Privacy and audience measurement

Your choice, clearly recorded.

Optional analytics helps us understand readership and explain our audience to potential sponsors. The comparisons work whether you allow it or decline.

Effective 22 October 2026

Who is responsible

The controller is DoubleTick Solutions Ltd, 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ. Contact [email protected] about privacy, corrections or your rights.

What we measure if you allow it

We use Google Analytics 4 to measure visits, page views, engagement, repeat visits, broad visitor countries, device categories and referring websites. We use aggregate reports to improve the publication and provide audience evidence to prospective sponsors. Analytics and its cookies rely on your consent. Refusing does not affect access.

We send only broad sections: official force comparisons, official regional comparisons, monthly force comparisons, monthly regional comparisons, methodology, sources and this privacy notice. We use fixed, generic titles and remove query strings and fragments. We do not send selected areas, force or region identifiers, crime categories, profiles, searches, sorting, comparison selections or campaign parameters. Referring addresses are reduced to the website origin, such as https://example.com/.

Google also receives ordinary network, browser and device information and derives geography from that information. Google Signals, user-provided data collection and advertising personalization are disabled; there is no Google Ads link. We do not send names, email addresses, account IDs, correspondence or crime-interest profiles. Enhanced measurement is off; we send broad page views manually rather than automatic searches, downloads or outbound-link events.

Prospective sponsors receive aggregate reports with dates, definitions and limitations. They do not receive browser identifiers, individual event histories or reader-level records. Consent choices, blockers and browser restrictions reduce measured coverage. Google's known-bot filtering does not certify every remaining visit as a person, and page views are not evidence that an advertisement was seen.

The standalone area, crime-category, methodology and sources pages do not load Google Analytics. The interactive comparison and this privacy page offer optional measurement using the consent controls.

Cookies, consent and withdrawal

After consent, Analytics uses first-party _ga and _ga_… cookies, capped at one year without renewing them on every visit. The essential crimeledger-audience-choice-v1 cookie remembers your allow/refuse choice for 180 days, after which we ask again. A matching local-storage value helps synchronize tabs. Neither preference storage nor opening this notice sends an analytics request before permission.

The preference cookie is shared between crime.compare and www.crime.compare. Withdrawal stops new analytics events from this site and deletes accessible Analytics cookies. Same-host tabs synchronize through browser storage events; tabs on the other hostname check the shared cookie on a one-second timer and when focused. Browsers may delay timers, especially in background tabs; we recheck permission before any manually sent page view. If we cannot save a verifiable consent cookie, analytics stays off. A newer refusal in local storage also blocks an older cookie grant. If your browser prevents both preference stores from being changed, your refusal still stops this tab's analytics, but cannot persist across a reload or reliably notify other tabs; clear the site's stored data or use your browser's blocking controls.

Withdrawal does not automatically delete earlier events. Contact us about deletion or other rights requests; do not send us full cookie contents or credentials. You can also use Google's Analytics opt-out add-on.

Owner and test browsers

People administering or testing the site can mark this browser before allowing analytics. The marker sends traffic_type=internal and debug_mode=true after consent so the property's active internal/developer filters exclude the test activity. The separate hard-exclusion option prevents Google Analytics from loading or sending events even if an earlier analytics choice allowed it.

These voluntary settings use essential crimeledger-analytics-internal and crimeledger-analytics-exclude cookies for up to one year and a local-storage mirror. They apply to this browser, not every device or account. Removing a hard exclusion leaves analytics declined until you explicitly allow it again. Changing an already active test marker reloads the page so old measurement defaults cannot persist.

Delivery and public crime data

Cloudflare delivers and protects the website and may process routine request and security information, including IP address, user agent, requested URL and time. GitHub hosts the public source and data snapshots and runs scheduled refreshes. Raw HTTP requests include crawlers and are not used as a human-readership count. This release does not load a Cloudflare Web Analytics beacon.

The comparison site publishes aggregate crime counts, population estimates and area boundaries from the official sources named on the website. It has no reader accounts. Search, filters and downloads run in your browser; no search or area selection is sent to Google Analytics. Following an external source link is subject to that provider's privacy notice. If you email us, we process your message and contact details to respond to the request.

Retention and international processing

Google Analytics user/event data are retained for 14 months, with renewal on new activity disabled. Google's standard aggregate reports have a separate retention model and may remain available longer. Aggregate audience exports are reviewed at least annually and kept only while needed for a current claim, agreement or dispute; we do not export individual reader histories for sponsors. We normally review closed privacy correspondence after 24 months and retain it longer only where a continuing dispute or legal duty requires it.

Google, Cloudflare and GitHub may process information outside the UK under the relevant service and data-processing terms. See Google's explanation for partner sites, its privacy policy, Analytics data-processing terms and international transfer safeguards. Contact us for more information about safeguards applicable to your data. We do not sell personal data.

Your rights and complaints

You may request access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection or portability where applicable, and withdraw analytics consent through the controls above. Contact [email protected]. You can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing.

The effective date changes when purposes, data flows, providers or retention materially change. Analytics covers only activity after its activation; it cannot reconstruct earlier readership.