Terms of Service

1. Who we are

UKGovscan (ukgovscan.com) — “we”, “us” in these terms. You can contact us at [email protected].

UKGovscan is an independent transparency project. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the UK Government, the UK Parliament or any of the official bodies whose published data it presents.

2. These terms

By using UKGovscan, creating an account or purchasing a paid plan, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

The following policies form part of these terms:

• Acceptable Use Policy
• Refund & Cancellation Policy

Our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy explain how we handle personal data; they are provided for information and describe our legal obligations rather than forming contractual terms.

3. The service

UKGovscan aggregates and cross-references publicly available UK government, parliamentary, company and political data — such as procurement contracts, government spending, political donations, registers of interests and company records — and presents it in searchable form with links to the original sources.

Account holders can additionally save entities to lists, set alert rules and receive notifications and email digests when the underlying public data changes. Some features are only available on paid plans, as described on the pricing page.

4. Accounts & eligibility

• You must be at least 18 years old to create an account.
• Sign-in is handled by our authentication provider (WorkOS) using your email address or a supported identity provider. You are responsible for keeping access to that email or identity provider secure, and for all activity under your account.
• Accounts are personal. You must not share your account or use someone else’s, and you must not create accounts by automated means.
• Notify us promptly at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorised use of your account.

5. Plans, fees & renewals

• Paid plans are billed in advance through our payment provider, Stripe, at the price and billing interval shown at checkout. Prices include VAT where applicable.
• Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period until you cancel. The renewal price and interval are shown before you subscribe.
• You can cancel at any time from the billing portal in your account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid period. There is no cancellation fee.
• If we change the price of your plan, we will give you reasonable advance notice by email and the new price will only apply from your next renewal after that notice. If you don’t agree, you can cancel before the change takes effect.
• If a payment fails, we may retry it and restrict paid features until payment succeeds. We never see or store your full card details — payment data is handled by Stripe.
• Plan limits (such as list sizes and alert quotas) are described on the pricing page and may be enforced automatically.

6. Cancellation & refunds

Your cancellation rights, the 14-day cooling-off period for consumers, and how refunds work are set out in our Refund & Cancellation Policy, which forms part of these terms. Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

7. Acceptable use

You must use UKGovscan lawfully and in accordance with our Acceptable Use Policy. In particular, you must not use the data to harass, intimidate or endanger any person; you must not scrape, crawl or bulk-extract the service; and you must not resell or redistribute access to it. We may suspend or close accounts that breach the policy (see section 13).

8. Intellectual property

• The underlying public data belongs to its original publishers and is typically made available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, the Open Parliament Licence or similar open licences. Attribution for each source is listed on our About page.
• Our software, database compilation, cross-referencing, derived analyses, design and branding are owned by us and protected by intellectual-property law, including database right.
• We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the service and to use data you export through features we provide (such as CSV export) for your own research, journalism and reporting — including publishing findings that cite UKGovscan as the source. You may not resell the service, offer it to third parties as your own, or reconstruct a substantial part of our database.

9. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains what personal data we process — both about account holders and about people who appear in the public records we aggregate — and the rights you have. Our Cookie Policy covers the (minimal) cookies we use.

10. Availability & changes to the service

• We work to keep the service available, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We may need to suspend the service temporarily for maintenance, security or technical reasons.
• We may add, change or withdraw features from time to time. If we withdraw or materially degrade a feature that is central to a paid plan, we will give account holders reasonable notice and you may cancel; where required by law we will refund the unused part of any pre-paid period.
• If we decide to discontinue the service entirely, we will give paid subscribers reasonable notice and refund any amounts paid for periods after the shutdown date.

11. Accuracy & disclaimers

The information on UKGovscan is drawn from third-party public sources and is provided “as is” for research and transparency purposes. We take care in how we ingest, match and present it, and every record links to its original source — but official datasets contain errors, gaps and delays, and our automated matching can occasionally link records incorrectly.

• We do not warrant that the information is complete, accurate or up to date.
• Nothing on the service is legal, financial or professional advice, and the presence of a person or organisation in the data does not imply wrongdoing of any kind.
• Always verify against the linked official source before relying on or publishing anything. If you spot an error, please tell us at [email protected] and we will review it.

12. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under the law of England and Wales — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation — and nothing affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

Subject to that:

• We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profits, business or opportunity, or for loss arising from your reliance on the data or from your publication of it.
• We are not liable for events outside our reasonable control, including failures of third-party data sources and providers.
• Our total liability to you in connection with the service is limited to the greater of £50 and the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

13. Suspension & termination

• You may stop using the service and delete your account at any time from your account settings.
• We may suspend or terminate your access if you seriously or repeatedly breach these terms (including the Acceptable Use Policy), if required by law, or to protect the service or the people in the data. Unless it would be unlawful or defeat the purpose of the action, we will tell you the reason and give you a chance to respond.
• If we terminate for your breach, no refund is due for the remainder of a paid period. If we terminate for convenience, we will refund the unused part of any pre-paid period.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time — for example to reflect new features or changes in the law. The current version will always be at ukgovscan.com/terms with its effective date. For material changes affecting account holders we will give reasonable advance notice by email; if you don’t agree to the new terms, you may cancel before they take effect.

15. General

• Entire agreement. These terms (with the policies they incorporate) are the entire agreement between you and us about the service.
• Severability. If any part of these terms is found invalid or unenforceable, the rest remains in force.
• No waiver. If we don’t enforce a term on one occasion, we may still enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights under these terms. We may transfer ours as part of a reorganisation or sale of the service, provided your rights are not reduced.
• Third parties. These terms do not give any rights to anyone other than you and us.

16. Governing law & disputes

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, except that if you are a consumer living elsewhere in the UK you may also bring proceedings in your home nation’s courts, and you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections of that law.

If you have a problem, please contact us first at [email protected] — we aim to resolve issues quickly and informally.