Last updated: 5 October 2026

1. About this privacy policy

Santa Maidstone respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy explains what information we collect, why we use it, how we protect it, and the rights you have under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

This policy covers personal data collected through the Santa Maidstone website and during visits to Santa’s Grotto, including photographs taken by Santa’s official Photo Elves.

2. Who is responsible for your personal data?

Santa Maidstone is the data controller for personal data covered by this policy. Photography at the Grotto is provided by Photo Team as part of the Santa Maidstone operation.

Contact details:

Santa Maidstone
c/o The Mall Management Suite
The Mall Maidstone
Pad’s Hill,
Maidstone
ME15 6AT

Email: mark@PhotoTeam.co.uk

Website: www.SantaMaidstone.co.uk

3. What personal data may we collect?

Depending on how you interact with us, we may process:

• Contact information that you choose to provide, such as your name, email address or telephone number.
• Information needed to deal with an enquiry, request or purchase.
• Photographs taken during your visit to Santa’s Grotto.
• Your instructions and consent where you ask us to share a purchased photograph on social media.
• Basic technical information generated when you use our website, such as IP address, browser information and server logs.

Children’s visit information

To help Santa and his Elves provide a more personal experience, we ask for a child’s first name, age and gender when they arrive at the Grotto. This information helps Santa personalise the child’s visit and helps his Elves select a suitable age-appropriate gift.

Parents or guardians are welcome to tell us which age and gender gift selection they feel would be most appropriate for their child. This does not necessarily have to match the child’s actual age. If, because of their developmental age, additional needs or individual preferences, you feel a gift intended for a different age group would be more suitable, simply let our Elves know.

Gender-neutral gifts can also be requested if preferred. These individual gift preferences are used only to help us choose the most suitable present for your child and are not recorded as part of the child’s information.

Any information a parent or guardian shares with our Elves about a child’s additional needs, developmental needs or other personal circumstances will be used only to help Santa and his Elves adapt the visit to the child’s individual needs and, where appropriate, select a suitable gift.

This additional information is not recorded or retained and is used only for the purpose of making the child’s visit as comfortable and enjoyable as possible.

The child’s first name, age and gender are recorded on paper only and are not entered onto a computer, database or other electronic system.

The information is used only in connection with the child’s visit. We retain only anonymous attendance figures, such as the total number of children who visit the Grotto each day. These figures contain no names or other information that could identify an individual child.

The paper records containing children’s first names, ages and gender are securely disposed of once they are no longer required.

4. Why we use your personal data

We use personal data only where we have a lawful reason to do so. This may include:

• Providing the Grotto experience, photography and any products you choose to purchase.
• Responding to enquiries and communicating with you.
• Processing and fulfilling purchases and maintaining appropriate business records.
• Operating, protecting and improving our website and services.
• Complying with legal, accounting and regulatory obligations.
• Sharing a photograph on social media when you have specifically asked us to do so and the required consent has been given.

Depending on the activity, our lawful basis may be performance of a contract, compliance with a legal obligation, our legitimate interests in operating and protecting the Grotto and website, or consent.

Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time.

5. Photographs taken at Santa’s Grotto

Photographs are taken by Santa’s official Photo Elves as part of the Grotto experience. There is no obligation to purchase a photograph.

We do not operate an online photo ordering or re-ordering service. Photographs and photo gifts are normally selected and purchased during your visit to Santa.

Additional copies may subsequently be ordered in person at the Grotto, provided the original image is still available on our system. To re-order, you must have the correct image number, which is printed in the bottom right-hand corner of your photograph. We are unable to accept re-orders online.

Grotto photographs are not automatically published online or placed in a public gallery.

Safeguarding and deletion of photographs: After viewing or purchasing photographs, a parent or guardian may ask us to delete the images of their child from our system. We will remove the relevant image files as soon as reasonably practicable.

Once deleted, the images will no longer be available for printing, replacement or retrieval.

6. Children’s photographs and social media

We take particular care with photographs of children. A photograph of a child will not be shared on our social media pages without the full consent of the child’s parent or guardian.

If you purchase a photograph, you may ask a Photo Elf at the time of ordering to upload your chosen image to social media. This is never automatic and must be specifically requested. For the 2026 season, we do not charge a fee for this service, although we ask for a small donation to one of the local children’s charities we support.

If consent is withdrawn after an image has been posted on a social media page we control, please contact us and we will take reasonable steps to remove it from that page. We cannot guarantee deletion of copies that may already have been shared, downloaded or otherwise reproduced by other users.

7. How long we keep information

We keep personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it is being used, including any legal, accounting or reporting requirements.

Grotto photographs are available for re-ordering only while they remain available through our current Grotto photography system and by the time the Grotto closes on Christmas Eve. We do not guarantee that photographs will remain available after your visit.

A parent or guardian may ask us to delete photographs of their child from our system, as explained in Section 5. Once deleted, those images will no longer be available for printing, replacement or retrieval.

8. Who we may share information with

We do not sell your personal data. We may share information with trusted service providers where this is necessary to operate our website or services, process transactions, provide technical services, or comply with the law.

If you specifically request social-media sharing, the chosen photograph will be provided to the relevant social-media platform. Once information is posted to a social-media platform, that platform also processes information under its own privacy terms.

9. Payment information

Payments for visiting Santa’s Grotto and payments for photographs and photo gifts are handled as separate transactions.

Card payments for Santa’s Grotto admission are processed separately from card payments made to Photo Team for photographs and photo products.

When you make a card payment, your payment-card details are processed securely by the relevant card payment provider. Santa Maidstone and Photo Team do not record or retain your full debit or credit card details.

We may retain appropriate transaction records, such as the date, amount and nature of the purchase, where required for accounting, tax or other legitimate business purposes.

Keeping the two payment systems separate also means that a payment for your Santa visit is not linked to any photographs or photo products you may subsequently choose to purchase.

10. Website information and cookies

Our website may collect standard technical information such as IP address, browser type, operating system, referring page, pages visited and the date and time of access. This information may be used for website security, administration and understanding how the website is used.

Where our website uses cookies or similar technologies that are not strictly necessary, appropriate information and choices are provided through the website’s cookie notice or consent mechanism.

11. Keeping your information secure

We use appropriate organisational and technical measures designed to protect personal data against accidental loss, misuse, unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure. Access to personal data is limited to people who need it for legitimate business purposes.

No internet or electronic storage system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect the information entrusted to us.

12. Your data protection rights

Depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:

• Ask for access to the personal data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete information.
• Ask us to erase personal data where the law gives you that right.
• Ask us to restrict the way we use your personal data.
• Object to certain types of processing.
• Receive certain personal data in a portable format, where applicable.
• Withdraw your consent at any time where consent is the basis on which we are processing your information.

These rights are not absolute and may depend on the circumstances and the lawful basis on which we process your information.

13. How to exercise your rights

To ask a question about your personal data or exercise one of your data protection rights, please contact Santa Maidstone using the contact details in section 2. We may need to confirm your identity before dealing with a request.

14. Complaints

If you have a concern about how we use your personal data, please contact us first so that we have an opportunity to resolve it.

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s independent data protection regulator.

ICO website: ico.org.uk

15. Automated decision-making

Santa Maidstone does not use personal data to make decisions about individuals solely by automated means that produce legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not use profiling for this purpose.

16. Changes to this privacy policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time to reflect changes in our services, working practices or legal requirements. The latest version will be made available through the Santa Maidstone website.