Code of conduct & privacy notice

Website privacy notice · Cookie notice & choices

Code of conduct

The Code states that as a member of the IPI & EPIC, I will undertake the following:

1. I must be accountable for all my work and/or investigations, which I will carry out within the highest standards of legal, professional and ethical principles, ensuring that my activities are covered by appropriate professional insurance. I will only operate in subjects or disciplines for which I am are qualified and/or recognised as being competent.

2. I will treat all information received in the course of my work and/or investigations with discretion, confidentiality and in compliance with data protection law and principles. I must require confirmation that a client’s information and instructions are for lawful uses only and address any conflicts of interest, ensuring that I am personally or corporately registered with the appropriate Data Protection body.

3. I will deal professionally in all matters with discretion, courtesy and confidentiality within ethical constraints. I must not deny any professional services to any client for any reasons of race, colour, religion, sex, accessibility needs, sexual preference, or national origin. I will interact with others with Courtesy, Fairness and in accordance with the principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).

4. I must not misrepresent or exaggerate my activities and/or services. I will uphold the aims and objectives of my professional organisation(s) and protect their reputation and that of their members.

5. I will maintain a high level of self-development and professional competence and keep up to date with legislation; techniques and any relevant disclosures required of me by my organisation, in particular any convictions recorded on the criminal database in my jurisdiction.

6. I will ensure that any others assisting me in my work will also comply with this Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. I will challenge and report any improper conduct of colleagues. I will refer all matters of conflict between members to the organisations’ governing body for arbitration, whose decision will be accepted as final and binding.

Website privacy notice

Updated 22 September 2026.

Who is responsible and how to contact us

P & D Investigations Limited is responsible for the personal information collected through this website. Contact John Bateman at johnb@johnbateman.co.uk, telephone 01707 371144, or write to 5 Westcott, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, AL7 2PP, United Kingdom.

This notice covers website enquiries, published reviews/comments, administration and optional website statistics. Information used for an investigation may require separate client/case-specific privacy information, lawful grounds and safeguards; this website notice is not permission to investigate people or collect sensitive information about them.

What we collect, why, and our lawful grounds

Enquiries: details you send, such as your name, email, telephone number, location and message, and relevant follow-up/admin notes. We use them to respond and take steps at your request before entering a contract, and to perform an agreed contract. Where that basis does not apply, our legitimate interests are dealing with genuine enquiries and managing correspondence. Provide only what we need for your enquiry; do not send unnecessary sensitive information or third-party case material through the public form.
Reviews and blog comments: your chosen display name, message, and optional review details are used to moderate and publish the contribution you ask us to display. Our legitimate interests are operating a relevant, trustworthy comments/reviews service and preventing abuse. Supplied email addresses help us administer submissions and are not automatically published. Historic reviews may contain masked contact details already included in their original published text. Only approved submissions are shown publicly.
Security and administration: login/session information, submission timing and hosting/security logs help operate and protect the service. The lawful basis is our legitimate interests in a secure, reliable website. Hosting logs can contain connection IPs even though the optional analytics described below do not retain raw IPs.
Optional analytics: only with your consent, we record the page path, date, page-view count, broad device type, referring domain and estimated country, with a hash of a random browser ID. Query strings, search terms, referrer paths and raw browser user-agent strings are not stored in these statistics. Your IP is used transiently for a country lookup against a local database, not retained in the analytics tables or sent to a geolocation API. Pseudonymous identifiers are still personal data; they are not treated as anonymous.
Legal requirements: we may use or disclose information where necessary to comply with an applicable legal obligation or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims. The ground depends on the particular requirement or claim.

Analytics help us understand and improve the site. They are not linked to enquiry identities, used to profile you for advertising, or used to make automated decisions that have legal or similarly significant effects. We do not add enquiry or review email addresses to a marketing list.

Who can receive information

Authorised staff and service providers supporting hosting, maintenance, backups and, when configured, email delivery can process information as needed to operate the site. Approved reviews and comments can be read by the public and search engines. We may also disclose information where legally required. We do not sell website visitor or enquiry data.

Following an external link or opening Google Maps directions shares information with that provider. Google form verification loads automatically on form pages after you accept cookies in the main banner or separately allow verification; this permission is remembered for 90 days. Google receives connection/browser information and may use cookies; you can withdraw this choice through Cookie choices and use telephone or email instead. See the cookie notice for details. The automatically displayed office map is hosted locally. Local country lookup uses a downloaded DB-IP database; DB-IP does not receive visitor IP addresses from this lookup.

Hosting and communication providers may process information outside the UK. Where a restricted international transfer occurs, the relevant UK adequacy arrangements or other appropriate safeguards are required. Contact us for details of the providers and safeguards applicable to your information.

How long information is kept

Enquiry information and associated notes are kept only for as long as specifically needed to deal with the enquiry and carry out the agreed task. When no longer needed, they should be deleted or anonymised, unless a separate legal requirement or documented need to deal with a dispute requires further retention. Case records are assessed separately according to the purpose, sensitivity and any applicable legal requirements. Closing an enquiry in the admin panel is not itself deletion.

Pseudonymous site-analytics records and analytics consent evidence are kept in the active database for up to 90 days; expired records are removed when statistics are next collected or viewed. Cookie preferences and the optional browser identifier expire after 90 days. Aggregate blog counters are retained without visitor identifiers. Published reviews and comments remain while relevant to the website, subject to moderation and requests for removal. Security logs and backups are separate operational records; their retention depends on the security/recovery purpose and provider arrangements. Restricted backup copies may remain until the normal backup cycle replaces them.

Your rights and complaints

Depending on the circumstances, you can ask for access, correction, erasure, restriction or a portable copy of your personal information, and object to processing based on legitimate interests. You can withdraw analytics consent at any time through Cookie choices, without affecting the lawfulness of earlier processing. Rights are not absolute; applicable legal restrictions or exemptions may affect a particular request.

Contact John using the details above. We may need proportionate information to confirm identity. We normally respond without undue delay and within one month; if a lawful extension applies, we explain it. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). You do not have to complain to us first.

Choices and changes

Essential fields are marked on the forms; without the required contact details we may be unable to respond. Optional analytics are not a condition of using the service. Please see the cookie notice and controls for exact first-party cookie purposes and lifetimes. We will update this notice when practices change and seek a new choice before materially changing the purposes of optional tracking.