child or adult in a photograph from their face.

If we ever introduce it, it would be biometric data under UK GDPR and would need your explicit, separate, opt-in consent for each child before anything is processed. We would first update this notice to say which service does the work (we currently plan to use Amazon Web Services in London), what it keeps (only a numerical representation of a face, never the picture), how long, and how it is deleted if you withdraw consent or your child leaves. Saying no would never affect your child’s place or care: staff would simply name faces by hand, as they do now.

Photographs and video

Photographs are taken to record learning and to share moments of your child’s day with you. For each child you choose, separately, whether photographs of them may be used in each of these ways. Every choice is optional, saying no never affects your child’s place or care, and you can change your answer at any time through the app or by telling us.

• Shared with you: photographs of your child that staff choose to share appear on the Photos page of the app and website for you. We send one notification for each batch (for example “3 new photos of Asha”); it includes your child’s first name and passes through the notification services of the phone makers. This does not depend on the choices below.
• Group photos shared with other families: if you say yes, your child may appear, not blurred, in group photographs that other families can see. If you say no, or have not answered, your child is blurred in any photograph another family can see.
• Website and app front page: if you say yes, photographs of your child may appear on our public website and on the front page of the app, where anyone can see them.
• Social media: if you say yes, photographs may be posted on our business social media pages, where anyone can see them.

A photograph stays private until a member of staff shares it. It can then be opened only by a signed-in person who is allowed to see it: staff with the right permission, and the families of the children in it. Other children are blurred in the version a family sees unless their own families have agreed. You can save photographs of your child; please do not share or post any in which other children can be recognised.

Photographs on our website or social media can be seen and copied by anyone. If you withdraw consent we will remove them from the pages we control, but we cannot recall copies other people have already saved, and a social media platform has its own rules for its copy.

Withdrawing consent stops future use straight away (what other families see changes immediately), but it does not by itself delete photographs already taken. You can ask us to delete any photograph of your child and we will delete it permanently from our storage, together with its tags, unless it is part of a learning or safeguarding record that we have to keep for the periods under “How long we keep it”. Photographs are held in private cloud storage in Western Europe. We take photographs, not video, at present; if that changes we will update this notice.

Why we hold it, and our lawful basis

• Legal obligation — the Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework and Ofsted registration require us to keep records of attendance, safeguarding, accidents, medication and children’s development.
• Contract — to provide the childcare place you have agreed with us, to invoice you, and to administer funded hours.
• Legitimate interests — to run the setting safely and to communicate with you about your child’s day. We balance this against your rights and only rely on it where the processing is what you would reasonably expect.
• Consent — for photographs, and for any optional feature we ask you about separately. Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw it at any time.
• Vital interests — in a medical emergency, to protect someone’s life.

Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling. We share it only where we must:

• Ofsted, as our regulator, on inspection or request.
• The local authority, for funded-hours claims and for safeguarding.
• Safeguarding partners, the police, or social care, where there is a concern about a child’s welfare. We may not be able to tell you when we do this, if doing so would put a child at risk.
• Emergency services and healthcare professionals, where a child needs medical attention.
• Our technology suppliers, listed below, who process data on our instructions only.

Our technology suppliers

• Cloud hosting for the application and its database.
• Cloud object storage (Cloudflare) for photographs and uploaded documents, held in Western Europe.
• An email delivery service, used only to send sign-in links and password resets.
• A push notification delivery service, used only to deliver notifications to the mobile app on your device, where you have allowed them.
• An error-reporting service, used only to alert us when part of the app stops working. Reports are stripped of names, email addresses, record identifiers, and anything you have typed before they are sent.

Each supplier is bound by a written data processing agreement. We choose suppliers that store data in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area. Where any transfer outside that area is unavoidable, it is covered by UK-approved safeguards.

How we protect it

• All traffic between your device and our servers is encrypted in transit.
• Passwords are stored only as a strong one-way hash and can never be read back, by us or anyone else.
• Sign-in sessions can be revoked individually, so a lost or stolen device can be cut off immediately without changing your password.
• The mobile app locks itself after a period of inactivity and can be unlocked with a PIN or biometric, so records are not left open on an unattended phone.
• Photographs are stored in private cloud storage that is not publicly reachable; each request is authorised individually, and a photograph can be opened only by a signed-in person who is allowed to see it.
• What each member of staff can see and do, including whether they can open photographs of children at all, is controlled by role-based permissions the setting configures.
• Changes to records are written to an audit log showing who made them and when.

How long we keep it

We keep records only as long as we need them, or as long as the law requires — which for a childcare setting is often well beyond the point a child leaves us. The periods below follow the recommended retention schedule for early years and childcare providers.

• Attendance registers, daily diaries, parental permission forms, contracts and funded-hours records: six years after the child leaves the setting.
• Accident and incident records, and any record of a reportable injury or dangerous occurrence: until the child reaches 21 years of age, and then for a further 6 months before they are destroyed. Someone injured as a child can bring a claim until three years after their 18th birthday under the Limitation Act 1980, which is their 21st birthday. Before anything is destroyed we remind the manager, who can decide to keep a record longer if there is a good reason, such as a claim or an investigation.
• Safeguarding and child protection records, and welfare records, including where a child was seriously injured, was on regular medication, had severe allergies or a serious illness: until the child reaches 21 years of age, and then for a further 6 months, with the same reminder and the same option to keep them longer.
• Learning and development records (other than photographs, which follow the periods below): normally passed to you, or to the child’s next setting, when they leave.
• Invoices, payments and funding claims: six years plus the current financial year, for tax purposes.
• Staff records: for the duration of employment and a limited period afterwards. For DBS we record only the essential details — name, date of birth, certificate number, date of issue, and who obtained it — never a copy of the certificate itself, in line with the DBS code of practice.
• Everyday and marketing photographs: deleted at once if you withdraw consent (photographs of your child on their own are deleted; group photographs stay, with your child blurred), and in any case destroyed securely 6 months after your child has finally left the setting.
• Photographs that are part of your child’s learning and development record: kept for at least 3 years and until an Ofsted inspection has concluded successfully, whichever is later, then destroyed securely.
• Photographs kept as part of a safeguarding, accident or child protection record: kept until your child’s 21st birthday and for 6 months after it, then destroyed securely. The manager is reminded beforehand and can decide to keep a photo longer if there is a good reason.

When a retention period ends, records are deleted or securely destroyed. Because some of these periods are long, a record may still exist after your child has left us — that is a legal obligation on the setting, not a choice, and it is the reason some deletion requests cannot be met in full.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you or your child.
• Ask us to correct anything that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Ask us to delete information, where we are not required to keep it.
• Ask us to restrict how we use it, or object to our using it.
• Ask for a copy in a portable, machine-readable format.
• Withdraw consent at any time, where we relied on consent.

Parents and guardians normally exercise these rights on behalf of a young child. Some rights are limited where we have a legal duty to keep a record — we cannot, for example, delete a safeguarding record on request.

To make a request, contact Kidshive Support Team at contact@kidshive.co.uk. We will respond within one month. There is normally no charge.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first so we can put it right. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, or on 0303 123 1113.

Cookies and tracking

The Kidshive website sets one cookie, which keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the service to work, so it does not require consent under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. It is not readable by scripts running in your browser and is not sent to other websites.

We do not use advertising cookies, analytics cookies, tracking pixels, or third-party trackers of any kind, on either the website or the mobile app.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we use personal information — for example, if we ever switch on the facial recognition feature described above — we will update this policy and tell you directly rather than relying on you to notice.

This version took effect on 24-Sep-2026.