The Favour — privacy notice

Last updated Tuesday 3 November 2026

This notice says what we do with the information you give us, why, who sees it, how long we keep it, and what you can do about it. It is written to be read in one sitting. If anything is unclear, text us and a person will answer.

Prices mentioned are in pounds sterling (£).

1. Who is responsible for your data

The Favour is run by Joy in Golf Limited ('the club', 'we'). We are the controller of your data, which means we decide what is collected and why.

Registered office: Unit 2, Leavesden Lodge, 1a Leavesden Road, Watford, England, WD24 5FR. Company number: 09996083. Contact for anything about your data: hello@thefavour.club or text [placeholder — the club number].

The club is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), registration number [placeholder — ICO registration number, to be entered once the fee is paid].

2. What we collect

When you apply:

• your name
• your mobile number
• your postal address (so we can post you the card)
• what you do (one line), and where you work if you tell us (never shown to anyone; used so no two guests at a table share an employer)
• where you are connected to (one line)
• the languages you speak
• your gender — a person places the tables and keeps them mixed; this is the only reason we ask
• which Thursdays you can do
• how you heard about us
• the one favour you need, in your own words
• whether you ticked the digest box, and whether you ticked the box letting us post your favour, unnamed, on the club's own channels

When you are accepted and pay:

• a record that you paid, and the Stripe reference. We do not see or store your full card number; Stripe holds that.

After the evening:

• your replies to our texts: whether your favour was sorted, whether you would come back, which favour (if any) you said you'd do
• if your favour went into the Monday digest: who replied to it, the one-line description sent to you, and your YES or NO
• if you were introduced to someone: that it happened, the date, what you chose to pass on (an email address, or your number if you replied CALL), and the answer each of you gave to the 'did that get sorted?' text about two weeks later
• a record of who sat with whom, and the kind of favour each guest brought and claimed — a short category such as 'a trade', 'a contact' or 'advice', never the wording (the 'composition record')
• if both sides of an introduction say the favour was sorted: a note that one favour is owed, between the two of you (the 'owed-favours ledger'). The ledger records that a favour is owed, not its wording.

If something goes wrong:

• any report you make about another guest, or that another guest or the restaurant makes about you, and what we did about it (the 'safety record')

We do not collect your date of birth. You confirm you are 18 or over when you apply.

The website sets no cookies of its own and nothing for advertising or tracking. The site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits and see which pages are read; Cloudflare describes it as collecting no personal data, setting no cookies and using no device fingerprint, and we see only totals.

3. Why we use it, and the legal reason for each use

UK data protection law says we need a lawful reason for each thing we do with your data. Here they are.

We do not sell your data, and we do not use it for anyone else's advertising.

4. Your favour may be sensitive — what we do about it

A favour is written in your own words, so it might say something about your health, your religion or beliefs, your sexuality, your ethnic background, your politics, or a union — the kinds of information the law calls 'special category data' and protects more strictly. 'Someone who has moved a parent into care' can reveal a parent's health. 'A doctor who will take me seriously' reveals yours.

So, before anything is printed:

• A person reads every favour. (Software proposes a clearer wording and flags anything that looks sensitive; a person decides.)
• If your favour touches something sensitive — health, religion, anything personal — we'll ask you separately whether you want it on a card at all, or help you word it so it isn't.
• If you want the favour to go out as written, we ask for your explicit consent to that, in a separate message, before it is printed or sent anywhere. That consent is the legal reason for handling the sensitive part (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a)). Without it, the favour is reworded or withdrawn. You can withdraw that consent at any time; the favour comes out of the next card run and the next digest.
• Safety reports can also contain sensitive content, or allegations about someone's conduct. We keep those under the conditions the law sets for such records.

5. The texts, and your consent to them

The texts your seat needs, then one digest a week at most; STOP ends them.

The texts your seat needs: that you're accepted and how to pay; that your card is in the post; a Wednesday reminder carrying the card's content; a Thursday-morning reminder; the Sunday questions; and, if you're introduced, the introduction and a day-14 check. They are part of providing the seat, and we send them to everyone who is accepted.

The Monday digest is different. It is sent only to past guests who ticked the box asking for it when they applied. At most one a week. The texting rules in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 require that consent, and they require every message to say who it is from and how to stop. Ours do: every text comes from the club's number and begins 'The Favour:', and every digest says 'STOP ends these'.

Reply STOP to any digest and the digest stops. We handle STOP ourselves, so it stops the digest and not the texts a seat you have paid for needs. Opting out of texts doesn't stop you coming back. If you reply STOP and then apply for another Thursday, you will be asked again whether you want the digest; we do not switch it back on without asking.

6. Who sees what

• Your tablemates see your favour on a card, with no name on it. One of them is posted the card with your favour on the front; the six favours on the back of every card are the table's, unnamed, including your own. For the first tables (November and December 2026) the card is posted in a sealed envelope, with your name and address on the envelope and not on the card, so nothing on it can be read in transit. From the first table after that the club uses a print-and-post service, Stannp, which prints the card and posts it as a bare postcard with your name and address printed on the back: the six favours, unnamed, can then be seen by the postal service and by anyone who handles the card before you, and your own favour is among them, unmarked. A favour that touches anything sensitive never goes on a card without your separate yes (section 4), whichever way the card travels.
• Anyone who looks at the club's own site or social accounts may see your favour's wording, unnamed, if you ticked the box allowing it — and only then. A favour we flagged as sensitive is never posted.
• Past guests who asked for the digest see your favour, if it was not claimed at the table, as one numbered line with your table number only. They never see your name or your number.
• A helper who replies is not told who you are. You are sent a one-line description of them (drawn from the 'what you do' line on their application). If you both say yes, each of you is asked what to pass on — an email address, or CALL to pass your number — and each of you gets one text with first names, the favour and only what the other chose to pass on. Nothing else. The club never shares a number; a guest may choose to. The club introduces by text and steps back.
• The restaurant holds the table. It is told the number of guests and the club's contact for the night. The table is booked under the club's name, 'The Favour', and you ask for it by that name when you arrive. The restaurant is not given your name, your favour or your number.
• The people who work for the club — at launch one person, later a part-time admin role — see what they need to do their job: the admin role handles the cards, the relay and the restaurant; refunds, introductions and anything sensitive are decided by Allan Saud.
• Nobody else, except the service companies in section 7.

7. The companies that handle data for us

These companies process data on our instructions, under contracts that require them to protect it. They do not use it for their own purposes.

Some of these companies hold data outside the United Kingdom. Where they do, we rely on the safeguards UK data-protection law requires for the transfer, and we send nothing abroad that the company does not need for its job.

8. How long we keep it

'Deleted' means removed from our live records and from backups on their next cycle.

9. Your rights

You can:

• ask for a copy of the data we hold about you
• ask us to correct it
• ask us to delete it (we will, unless the law requires us to keep it — for example, a payment record, or a safety record that another guest's safety depends on)
• ask us to stop using it for something, or to restrict what we do with it
• object to our using it where we rely on our legitimate interests — including the composition record and the owed-favours ledger
• withdraw any consent you gave, at any time; this does not affect what was done before you withdrew it
• ask for the data you gave us in a form you can take elsewhere
• complain to us, and complain to the ICO at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113

To do any of these, text or email us (section 1). We answer within one month.

We do not make decisions about you by software alone. Software drafts the tables; a person reads every application and decides.

10. Changes

We will change this notice when we change what we do. The date at the top is the date of the version you are reading. If a change matters to you — a new purpose, a new company handling data — we tell you by text before it takes effect.