Privacy Policy

HOME OF INDEPENDENT LANGUAGE TEACHERS LTD (“HILT”, “we”, “us”) is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy.

• Company number: 17417131
• Registered office: 86 Ryknield Road, Kilburn, DE56 0PF, United Kingdom
• Contact email: hello@hiltcommunity.com

We process personal information in accordance with the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

HILT operates a membership community for independent language teachers and a free public directory for learners. Teachers listed in the directory are independent businesses. We do not employ them, arrange lessons or take part in agreements between teachers and learners. Once we pass an enquiry to a teacher, that teacher is a separate, independent controller of the information in it.

Teacher membership, account and profile information. When a teacher joins HILT and creates a directory profile we process their name, email address, telephone number, website address, biography, hourly rate and currency, the languages and levels they teach, whether they teach online or in person, their teaching location, and any profile photograph they upload. Profile information marked as published is shown publicly in the directory; contact details such as email address and telephone number are not published in the directory.

Authentication information. To sign in, teachers use an email address and password. Passwords are handled by our authentication provider in hashed form; we never see or store them in readable form. We also process session and sign-in records needed to keep an account secure.

Learner enquiry information. When a learner uses the “Contact this teacher” form we collect their name, email address, optional telephone number, the language they wish to learn, their message, the teacher the enquiry is addressed to, the date and time, and the enquiry’s status.

Website security and anti-abuse information. When an enquiry is submitted we store a one-way hashed form of the sender’s IP address and their email address in lower case, solely to detect and prevent spam and abuse of the form. The IP address itself is never stored, and this information is not used for tracking, profiling or marketing.

Membership and payment information. HILT charges for teacher membership, payable monthly or annually, using Stripe as its payment provider. Card and payment details are collected and processed by Stripe through its own payment services under Stripe’s privacy policy. HILT does not receive or store full card numbers; we receive only limited information such as the subscription status, amounts, dates and invoice records needed to administer membership and meet our accounting obligations.

Correspondence. If you email us, we process your email address and the contents of your message.

• Providing teacher membership and the directory listing — creating and maintaining accounts and profiles, publishing profiles, and passing on enquiries. Lawful basis: performance of a contract with the teacher member (or steps taken at their request before entering into one).
• Passing learner enquiries to the chosen teacher and letting the teacher manage them — sending the enquiry to the teacher by email and showing it in their enquiry dashboard. Lawful basis: legitimate interests — the learner has deliberately asked to be put in touch with that teacher, and the teacher needs the enquiry to respond. The checkbox on the form is an acknowledgement that the enquiry will be shared with the teacher; it is not the lawful basis for the processing.
• Keeping accounts secure and preventing spam and abuse — sign-in security, rate limiting and the hashed anti-abuse records described above. Lawful basis: legitimate interests in protecting our service, our members and our users.
• Operating and improving the website — running, maintaining and troubleshooting the site. Lawful basis: legitimate interests in providing a reliable service.
• Administering membership payments — taking subscription payments and keeping invoice records. Lawful bases: performance of a contract and legal obligation for accounting and tax records.
• Responding to correspondence and meeting legal obligations — answering questions, handling complaints and disputes, and complying with the law. Lawful bases: legitimate interests and legal obligation.
• Optional communications — where we ask for your consent for something genuinely optional, we will make that clear at the time and you can withdraw consent at any time.

We do not carry out advertising, profiling or automated decision-making that produces legal or similarly significant effects.

Teachers. A learner’s enquiry is shared with the individual teacher it is addressed to, so that they can reply directly.

Service providers acting on our behalf. We use a small number of providers who process personal information on our instructions:

• Supabase — database, authentication and file storage for teacher accounts, profiles, profile photographs and enquiries.
• Lovable — the platform on which this website is built, hosted and served, and through which our notification emails are sent from the notify.hiltcommunity.com domain, using its underlying hosting and email infrastructure providers.
• Stripe — payment processing for teacher membership payments.

We may also disclose information where we are required to do so by law, or where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. We do not sell personal information.

Some of our providers, and the infrastructure they rely on, may process or store personal information outside the United Kingdom. Where that happens, we rely on the transfer safeguards offered by those providers — typically the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or a country covered by UK adequacy regulations.

We have not independently verified the precise hosting region of every provider used to deliver this website. If you would like details of the safeguards that apply to a particular transfer, please contact us at hello@hiltcommunity.com and we will provide the information we hold.

• Learner enquiries — normally 12 months from submission, unless longer retention is reasonably necessary for a complaint, dispute or legal obligation.
• Anti-abuse records (hashed IP address and lower-cased email address) — a maximum of 30 days, after which they are deleted automatically.
• Teacher profile and account information — kept while membership is active, then deleted or anonymised when no longer required, except where we need to retain information for legal, accounting, dispute or administrative purposes.
• Membership payment, invoice and accounting records — 6 years from the end of the relevant company financial year, or longer where required by law.
• Correspondence — kept for as long as needed to deal with the matter and for a reasonable period afterwards.

HILT does not use analytics, advertising or marketing tracking, and does not set any non-essential cookies. There is therefore no cookie consent banner on this site.

• Authentication storage (essential). When a teacher signs in, our authentication provider stores a session token in the browser’s localStorage so that the teacher stays signed in. It is removed on sign-out.
• Functional sessionStorage. The site may store small amounts of information in sessionStorage for page and scroll behaviour while you browse. It is cleared when you close the tab.

These are strictly necessary or purely functional to provide the service you have asked for. You can clear this storage at any time through your browser settings, though doing so will sign a teacher out.

We use access controls, database-level security rules, encrypted connections and short-lived links for profile photographs to protect personal information. Teacher contact details and other private fields are not exposed publicly through the directory. No online service can be completely secure, but we take reasonable technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk.

Under UK data protection law you have the right to:

• be informed about how your information is used;
• request a copy of the personal information we hold about you;
• have inaccurate information corrected;
• ask us to erase information in certain circumstances;
• ask us to restrict processing in certain circumstances;
• data portability, where processing is by consent or contract and automated;
• object to processing based on our legitimate interests, including in relation to direct marketing; and
• withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent.

To exercise any of these rights, please email hello@hiltcommunity.com. We may need to verify your identity, and we will normally respond within one month.

If your enquiry has already been passed to a teacher, you may also need to contact that teacher directly, as they are an independent controller of the information they hold.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first at hello@hiltcommunity.com so that we can try to put things right. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk, or by calling 0303 123 1113.

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last updated.