Nature Works UK Ltd

Privacy & legal

Last updated: October 2026. Version 2.2.

About this page

This page sets out two things: how Nature Works UK Ltd handles your personal data when you contact us or work with us (the Privacy Notice in Part A), and how the intellectual property in everything on this website, and in everything I produce for clients, is owned and protected (the IP Statement in Part B).

Nature Works is a small consultancy. I have written this in plain English where I can, so you can read it without a solicitor. The operative legal clauses are written in standard form so they hold up if they are ever needed. Both parts apply together.

If you have any question about this page, including a privacy question, a request to exercise your data rights, or a request to use any of the material on this site, please email me at ross@nature-works.earth.

Part A: Privacy Notice

This Notice explains what personal data Nature Works UK Ltd collects about you, how and why we use it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

A1. Who we are

Nature Works UK Ltd is the data controller for the personal data described in this Notice. Our details are:

Company: Nature Works UK Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 16934959.
Registered office: Unit A Farriers Courtyard, Spelmonden Road, Goudhurst, Kent TN17 1HE.
ICO registration: Registration in progress. Number to be inserted on issue.
Director and contact for data matters: Ross Wingfield, ross@nature-works.earth.

A2. What personal data we collect

We collect the following categories of personal data, depending on how you interact with us:

A2.1 From visitors to the website

When you visit nature-works.earth, basic technical information is logged automatically by our hosting provider, including your IP address, browser type, the pages you view and the time and date of your visit. This is used only for site security and basic operational diagnostics.

A2.2 From people who contact us

When you submit our contact form, send us an email, or get in touch by phone, we collect: your name; your email address; your phone number (if you give it); your SBI number (if you give it); the name of your organisation, estate or holding (if relevant); and the content of your message, including any details you choose to share about your land, your project, your funding situation or your professional role.

A2.3 From clients during an engagement

If you engage Nature Works to produce a piece of work, we will additionally collect: information about the land or holding the work concerns, including grid references, what3words locations, postcodes, OS map extracts, SBI numbers, boundary plans and parcel data; information about ownership and tenure where relevant to the work; ecological data (species records, habitat surveys, photographs of the site, third-party survey reports) tied to the named landowner or holding; and the contact details of any colleagues, agents, advisers or contractors you ask us to liaise with.

A2.4 From third-party sources

We may obtain additional information about a holding or about you from public sources, including HM Land Registry, Companies House, the Charity Commission, Defra MAGIC, Natural England, Environment Agency Catchment Data Explorer, the Forestry Commission, the British Trust for Ornithology and local environmental record centres. Where we use third-party data of this kind, the source is identified in the resulting work.

A2.5 Photographs and personal description

We will only collect photographs of you, or a personal description, where you specifically provide them, for example to be included on the Nature Works website as a partner, contributor or case-study client, or where you send us photographs of your land that include identifiable people. Photographs you provide of your land will be treated as part of the engagement record described in A2.3.

A3. Why we use your personal data

We use the personal data described in clause A2 to:

respond to enquiries you send us through the website, by email or by phone;
prepare proposals, scopes of work, quotations and engagement letters;
deliver the consultancy services you have engaged us to provide, including site visits, ecological analysis, written advice, mapping, reports, plans and recommendations;
share information with funding bodies, registries, brokers, regulators and partner organisations on your behalf where this is part of the agreed scope of work (for example: Wilder Carbon, biodiversity unit registries and brokers, Landscape Enterprise Networks, Defra and Rural Payments Agency for environmental land management agreements, Natural England, Forestry Commission, the Environment Agency, and named project partners);
engage subcontractors (for example specialist surveyors or ecologists) where elements of the work require expertise outside Nature Works, with your consent or under the engagement letter;
keep proper business records, raise invoices, and meet our legal obligations under UK tax, company and accounting law;
maintain the security and proper functioning of the website and our IT systems;
where we are publishing a case study or marketing material, only with your prior written consent.

A4. Our lawful basis under UK GDPR

Under UK GDPR, we must rely on a lawful basis to process your personal data. We rely on the following:

A4.1 Performance of a contract

Where we are performing the obligations of an engagement letter or other consultancy agreement we have with you, processing is necessary for the performance of that contract, or to take steps at your request before entering into it. This covers most of the activities in clause A3 once you become a client.

A4.2 Legitimate interests

Where you contact us as a prospective client, or as someone who is otherwise interested in our work, we rely on our legitimate interest in responding to enquiries, building relationships in the sector, and running the business. We have considered the impact on your rights and have concluded that this processing is reasonable and proportionate. You may object at any time using the rights set out in clause A10.

A4.3 Legal obligation

We process certain data because we are legally required to: keeping accounting and tax records for HMRC (currently six years from the end of the relevant accounting period); statutory records under the Companies Act 2006; and any retention obligations imposed by planning conditions or other regulatory regimes attaching to a specific engagement.

A4.4 Consent

Where we use your data for an optional purpose, such as publishing a case study, sending you marketing emails or featuring your photograph on the website, we rely on your consent. You may withdraw consent at any time by emailing us; this will not affect the lawfulness of processing that took place before withdrawal.

A5. Who we share your personal data with

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the following categories of recipient, and only to the extent necessary for the purposes set out in clause A3:

Our IT and cloud providers, in particular Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft 365 and OneDrive: email, document storage, file sharing and collaboration); Anthropic, PBC (Claude, used as an AI working aid in analysis and drafting); Krystal Hosting Ltd (website hosting); Xero Limited (cloud accounting and invoicing software); Zestia Ltd (Capsule CRM: client contact and relationship management); LandApp (mapping and land parcel data tool); Granola Labs Ltd (Granola, an AI meeting notes tool used to capture and transcribe client and internal meetings; UK entity, registered in England and Wales, St Albans; infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services; DPA incorporating EU and UK Standard Contractual Clauses in place); and QGIS (open-source desktop GIS software used locally for mapping and spatial analysis). These providers act as data processors on our behalf under written terms, or, in the case of QGIS, as locally installed software that does not transmit personal data to a third party.
Subcontracted ecologists, surveyors and specialists, where part of the work falls outside Nature Works’ direct expertise. These subcontractors are bound to confidentiality and are listed in the relevant engagement record.
Funding bodies, registries and brokers, as named in the engagement letter or otherwise authorised by you. Examples include Wilder Carbon, biodiversity unit registries and accredited brokers, Landscape Enterprise Networks, Defra, the Rural Payments Agency, Natural England, the Forestry Commission and the Environment Agency.
Our professional advisers, such as our accountant, bank, insurers and (if needed) legal advisers, where they need access to information to provide their service to us.
Regulatory and law-enforcement bodies, where we are required by law to disclose personal data, including HM Revenue and Customs, the ICO, and any court of competent jurisdiction.
Successors in title, if Nature Works UK Ltd is sold, restructured or merged, in which case the personal data we hold may be transferred to the successor as part of the business assets, subject to the same protections set out in this Notice.

A6. International transfers of personal data

Some of the providers we use are based outside the UK, in particular in the United States. Specifically:

Microsoft 365 stores data on Microsoft’s global infrastructure, with primary EU/UK data residency available. Microsoft Corporation is certified under the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, which provides an adequate safeguard for transfers to the United States. Where data leaves the UK or EEA outside the Framework, Microsoft additionally relies on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.
Anthropic, PBC is a US-based provider of the Claude AI assistant. Where personal data is processed by Anthropic on our behalf, the transfer relies on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, and on Anthropic’s published data processing terms.

Granola Labs Ltd is a UK-registered entity (St Albans) that provides the Granola AI meeting notes tool. Granola’s infrastructure is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a US-based provider. Where personal data is processed by Granola or AWS on our behalf, the transfer relies on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, as set out in Granola’s published Data Processing Addendum.

Where any other provider transfers personal data outside the UK, we ensure that an appropriate safeguard is in place under Article 46 of UK GDPR, normally either: a UK adequacy decision; the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework; the UK International Data Transfer Agreement; or the EU Standard Contractual Clauses with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum. You may request further details of the safeguards in place for any specific transfer by emailing us.

A7. How long we keep your personal data

We keep personal data only for as long as we need it for the purpose for which it was collected, or for as long as we are required to keep it by law. The indicative retention periods we apply are:

Enquiry data (messages from people who contact us but do not become clients): two years from the date of last contact, then deleted. Messages sent through the website contact form are also stored securely in the website’s own database so that none are lost, and are deleted on the same timetable.
Client engagement records (proposals, engagement letters, correspondence, deliverables, project files): seven years from the end of the engagement, in line with HMRC retention requirements.
Ecological survey records and any deliverables tied to a planning consent or environmental land management agreement: for the longer of (a) seven years from the end of the engagement, or (b) the period required by the relevant consent, agreement or scheme.
Accounting records: six years from the end of the relevant accounting period, as required by the Companies Act 2006 and HMRC.
Marketing-list contacts (if any newsletter is sent in future): until consent is withdrawn.
Website server logs: automatically deleted by our hosting provider in line with their standard retention period (typically thirty to ninety days).

A8. How we keep your personal data secure

We apply appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against loss, misuse, unauthorised access, alteration and disclosure. These include: access controls on devices and accounts; multi-factor authentication on key services; secure cloud storage with reputable providers; encrypted backups; and a written approach to handling client data set out in our internal procedures.

No system is perfectly secure. If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will report it to the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of it, and notify affected individuals where required by law.

A9. Cookies and the website

A cookie is a small text file placed on your device when you visit a website. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (“PECR”) require us to obtain your consent before setting any non-essential cookie.

This website does not use analytics, advertising or tracking cookies, and it does not load fonts or other content from third-party servers. Visitors browsing the site are not set any cookies, which is why there is no cookie banner. The only cookies the site uses are strictly necessary ones set by WordPress for people who log in to manage the website.

If we add any non-essential cookies in future, we will ask for your consent first and update this section. You can manage and delete cookies through your browser settings at any time.

A10. Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

Right of access: to ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to rectification: to ask us to correct any data that is inaccurate or incomplete.
Right to erasure: to ask us to delete your data, where there is no overriding legal reason for us to keep it.
Right to restriction of processing: to ask us to limit how we use your data while a query about it is resolved.
Right to object: to object to our processing of your data on the basis of legitimate interests, including for direct marketing.
Right to data portability: to ask us to provide certain data you have given us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format, or to transfer it to another controller.
Right to withdraw consent: where we are relying on your consent for a particular use, to withdraw it at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing carried out before withdrawal.
Right not to be subject to solely automated decision-making: we do not use automated decision-making or profiling that produces legal or similarly significant effects on you.

To exercise any of these rights, please email ross@nature-works.earth. We will respond within one month, and may need to verify your identity before acting on the request. There is no charge for exercising these rights, except where the request is manifestly unfounded or excessive.

A11. Complaints

If you have a concern about how we handle your personal data, please raise it with us first by emailing ross@nature-works.earth. We will look into the issue and aim to resolve it promptly.

If you remain unhappy with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK supervisory authority for data protection. The ICO can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF; telephone 0303 123 1113; ico.org.uk.

A12. Children

Nature Works’ services are directed at landowners, estate managers, organisations and other adult professionals. The website and our consultancy work are not intended for, or directed at, children under the age of sixteen. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will delete it.

A13. Changes to this Notice

We may update this Notice from time to time to reflect changes in the way we work, in our suppliers, or in the law. The version in force at any time is the version published at nature-works.earth, with the date shown at the top of this page. Where a change is material, we will flag it on the home page of the website for a reasonable period after it takes effect, and where the law requires it, we will notify clients and other affected individuals directly.

Part B: Intellectual Property Statement

This section explains what intellectual property Nature Works UK Ltd owns, what you may and may not do with it, and how IP works in the reports and other deliverables produced for clients. It applies to anyone who visits this website, downloads or receives material from Nature Works, or engages Nature Works to produce work.

B1. Definitions

In this Statement, the following terms have the following meanings:

“Nature Works”, “I”, “me” or “my” means Nature Works UK Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 16934959, registered office Unit A Farriers Courtyard, Spelmonden Road, Goudhurst, Kent TN17 1HE.
“Site” means the Nature Works website at nature-works.earth and any subdomains.
“Site Materials” means all content made available on the Site, including text, copy, blog posts, articles, photographs, illustrations, maps, diagrams, layouts, design, logos, branding, code and any downloadable resources.
“Methodology” means the analytical methods, frameworks, scoring systems, decision rules, voice guides, habitat triggers, corridor logic, routing rules and other proprietary approaches developed by Nature Works for landscape connectivity, habitat restoration, species recovery and natural capital advice, including any updates and successor versions.
“Know-how” means the experience, judgement and field expertise built up by Ross Wingfield over twenty-five years of land management, including the unrecorded operational know-how that informs every piece of advice Nature Works produces.
“Deliverables” means any report, plan, map, model, presentation, written advice, recommendation, document or other tangible output produced by Nature Works for a client under a written or oral engagement.
“Client” means any person or organisation that engages Nature Works to produce Deliverables.
“Visitor” means any person who accesses the Site.
“Intellectual Property Rights” means copyright, database rights, design rights, trade marks, rights in confidential information and know-how, and all other intellectual property rights, in each case whether registered or unregistered, anywhere in the world.

B2. Ownership of Site Materials

All Site Materials are owned by Nature Works UK Ltd, or are used under licence from a third party. Copyright in original Site Materials authored by Nature Works subsists from the moment of creation. The compilation, selection and arrangement of all Site Materials is itself a protected work.

The name “Nature Works”, the Nature Works word mark, the Nature Works logo, and any associated visual identity are trade marks of Nature Works UK Ltd. You may not use them without my prior written consent, except where doing so is necessary to identify Nature Works fairly in good-faith reporting, criticism or review.

B3. Methodology, frameworks and know-how

Nature Works has developed a body of proprietary Methodology and Know-how that underpins the analytical and advisory work it produces. This includes, without limitation: the 100-metre corridor principle and associated buffer logic; the habitat trigger hierarchy and tier classification; the corridor routing rules and routing hierarchy; the network character and braiding principles; the gap classification system; the river corridor priority framework; the natural capital and funding stack assessment approach; the voice and writing standards used in client outputs; and the analytical workflows by which all of the above are applied.

All Intellectual Property Rights in the Methodology, in any expression of it, and in any documents, frameworks, templates, guides, reference files or other materials embodying it, are owned by Nature Works UK Ltd. Nothing on this Site, in any Deliverable, or in any conversation, transfers ownership of the Methodology or Know-how to any other person.

The Methodology and Know-how are commercially valuable confidential information. They have been developed over a long period at substantial cost. The fact that elements of the Methodology may be described, summarised or illustrated in publicly accessible Site Materials or in Deliverables does not place those elements into the public domain, nor does it grant any person a licence to apply, replicate, repackage, train artificial intelligence systems on, or otherwise exploit them.

B4. Confidential information

All non-public information held by Nature Works about its clients, their land, their commercial circumstances, and their conservation plans is confidential. It will be treated as confidential indefinitely and will not be disclosed to any third party without the client’s prior written consent, except where disclosure is required by law or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Confidentiality flows in both directions. Clients are required, as a condition of engagement, to treat the Methodology, Know-how, and any non-public elements of Deliverables as confidential information of Nature Works.

B5. Permitted use of Site Materials

Subject to the prohibitions in clause B6, Visitors may:

view and read Site Materials for their personal, non-commercial information;
save, print or share short extracts of Site Materials for personal use, in private correspondence, or in good-faith news reporting, criticism or review, provided that Nature Works is clearly credited as the source and that any such extract is not modified in a way that misrepresents its meaning;
link to pages on the Site, provided that the link does not falsely suggest endorsement, partnership or other commercial association with Nature Works.

Any use beyond these permitted uses requires my prior written consent. As above, please ask. I am usually happy to say yes.

B6. Prohibited uses

Without my prior written consent, you must not:

reproduce, republish, redistribute, sell, sublicense, rent or otherwise commercially exploit Site Materials in whole or in substantial part;
use Site Materials, the Methodology or the Know-how to provide competing consultancy, advisory or analytical services, or to assist any other person to do so;
scrape, harvest, mine, copy, ingest, index or otherwise systematically extract Site Materials, including using automated tools, bots, crawlers or any form of programmatic access, for any purpose other than ordinary search-engine indexing;
use Site Materials, the Methodology, any Deliverable, or any part of any of them, as training data, fine-tuning data, evaluation data, retrieval-augmented inputs, or any other input to a machine learning model, large language model, or other artificial intelligence system, whether for commercial or non-commercial purposes;
remove, obscure or alter any copyright notice, trade mark, attribution or other proprietary marking on Site Materials or Deliverables;
reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the underlying logic of the Methodology from public-facing summaries of it;
use the Nature Works name, marks or branding in any way that suggests endorsement, partnership, employment or other commercial association without my prior written consent.

B7. Client deliverables: how IP is allocated

This clause sets out the default IP position that applies to every Deliverable produced by Nature Works for a Client. It applies in addition to the terms of any specific written engagement letter. Where a written engagement letter exists and conflicts with this clause, the engagement letter takes precedence.

B7.1 Client material

The Client retains all Intellectual Property Rights in materials it provides to Nature Works for the purposes of an engagement, including its own data, maps, plans, photographs and operational records. The Client grants Nature Works a non-exclusive royalty-free licence to use those materials for the purpose of producing the Deliverables and for Nature Works’ internal record-keeping and quality assurance.

B7.2 Background IP

The Methodology and Know-how, together with all templates, frameworks, reference materials, voice guides and analytical tools used by Nature Works in producing any Deliverable (“Background IP”), are and remain the sole property of Nature Works UK Ltd. Nothing in any engagement transfers Background IP to the Client. No engagement creates any obligation on Nature Works to disclose, document or hand over Background IP.

B7.3 Foreground IP

Intellectual Property Rights in the specific written content of each Deliverable (“Foreground IP”) vest in Nature Works UK Ltd on creation. On full payment of the agreed fee for that Deliverable, Nature Works grants the Client a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use the Deliverable for the purposes of managing, restoring, financing, applying for funding for, communicating about, reporting on, and otherwise pursuing nature recovery on the land or holding to which the Deliverable relates.

B7.4 What the Client may not do with a Deliverable

The Client’s licence under clause B7.3 does not permit the Client, or anyone acting on the Client’s behalf, to:

publish, sell or distribute the Deliverable to third parties for their commercial gain;
use the Deliverable, or extract any element of the Methodology from it, to provide competing advisory or analytical services;
use the Deliverable as training, fine-tuning or retrieval input for any artificial intelligence system;
modify the Deliverable in a way that materially changes its analytical conclusions and continue to attribute those conclusions to Nature Works.

B7.5 Reuse of anonymised insights by Nature Works

Nature Works reserves the right, after the Client’s first publication of, or first public use of, a Deliverable, to refer in general terms to the work undertaken (for example, in case studies, marketing, conference presentations and on the Site), provided that any commercially sensitive or personally identifying information is anonymised or omitted.

B8. Third-party materials and data sources

Site Materials and Deliverables include, refer to or are built on top of public datasets and third-party materials, including (without limitation) data from the Environment Agency, Natural England, the Forestry Commission, DEFRA, MAGIC, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Ordnance Survey, and various local record centres. Where third-party material is used, it is used under the licence offered by the relevant data owner (most commonly the Open Government Licence v3.0 or equivalent). Intellectual Property Rights in that third-party material remain with the original data owner.

The selection, arrangement and analytical interpretation applied to third-party data by Nature Works is itself a protected work, owned by Nature Works UK Ltd.

B9. AI-assisted work

Site Materials and Deliverables may have been produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools used by Nature Works as a working aid. The use of such tools does not affect the ownership of Intellectual Property Rights in the resulting work. All authorial decisions, analytical judgements, recommendations and final wording are made and approved by Ross Wingfield as a human author exercising professional skill and judgement, and the resulting work is owned and signed off by Nature Works UK Ltd in the same way as any other work it produces.

B10. Reporting suspected infringement

If you believe that any material on the Site infringes your Intellectual Property Rights, please email me at ross@nature-works.earth with the words “IP NOTICE” in the subject line, and provide enough information for me to identify the material in question, the right you believe is infringed, and your contact details. I will respond within a reasonable period.

If you become aware of any third party using Nature Works’ Site Materials, Methodology or Deliverables in breach of this Statement, I would be grateful if you would let me know at the same email address.

B11. The Site is information, not advice

Site Materials are provided for general information about Nature Works and the work it does. They are not, and must not be relied upon as, advice on a specific site, holding, project, regulatory matter, funding application or financial decision. Site-specific advice is produced under a separate engagement, recorded in a Deliverable, and is the only output on which the recipient is entitled to rely.

Nature Works gives no warranty, express or implied, that Site Materials are accurate, complete, current, fit for any particular purpose, or free from error. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Nature Works excludes all such warranties.

B12. Limitation of liability

Nothing in this Statement excludes or limits Nature Works’ liability for: death or personal injury caused by its negligence; fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation; or any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited under English law.

Subject to the paragraph above, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, Nature Works will not be liable to any Visitor for any loss or damage of any kind, whether direct, indirect, consequential or otherwise, arising out of or in connection with the use of, or inability to use, the Site or any Site Materials.

Liability arising out of or in connection with a Deliverable produced for a Client is governed by the engagement letter relating to that Deliverable. Where no engagement letter exists, Nature Works’ total aggregate liability for all claims arising out of or in connection with that Deliverable will not exceed the fee actually paid by the Client for that Deliverable.

Part C: Shared provisions

These provisions apply to both Part A and Part B above.

C1. Changes to this page

Nature Works may amend this page from time to time. The version in force at any moment is the version published on the Site, with the date shown at the top. Material changes will be flagged on the home page for a reasonable period after they take effect. Use of the Site after the date of any amendment constitutes acceptance of the amended page; the version of Part B that applies to a specific Deliverable is the version in force on the date that engagement was entered into.

C2. Governing law and jurisdiction

This page, and any non-contractual obligations arising out of or in connection with it, are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction to hear any dispute arising out of or in connection with it, save that nothing in this clause affects your statutory right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office under clause A11.

C3. Contact

For any question relating to this page, including data protection requests, IP enquiries, or requests for permission to use Site Materials beyond the permitted uses set out above, please contact:

Ross Wingfield
Director, Nature Works UK Ltd
ross@nature-works.earth
Unit A Farriers Courtyard, Spelmonden Road, Goudhurst, Kent TN17 1HE