This notice explains how Real Nirman collects and uses personal data when you:
visit our website, www.realnirman.com;
send us a project enquiry;
use the Real Nirman platform, app.realnirman.com.
It also explains how we use project data to train our AI models, and the rights you have.
Key points
What we collect:
account details;
project information and uploaded files;
the designs and documents the platform generates;
chat and feedback;
usage and technical data.
Why: to run the platform, keep it secure and support you, and to train and improve our AI models.
Training: we use project data to train and improve our models, based on our legitimate interests. You can object at any time (section 5).
Where: the platform's servers are in the UK. Some providers, including our AI provider, are in the United States, and we use legal safeguards for those transfers.
Map look-ups: to find which way a property faces and where it is, we send its postcode and street address to free public map services. We never send names or contact details (section 8).
Retailer links: links to retailers in a cost plan are affiliate links. If you buy through one, the retailer may pay us a commission. The retailer's website may set its own cookies (section 8).
Your rights: access, correction, deletion, objection and more. You can complain to us or to the ICO.
1. Who we are
Real Nirman is a trading name of Real Nirman Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16905352) whose registered office is at 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, United Kingdom, W1W 5PF.
We are the controller of the personal data described in this notice, except where section 4 says otherwise.
your password, which we store only as a secure hash.
Project information:
site address and postcode;
which way the property faces and where it is (its Ordnance Survey grid reference), found from its address on free public map data and checked with you;
property type, size and bedrooms;
extension sizes, rooms and specification;
budget, site constraints, goals and descriptions;
your answers to the questions asked before the first drawings, such as whether the house has been extended before and the planning route you want;
a client's name, if you add one;
practice and title-block details, including your logo.
Files you upload: existing plans, surveys, photos, drawings and logos.
What the platform generates: drawing packs, renders, cost estimates, planning advice and Design & Access Statements.
Chat and feedback: the messages you send in a project, your ratings, and the layouts you approve.
Usage and technical data:
the actions and generations you use, with times, to apply plan limits;
IP addresses and browser details in our server logs;
error logs.
Website enquiries: the project brief and contact details you send through our Submit A Project form.
Communications: emails and support requests you send us.
Payments: plans are paid for by bank transfer straight to our bank account. We keep each payment's plan, months, amount, reference and date, and any discount code used. No payment provider is involved, and we never see or store card details.
3. How we use it and our lawful bases
What we use it for
Lawful basis under the UK GDPR
Creating and managing your account, providing the platform, looking properties up on public map data, generating outputs, applying your plan's features
Contract, where you are our customer (for example as a sole trader). Otherwise, legitimate interests in providing our service to the business you work for.
Applying usage limits, preventing misuse and keeping the platform secure
Legitimate interests
Support and service messages, such as security alerts and changes to our terms
Contract or legitimate interests
Training, testing and improving our AI models, design rules, cost benchmarks and planning guidance (section 5)
Legitimate interests: developing accurate and useful design, costing and planning tools for UK homes
Responding to website enquiries and turning them into projects
Legitimate interests, or steps you ask us to take before entering a contract
Emails about our services
Your consent, or for existing customers, legitimate interests. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Billing, accounting and tax records
Contract and legal obligation
Complying with the law, and establishing or defending legal claims
Legal obligation and legitimate interests
4. Data we process for business customers
When a business, such as an architect, designer or builder, uses the platform for its clients' projects:
that business decides how its clients' information is used. It is the controller, and we process the information on its behalf to provide the platform.
we are also a controller when we use project data to improve our models (section 5).
If you are the client of a business that uses Real Nirman, you can contact that business or us about your information.
5. How we use project data to train our models
What we use
Briefs and project details, uploaded files, the outputs the platform generates, chat messages and feedback.
Why
To make Real Nirman's designs, cost estimates and planning guidance more accurate and useful for UK residential projects. This is our legitimate interest.
How we protect it
Training data is linked to accounts by internal reference numbers, not names or email addresses. It can still contain personal data that was part of a project, such as a site address, a client's name or details written in a brief.
Only authorised staff and service providers acting for us can access it.
We never sell it.
We do not use it to make decisions about individuals or to profile them.
Our models learn general patterns from many projects, such as typical room sizes, layouts and costs.
Your choice
You can object to your personal data being used for training at any time by emailing info@realnirman.com. We will stop using it for future training, unless we have compelling legitimate grounds to continue, which we would explain to you. Information already learned by a trained model cannot always be removed from that model.
6. Sensitive information
Please do not include information about health, ethnicity, religion or other special categories of personal data in briefs, uploads or chat. If a design needs to meet accessibility needs, describe the requirement rather than any medical details, for example "step-free access and a ground-floor bedroom with en-suite".
7. Automated decisions
The platform uses AI to generate designs, cost estimates and guidance for you to review. We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing that have legal or similarly significant effects on you.
8. Who we share data with
We share personal data with service providers who process it for us under contract, only to provide their services to us:
Service
Provider
Location
Platform hosting: servers, database and files
Fly.io (London region)
United Kingdom
AI text generation: planning advice, chat answers, Design & Access Statements, the descriptions and checks for photo-real renders, and reading the sizes on a floor plan photo or scan you attach (Pro and Ultra)
Anthropic (Claude)
United States
Image generation for photo-real renders (Pro and Ultra). It receives the 3D render and a description of the design, not names, addresses or contact details.
Stability AI
United States
Our website, www.realnirman.com
Webador (website builder) and Netlify (web hosting)
Netherlands (EU) and United States
Website forms: Submit a Project and Sign Up. They receive the contact details and project brief you enter.
Airtable (Submit a Project) and HubSpot (Sign Up)
United States
Customer records (CRM): when you sign up to the platform or your plan changes, your name, email address, company, phone number, role, how you heard about us and your plan
HubSpot
United States
Off-site backups
Oracle Cloud (Object Storage)
United Kingdom (London)
Email
Google Workspace (supplied through Webador)
United States and European Union
Map look-ups. When you start a project, the platform looks the property up on free, public map data to find which way it faces and where it is. Our servers send the requests, so your IP address is not passed on, and the requests never include your name, email address or other contact details:
postcodes.io, run by Ideal Postcodes ([where postcodes.io is hosted: confirm with Ideal Postcodes]), receives the postcode and returns its location;
the Overpass API, a public service for OpenStreetMap data run by FOSSGIS e.V. in Germany, receives the house number or name, the street and the postcode's location, and returns the map data around them.
These services are open to anyone and handle requests under their own policies. They do not work for us under contract. You confirm or correct what they find in the questions asked before your first drawings.
Live prices. To keep cost estimates current, our servers download published price lists and statistics:
price indices from GOV.UK (the Department for Business and Trade) and the Office for National Statistics;
retailers' product price lists, through affiliate networks such as Awin, from retailers whose affiliate programmes we have joined.
These downloads never include anything about you or your projects.
Links to retailers. Links to retailers in a cost plan are affiliate links, marked "(affiliate link)":
If you follow one, you leave our platform. The affiliate network and the retailer may set cookies in your browser to record that you came from us, under their own privacy notices.
If you then buy something, the retailer may pay us a commission. You pay the same price.
The network reports the sale and our commission to us without your name or contact details.
We may also share personal data with:
our professional advisers, such as lawyers and accountants;
regulators, courts and law enforcement, where the law requires it;
a buyer or successor, if our business is sold or reorganised.
Plans are paid for by bank transfer to our bank account, so no payment provider receives your details. We do not sell personal data.
9. International transfers
Some providers, such as our AI provider, are outside the UK. When personal data is transferred outside the UK, we rely on one of these safeguards:
UK adequacy regulations, including the UK–US data bridge where the recipient is certified;
the ICO's International Data Transfer Agreement, or its Addendum to the EU standard contractual clauses.
Map look-ups to the Overpass API (section 8) go to Germany, which UK adequacy regulations cover.
Contact us for details of the safeguards for a particular transfer.
10. How long we keep data
Account and project data: we keep it while your account is open.
If you close your account, we delete or anonymise your account details on the platform within 90 days. Copies in our backups are deleted when those backups expire (see "Backups" below).
We keep project records for up to 6 years after a project's last activity, in case of queries or legal claims.
Training datasets: we keep these for up to 6 years after the data was collected. After that, personal data in them is deleted or anonymised.
Billing and accounting records: 6 years, as tax and company law require.
Server logs: up to 90 days.
Map look-up answers: 30 days, so the same property is not looked up twice. Which way the property faces and where it is are then kept with the project.
Website enquiries that do not become a project: 12 months.
Backups: our backups are full copies of the platform, so they also hold data that has since been deleted from it. We keep:
server snapshots for 5 days;
encrypted off-site backups: the newest 7 nightly copies, plus one a week for 4 weeks and one a month for 5 years. Older copies are deleted automatically.
We keep monthly backups for 5 years so that we can recover from problems found late, and answer legal claims about our designs (the usual limitation period is 6 years). Until a backup expires, data deleted from the platform is kept beyond use:
we do not access it or use it for anything else;
if we ever restore a backup, we delete again anything that was deleted after that backup was made.
Saved versions of our layout model: kept permanently. They hold room layouts learned from many projects, not names or contact details.
Deleted projects: deleting a project removes it from your account. Copies may remain in training datasets and backups for the periods above.
Deletion requests: we complete them on the platform within one month. Copies in backups follow the backup periods above.
11. Security
We protect personal data in several ways:
encrypted connections (HTTPS);
securely hashed passwords;
access controls;
UK-based hosting for the platform;
regular backups, encrypted (AES-256) on our servers before they are stored off-site in the UK.
No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will tell you and the ICO where the law requires.
12. Your rights
You have the right to:
access your personal data and receive a copy;
have inaccurate data corrected;
have your data deleted in certain circumstances;
restrict how we use your data in certain circumstances;
data portability: receive data you gave us in a machine-readable format;
object to processing based on legitimate interests, including model training (section 5), and to direct marketing at any time;
We will respond within one month, or within three months for complex requests, in which case we will tell you.
There is normally no charge.
13. Complaints
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal data, please complain to us first. Email info@realnirman.com with the subject "Data protection complaint".
We will acknowledge your complaint within 30 days.
We will investigate it without undue delay and keep you informed of progress and the outcome.
You can also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or on 0303 123 1113.
14. Cookies and browser storage
The platform (app.realnirman.com) uses one cookie and some browser storage. It uses no advertising or analytics cookies.
Session cookie (rn_session): keeps you signed in. It is strictly necessary for the platform to work.
Browser storage:
your sign-in token (rn_token);
your light or dark display choice (rn_theme);
an unsaved project brief, for the current browser tab only (rn_draft).
Affiliate links to retailers (section 8) lead to other websites, which may set their own cookies when you follow them.
Fonts. The platform and our website use fonts served from our own servers at app.realnirman.com. No font service, such as Google Fonts, receives your IP address or any other details when a page loads.
Any cookies on our website, www.realnirman.com, are explained in the website's cookie banner.
15. Children
Our services are for adults acting for businesses. They are not intended for anyone under 18.
16. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice from time to time. Each version is dated and numbered at the top. We will tell account holders about significant changes by email or in the platform.