Terms of Service

1. Information about us

UKGovscan (ukgovscan.com) is operated by Elenchos Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 17458316. Registered office: 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. In these terms, “we”, “us” and “our” mean Elenchos Ltd. We can be contacted by email at [email protected].

UKGovscan is an independent service. It is not part of, affiliated with or endorsed by the UK Government, the UK Parliament or any body whose published information appears on the service.

2. Acceptance of these terms

By using UKGovscan, creating an account or purchasing a paid plan, you agree to these terms. The rules governing use of the service are set out in section 7, and an account may be suspended or closed for breach of them (section 11). Your cancellation and refund rights are set out in section 5.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we process personal data, including the information we store on your device. It does not form part of these terms.

Certain provisions of these terms apply differently depending on the capacity in which you use the service. A consumer is an individual using UKGovscan wholly or mainly for purposes outside their trade, business, craft or profession. A business user is any person using it wholly or mainly for trade, business, professional or organisational purposes.

Nothing in these terms affects any rights that cannot be excluded or restricted by law.

3. Accounts

• You must be 18 or over to create an account.
• You must provide accurate information when you create your account, and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account. If you believe that another person has gained access to it, you must notify us at [email protected] as soon as possible.

4. Plans and subscriptions

To purchase a plan, you select it and pay through our payment provider’s hosted checkout. The checkout displays the plan, the price and the billing interval before you pay, and you may return to amend your selection at that stage. The contract is formed when your payment is accepted. We do not file a copy of the contract: these terms remain available at ukgovscan.com/terms, where you may save or print them. The contract is concluded in English.

• The features and limits of each plan are set out on the pricing page and are shown again at checkout. Limits such as list sizes and alert quotas are applied automatically.
• Paid plans are billed in advance and renew automatically at the same interval until you cancel.
• Payments are processed by our payment provider, Stripe.
• If a payment fails, we or Stripe may attempt it again, and we may restrict access to paid features while the payment remains outstanding. A failed payment does not entitle us to charge you any amount other than the amount properly due.

5. Renewals, cancellation and refunds

You may turn off automatic renewal at any time in the billing section of your account. No cancellation fee is charged. Cancellation prevents the next renewal, and your paid features remain available until the end of the current paid period.

Right to cancel (consumers)

A subscription to UKGovscan is a contract for the supply of a service. You have the right to cancel this contract within 14 days without giving any reason. The cancellation period will expire after 14 days from the day of the conclusion of the contract. By subscribing, you request that we begin providing the service immediately. This does not affect your right to cancel, which continues for the full cancellation period.

To exercise the right to cancel, you must inform us of your decision to cancel this contract by a clear statement. You may do so by email to [email protected]. Our postal address is shown on the contact page. To meet the cancellation deadline, it is sufficient for you to send your communication concerning your exercise of the right to cancel before the cancellation period has expired.

Effects of cancellation

If you cancel this contract, we will reimburse to you all payments received from you. We will make the reimbursement without undue delay, and not later than 14 days after the day on which we are informed about your decision to cancel this contract. We will make the reimbursement using the same means of payment as you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; in any event, you will not incur any fees as a result of the reimbursement.

You have requested that we begin the performance of services during the cancellation period. You shall pay us an amount which is in proportion to what has been provided until you have communicated to us your cancellation of this contract, in comparison with the full coverage of the contract.

Disputed charges

If you believe that you have been charged in error, please contact us at [email protected]. Any amount charged in error will be refunded.

6. Changes to prices and plans

We may change the price of a subscription for future billing periods. Where a change affects an existing subscriber, we will give the subscriber reasonable notice of it by email before the new price is charged. A new price never applies to a period already paid for, and you may cancel before it takes effect.

We may change plan features or usage limits where this is necessary to:

• improve or develop the service;
• respond to changes in technology, or in the services our providers supply to us;
• maintain the security or integrity of UKGovscan;
• prevent misuse;
• comply with the law or a requirement that applies to us; or
• reflect a material change in the cost of providing a feature.

We will not rely on this provision to remove a material part of a paid service without notice. If, during a period for which you have already paid, we withdraw or materially reduce a feature that formed a significant part of your plan and do not offer a reasonable alternative, you may end your subscription and we will refund the unused part of that period.

This does not apply to a change that we must make urgently for security, legal or regulatory reasons, although we will take reasonable steps to limit its effect on you.

7. Acceptable use

You may use UKGovscan for research, journalism, reporting, due diligence and other lawful purposes, and may publish your findings. This section sets out the uses that are not permitted.

Protection of individuals

You must not use UKGovscan, or information obtained through it, to:

• harass, threaten, stalk, intimidate or endanger any person, or facilitate unwanted contact;
• publish a person’s personal information in order to expose them to harassment, threats or harm;
• discriminate unlawfully against a person or group;
• create a misleading impression of a person by deliberately presenting information without material context;
• impersonate a person or organisation, or carry out fraud or deception; or
• make allegations about a person or organisation that you know to be false or misleading.

Re-identification

You must not attempt to identify individuals from information we publish only in aggregate, or encourage any other person to do so, where doing so would be unlawful or is intended to cause harm. This does not prevent legitimate privacy or security research carried out responsibly and lawfully. If you identify a weakness in the way we aggregate or protect information, you must report it to us at [email protected] rather than exploit it, and must not publish anything that exposes individuals unnecessarily.

Automated access and extraction

You must not use scraping, crawling, bots or other automated means to extract information from UKGovscan systematically. Where we provide a facility for exporting data, namely the CSV and JSON exports included in your plan, you must use that facility instead, within its limits. You must not:

• circumvent rate limits, export limits, plan limits or other technical restrictions;
• distribute activity across multiple accounts to circumvent those limits;
• reproduce all or a substantial part of our database;
• develop a service that substantially reproduces or substitutes for UKGovscan; or
• place an unreasonable or disruptive load on the service.

These restrictions concern the extraction of data from UKGovscan. Nothing in them prevents you from obtaining the same public information directly from the body that published it, or from exercising rights you hold under the Open Government Licence, the Open Parliament Licence or any other applicable licence.

Accounts and security

You must not:

• share, sell, sublicense or transfer access to your account;
• use another person’s account or credentials, or attempt to obtain them;
• create accounts in bulk or by automated means;
• use more than one account to circumvent a suspension, restriction or plan limit;
• bypass authentication or other access controls;
• interfere with the normal operation of the service, or deliberately degrade it;
• introduce malware or malicious code;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to our systems or data; or
• exploit a security weakness to obtain, alter, destroy or disclose information that you are not authorised to view.

If you believe that you have found a security vulnerability, notify us at [email protected] with sufficient detail for us to investigate it, and do not access more information than is necessary to demonstrate the problem. Nothing in these terms permits access to systems or information that you are not otherwise authorised to access.

Publication and citation

You may use UKGovscan as a source for research, journalism, reporting and analysis, quote individual records and figures, and publish your findings. You must not:

• describe UKGovscan as an official government or parliamentary service;
• suggest that Elenchos Ltd, the UK Government, Parliament or a data publisher endorses you or your conclusions when they do not; or
• present information in a way that materially misrepresents the content of the underlying record.

Enforcement

Where we reasonably believe that this section has been breached, we may apply rate limits to your access, request that you cease the activity, suspend an account, or end access under section 11. The action we take will depend on the seriousness of the breach.

We would not normally close an account for a minor or accidental breach without first giving you a reasonable opportunity to remedy it. A mistake made in good faith is not in itself a breach. We may act immediately where this is necessary to address fraud, a security threat, serious abuse, a risk of harm or unlawful activity. Where it is appropriate and lawful to do so, we may retain information about suspected misuse and disclose it to law enforcement agencies or a regulator.

Misuse of the service or of its data may be reported by email to [email protected], providing the details necessary for us to investigate.

8. Accuracy of information

UKGovscan compiles information published by third parties, including government departments, public bodies, regulators and official registers.

We take reasonable care in operating the service and in processing the information we receive. Public datasets nonetheless contain errors, omissions and delays; sources may be corrected after we have collected them; and the automated processes we use to standardise, connect and match records can produce incorrect matches. We therefore do not guarantee that every record is complete, current or free from error.

Each record links to its source where one is available. Where the accuracy of a record is material to your purpose, and in particular before you publish it or rely on it for an important decision, you should verify it against that source. Suspected errors may be reported through the feedback page.

The appearance of a person, organisation, contract, payment, donation or interest on UKGovscan does not imply wrongdoing. Nothing on the service constitutes legal, financial, investment or other professional advice.

This section does not limit our obligation to provide the service with reasonable care and skill.

9. Intellectual property

Our sources and their attribution are listed on the Data sources page. Your use of their material remains subject to the licence under which each source publishes it.

Elenchos Ltd owns, or is licensed to use, the intellectual property in UKGovscan itself: its software, design, branding, original text and analysis, and, so far as the law protects it, the selection, arrangement, compilation, matching and cross-referencing of the information in our database.

Subject to these terms, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use UKGovscan for lawful research and analysis, and to publish your findings.

Without our permission, you must not:

• resell our exports as a standalone data product; or
• remove our branding or attribution in a way that suggests that our material is your own.

Nothing in these terms confers on us ownership of facts, or of public-source material we do not otherwise own, and nothing in this section restricts any right you hold independently under the law or under an applicable open licence.

10. Availability of the service

The service cannot be guaranteed to operate without interruption. Access may be interrupted by maintenance, security incidents, software faults, infrastructure failures, changes made by our suppliers, or problems affecting the public data sources on which the service relies.

We may restrict or suspend all or part of the service where this is necessary for maintenance, security or legal compliance, or to protect UKGovscan and its users.

Where you deal directly with a third party on which we rely, such as Stripe or Telegram, that party’s own terms also govern its relationship with you.

If we permanently discontinue UKGovscan, we will give paid subscribers reasonable notice where possible, and will refund the unused part of any prepaid period.

11. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the service and delete your account at any time from your account settings.

We may restrict, suspend or close an account where this is necessary because:

• you have seriously or repeatedly breached these terms, including the acceptable use provisions in section 7;
• payment properly due is outstanding;
• we reasonably believe the account is compromised or is being used fraudulently;
• your use creates a material security, legal or operational risk;
• the law, a court or a competent authority requires it; or
• it is necessary to protect UKGovscan, another user, or a person whose information appears in the database.

Where circumstances permit, we will inform you of the reason and give you a reasonable opportunity to remedy the problem before we close an account permanently. We may act immediately where the matter is urgent or serious, involves security or suspected fraud, or where notice would be unlawful or would defeat the purpose of acting.

If we end a paid subscription because of your serious breach of these terms, no refund is due for the remainder of the period. If we end it for reasons unrelated to your conduct, we will refund the unused part.

12. Our liability to consumers

This section applies if you are a consumer.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, and your statutory rights as a consumer, including the right to have the service performed with reasonable care and skill.

We are responsible for loss that you suffer which is a foreseeable result of our breach of these terms or of our failure to use reasonable care and skill. Loss is foreseeable if, at the time the contract was made, it was obvious that it would occur, or if both you and we knew that it might occur.

We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable in that sense, or for loss caused by matters for which we are not legally responsible.

UKGovscan is supplied to consumers for private use. We are not liable to consumers under this section for business losses, such as loss of profit, revenue, business or commercial opportunity.

13. Our liability to business users

This section applies if you are a business user.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Subject to the preceding paragraph, we are not liable to a business user for:

• loss of profit, revenue, business, contracts, anticipated savings or commercial opportunity;
• loss of goodwill or reputation;
• indirect or consequential loss; or
• loss arising from a decision to publish, transact or otherwise act without checking material information against the underlying source, where it was reasonable to do so.

Subject to the liabilities above that cannot lawfully be limited, our total liability to a business user in connection with the service in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of £100 and the total subscription fees paid or payable by that business user in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

14. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms where this is necessary to:

• reflect changes to UKGovscan or the way in which we provide it;
• comply with a change in the law or regulation;
• respond to a security problem or to misuse;
• clarify an existing provision; or
• make a reasonable change to our commercial arrangements.

The version of these terms currently in force, and its effective date, are published at ukgovscan.com/terms. A change does not affect rights or obligations that have already arisen. Where a material change affects account holders, we will notify them by email a reasonable time before it takes effect. A paid subscriber who is materially disadvantaged by the change may cancel before it takes effect and receive a refund of the unused part of a prepaid period.

We may make an urgent change without advance notice where security, the law or a regulator requires it, and will notify affected users as soon as reasonably practicable.

15. General

These terms, together with any policies stated to form part of them, constitute the agreement between you and us in relation to the service. Nothing in this section excludes liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any rights that cannot be excluded by law. If any provision of these terms is found to be unlawful or unenforceable, the remaining provisions continue in force.

You may not transfer your subscription or your rights under these terms to any other person without our agreement, unless the law entitles you to do so. We may transfer our rights under these terms as part of a restructuring, financing, merger, acquisition or sale of the service or of Elenchos Ltd; if you are a consumer, we will not do so in a way that reduces your contractual or statutory rights.

No person other than you and Elenchos Ltd has any right to enforce these terms, except where the law provides otherwise.

16. Governing law and jurisdiction

Consumers

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of the place where you live, and you may bring proceedings in any court that has jurisdiction under the law applicable to you.

Business users

These terms, and any non-contractual dispute or claim arising out of them, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.