Privacy, cookies and accessibility

This site collects very little, sells nothing, and does not track you around the internet. What follows says so properly, because saying it properly is the point of a page like this.

Aftergrowth is a brand of Alkhemy Group Ltd, and Alkhemy Group Ltd is the data controller for anything you send through this website. Alkhemy’s full privacy policy covers the rest of the business and this page sits alongside it rather than replacing it.

Who is responsible

Alkhemy Group Ltd
Vibrant Accountancy, The Mill, Lodge Lane, Derby, DE1 3HB

About this site: ollie@aftergrowth.co.uk
Formal data protection requests: hey@alkhemy.org.uk

Last updated 5 October 2026.

What this site collects

If you use the contact form

Whatever you type into it: the name you give, the email address you give, and your message. It is emailed to me and a copy is stored in the website’s own records. I use it to reply to you and for nothing else. I do not add you to a mailing list off the back of it, and I do not pass it to anybody.

If you just read the site

The site runs on WordPress.com, which records basic visit statistics: pages viewed, roughly where in the world the visit came from, and what referred you. I see that as totals rather than as individuals, and I use it to work out which writing is worth doing more of. WordPress.com sets the cookies that make this work, and their own privacy documentation covers what those are.

There is no advertising on this site, no advertising cookies, no tracking pixels and no social media trackers.

If you subscribe to the writing

Subscribing happens on Substack, not here. When you press Subscribe you leave this site, and from that point your email address is held by Substack under their privacy policy rather than under this one. I can see my subscriber list and I can email it, which is the whole point, but I do not sell it, rent it or share it, and you can leave at any time without asking me.

Why I am allowed to hold it

The lawful bases are the same as Alkhemy’s: your consent, performance of a contract, compliance with a legal obligation, and legitimate interests such as responding to enquiries and improving the service. For the contact form it is usually consent and legitimate interest, which in plain terms means you wrote to me and I am writing back.

How long it is kept

Only as long as necessary for the purpose it was collected for, including any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. If you write to me and nothing comes of it, I am not keeping your message for years out of sentiment. Ask me to delete it and I will.

Your rights

You can ask what I hold about you, ask me to correct it, ask me to delete it, ask me to restrict what I do with it, object to me holding it, or ask for a copy to take elsewhere. Write to hey@alkhemy.org.uk and I will deal with it. If you are not happy with how I have dealt with it you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk, and you do not need my permission to do that.

Accessibility

People read this site tired, upset, on a phone, sometimes at three in the morning. That is not an edge case here, it is the normal case, so the design has been built for it rather than having accessibility added afterwards.

Body text is never smaller than 17 pixels and is set at a generous line height, with the text column stopped at a readable width rather than stretched across a wide screen. Every text and background pairing used on the site has been measured against the WCAG 2.2 AA contrast requirements and passes. Colour is never the only thing carrying meaning, and links in body text are always underlined rather than just coloured. Nothing moves, flashes, autoplays or pops up over what you are reading.

The page structure uses real headings in order, so a screen reader can move through it properly, and the whole site can be used with a keyboard.

Where it is not perfect

No formal accessibility audit has been carried out on this site, so what is above is a careful account rather than a certified one. The images are generated rather than photographed and their descriptions are written by hand, so some will be better than others. And the writing itself lives on Substack, which is somebody else’s website with its own accessibility behaviour that I do not control.

If something here is hard to use, tell me at ollie@aftergrowth.co.uk and I will fix it. You do not need to know the technical name for the problem. Describing what happened is plenty.