Terms of use

1.1 These terms and conditions (Terms of Website Use) govern your use of our website, https://www.homegroup.org.uk/.

1.2 By using our website, you accept these Terms of Website Use in full. Accordingly, if you disagree with these Terms of Website Use or any part of these Terms of Website Use, you must not use our website.

1.3 You must be at least 18 years of age to use our website. By using our website or agreeing to these Terms of Website Use, you warrant and represent to us that you are at least 18 years of age.

2.1 Who we are. When we say “we”, “us”, “our” or “Home Group” in these Terms of Website Use, we mean Home Group Limited, a registered society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (registered number 22981R). We have charitable status but are exempt from registration with the Charity Commission – we are a ‘charity’ but not a ‘registered charity’. Home Group is also a Registered Provider of Social Housing and is registered with the Regulator of Social Housing under number L3076. The registered address is at One Strawberry Lane, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4BX. References to “we”, “us” and “our” in these Terms of Website Use also includes our group companies from time to time, including (but not limited to) Home Scotland.

2.2 Home Scotland. When we say “Home Scotland” in these Terms of Website Use, we mean Home in Scotland Limited, a registered society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (registered number 1935R(S). Home Scotland is also a Registered Social Landlord, registered with the Scottish Housing Regulator under number 90. Home Scotland is also a registered Scottish charity (Scottish Charity No. SC005247).

2.3 How to contact us. If you wish to contact us for any reason, including because you have any queries or complaints, you can contact us by either:

(a) calling our customer service team on 0345 141 4663 between the hours of 09:00 and 17:00 on Monday – Friday;
(b) e-mailing us at communications@homegroup.org.uk; or
(c) by post to the address in clause 2.1 above.

2.4 Accessibility. We seek to make the Site as accessible as possible and have enabled the “BrowseAloud” text-to-speech functionality in our website. However, if you have any difficulties using the Site, please contact us at communications@homegroup.org.uk.

2.5 Freedom of Information Rights. Nothing in these Terms of Website Use is intended to restrict any applicable Freedom of Information rights. Home Scotland is under a legal obligation to publish certain Information, this can be found on our Scotland Freedom of Information page.

3.1 How to identify which terms apply to you. In some areas you will have different rights under these Terms of Website Use depending on whether you are a business or consumer. Provisions:

(a) specific to consumers only are introduced by the following:

This clause applies to consumers only.

(b) specific to business users only are introduced by the following:

This clause applies to business users only.

(c) all other provisions apply to all users.

3.2 Am I a business user or a consumer? You are a consumer if you are an individual, and you are using our website wholly or mainly for your personal use (and not for use in connection with your trade, business, craft or profession).

3.3 This is our entire agreement with you.

This clause 3.3 applies to business users only.

If you are a business user, these Terms of Website Use constitute the entire agreement between us in relation to your use of our website. You acknowledge that you have not relied on any statement, promise, representation, assurance or warranty made or given by or on behalf of us which is not set out in these Terms of Website Use and that you shall have no claim for innocent or negligent misrepresentation or negligent misstatement based on any statement in these Terms of Website Use

4.1 Copyright (c) 2020 Home Group Limited.

4.2 Subject to the express provisions of these Terms of Website Use:

(a) we, together with our licensors, own and control all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in our website and the material on our website; and

(b) all the copyright and other intellectual property rights in our website and the material on our website are reserved.

4.3 The trade name “Home Group”, our logos and our other trademarks are trademarks belonging to us. We give no permission for the use of these trademarks, and such use may constitute an infringement of our rights.

4.4 Any third party registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks on our website are the property of their respective owners and, unless expressly stated otherwise in these Terms of Website Use or on our website, we do not endorse and are not affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights and as such we cannot grant any licence to exercise such rights.

4.5 Nothing in these Terms of Website Use shall operate to transfer any intellectual property rights from us to you. Any goodwill derived from the use by you of our intellectual property rights shall accrue to us.

5.1 Your privacy and personal information are important to us. Any personal information that you provide to us will be dealt with in line with our privacy policy, which explains what personal information we collect from you, how and why we collect, store, use and share such information, your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us and supervisory authorities in the event you have a query or complaint about the use of your personal information.

5.2 Our privacy policy is available here and cookie policy is here.

6.1 You may:
(a) view pages from our website in a web browser;

(b) download pages from our website for caching in a web browser;

(c) print pages from our website;

(d) stream audio and video files from our website; and

(e) use our website services by means of a web browser, subject to the provisions of these Terms of Website Use.

6.2 Our website is intended for use only by those who can access it from within the UK. If you choose to access our website from locations outside the UK, you are responsible for compliance with local laws where they are applicable.

6.3 Except as expressly permitted by clause 6.1 or the other provisions of these Terms of Website Use, you must not download any material from our website or save any such material to your computer.

6.4 Except as expressly permitted by these Terms of Website Use, you must not edit or otherwise modify any material on our website.

6.5 Unless: (1) required in line with Freedom of Information legislation; and/or (2) our Openness Statement from time to time; and/or (3) you own or control the relevant rights in the material, you must not without or prior written consent:

(a) republish material from our website (including republication on another website);

(b) sell, rent or sub-license material from our website;

(c) show any material from our website in public;

(d) exploit material from our website for a commercial purpose; or

(e) redistribute material from our website.

6.6 Notwithstanding clause 6.5 of these Terms of Website Use, you may redistribute any newsletter which we may distribute to you from time to time in print or electronic form to any person and/or use information on our products where purposely made available by us for downloading from our website, provided that you: (1) do not remove any proprietary notice language in all copies of such documents; (2) make no modifications to any such information; and (3) do not make any additional representations or warranties relating to such documents.

6.7 We reserve the right to restrict access to parts or all of our website at our discretion. You must not circumvent or bypass, or attempt to circumvent or bypass, any access restriction measures on our website.

7.1 You must not:

(a) use our website in any way or take any action that causes, or may cause, damage to the website or impairment of the performance, availability or accessibility of the website;

(b) use our website in any way that is unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful, or in connection with any unlawful, illegal, fraudulent or harmful purpose or activity;

(c) use our website to copy, store, host, transmit, send, use, publish or distribute any material which consists of (or is linked to) any spyware, computer virus, Trojan horse, worm, keystroke logger, rootkit or other malicious computer software;

(d) conduct any systematic or automated data collection activities (including without limitation scraping, data mining, data extraction and data harvesting) on or in relation to our website without our express written consent;

(e) access or otherwise interact with our website using any robot, spider or other automated means, except for the purpose of search engine indexing;

(f) violate the directives set out in the robots.txt file for our website;

(g) use data collected from our website for any direct marketing activity (including without limitation email marketing, SMS marketing, telemarketing and direct mailing);

(h) circumnavigate the navigational structure of our website to obtain or attempt to obtain any materials, documents or information through any means not purposely made available throughout our website; or

(i) attempt to gain unauthorised access to any portion or feature of our website, or any other systems or networks connected to our website or to any of the services offered on or through our website by hacking, password mining or any other illegitimate means.

7.2 You must not use data collected from our website to contact individuals, companies or other persons or entities.

7.3 You must ensure that all the information you supply to us through our website, or in relation to our website, is true, accurate, current, complete and non-misleading.

8.1 In these Terms of Website Use, "your content" means all works and materials (including without limitation text, graphics, images, audio material, video material, audio-visual material, scripts, software and files) that you submit to us or our website for storage or publication on, processing by, or transmission via, our website.

8.2 You grant to us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, reproduce, store, adapt, publish, translate and distribute your content in any existing or future media.

8.3 You grant to us the right to sub-license the rights licensed under clause 8.2 of these Terms of Website Use.

8.4 You grant to us the right to bring an action for infringement of the rights licensed under clause 8.2 of these Terms of Website Use.

8.5 You hereby waive all your moral rights in your content to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, and you warrant and represent that all other moral rights in your content have been waived to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law.

8.6 You may edit your content to the extent permitted using the editing functionality made available on our website.

8.7 Without prejudice to our other rights under these Terms of Website Use, if you breach any provision of these Terms of Website Use in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these Terms of Website Use in any way, we may delete, unpublish or edit any or all of your content.

9.1 You warrant and represent that your content will comply with these Terms of Website Use.

9.2 Your content must not be illegal or unlawful, must not infringe any person's legal rights, and must not be capable of giving rise to legal action against any person (in each case in any jurisdiction and under any applicable law).

9.3 Your content, and the use of your content by us in accordance with these Terms of Website Use, must not:

(a) be libellous or maliciously false;

(b) be obscene or indecent;

(c) infringe any copyright, moral right, database right, trade mark right, design right, right in passing off, or other intellectual property right;

(d) infringe any right of confidence, right of privacy or right under data protection legislation;

(e) constitute negligent advice or contain any negligent statement;

(f) constitute an incitement to commit a crime, instructions for the commission of a crime or the promotion of criminal activity;

(g) be in contempt of any court, or in breach of any court order;

(h) be in breach of racial or religious hatred or discrimination legislation;

(i) be blasphemous;

(j) be in breach of official secrets legislation;

(k) be in breach of any contractual obligation owed to any person;

(l) depict violence in an explicit, graphic or gratuitous manner;

(m) be pornographic, lewd, suggestive or sexually explicit;

(n) be untrue, false, inaccurate or misleading;

(o) consist of or contain any instructions, advice or other information which may be acted upon and could, if acted upon, cause illness, injury or death, or any other loss or damage;

(p) constitute spam;

(q) be offensive, deceptive, fraudulent, threatening, abusive, harassing, anti-social, menacing, hateful, discriminatory or inflammatory; or

(r) cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to any person.

9.4 While we try to make sure that our website is secure, we cannot guarantee the security of any information that you supply to us and therefore we cannot guarantee that it will be kept confidential. For that reason, you should not let us have any patentable ideas or patent applications, advertising or marketing suggestions, prototypes, or any other information that you regard as confidential, commercially sensitive or valuable (Unwanted Submissions). While we value your feedback, you agree not to submit any Unwanted Submissions.

9.5 We may use any Unwanted Submissions as we see reasonably fit on a free-of-charge basis (bear in mind that we have no way of knowing whether such information is confidential, commercially sensitive or valuable because we do not monitor the Site to check for these matters). Therefore, we will not be legally responsible for keeping any Unwanted Submissions confidential nor will we be legally responsible to you or anybody else for any use of such Unwanted Submissions.

10.1 To be eligible for an individual account on our website you must be at least 18 years of age.

10.2 You may register for a user account with our website by completing and submitting the account registration form on our website.

10.3 When you submit the registration form on our website, we will send an email with a verification link to the address which you provided to us on the registration form. Your registration will be completed only when you follow the link to verify your email address and activate your account.

10.4 Only one user account is permitted per person.

11.1 If you choose, a password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party.

11.2 Your user ID must not be liable to mislead and must comply with the content rules set out in clause 9 of these Terms of Website Use. You must not use your account or user ID for or in connection with the impersonation of any person.

11.3 You are responsible for any activity on our website arising out of any failure to keep your password confidential and may be held liable for any foreseeable losses arising out of such a failure.

11.4 We have the right to disable any account access at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Terms of Website Use.

12.1 You acknowledge that we provide our website to you free of charge and accordingly:

(a) content is provided for your general information purposes only and to inform you about us and our products and news, features, services and other websites that may be of interest. It does not constitute technical, financial or legal advice or any other type of advice and should not be relied on for any purposes and we make no representation or warranty as to its accuracy or completeness;

(b) we do not warrant or represent: (1) the completeness or accuracy of the information published on our website; (2) that the material on the website is up to date; or (3) that the website or any service on the website will remain available;

(c) we reserve the right to discontinue or alter any or all of our website services, and to stop publishing our website, at any time in our sole discretion without notice or explanation. Save to the extent expressly provided otherwise in these Terms of Website Use, you will not be entitled to any compensation or other payment upon the discontinuance or alteration of any website services, or if we stop publishing the website; and

Clause 12.1(d) applies to business users only.

(d) if you are using our website for business purposes, then to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law and subject to clause 14.1 of these Terms of Website Use, we exclude all representations and warranties relating to the subject matter of these Terms of Website Use, our website and the use of our website. This clause 12.1(d) does not apply if you are using our website in your capacity as a consumer (as defined in clause 3.2).

This clause 13 applies to consumers only.

13.1 Except for any legal responsibility that we cannot exclude in law (such as for death, personal injury or fraud) or which arises under applicable laws relating to the protection of your personal information, we are not legally responsible for any losses which:

(a) were not foreseeable to you and us when these Terms of Website Use were formed;

(b) were not caused by our breach of contract and/or or of any other legal duty which we owe to you;

(c) arise from any event or events outside of our reasonable control;

(d) relate to business losses, including (without limitation) loss of or damage to profits, income, revenue, use, production, anticipated savings, business, contracts, commercial opportunities or goodwill.

14.1 Nothing in these Website Terms of Use shall limit or exclude our liability for:

(a) death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors (as applicable);

(b) fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;

(c) defective products under the Consumer Protection Act 1987;

(d) arising under applicable laws relating to the protection of your personal information; or

(e) any matter in respect of which it would be unlawful for us to exclude or restrict liability.

14.2 Subject to clause 14.1 above, we shall not be liable to you, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, for:

(a) any damage to software, damage to or loss of data;

(b) any loss of profit, business, revenue, goodwill or anticipated savings;

(c) any indirect or consequential loss or damage (including, but not limited to, any indirect or consequential losses which result in loss of profit, business, revenue, goodwill, anticipated savings or business opportunity, loss or corruption of data); or

(d) any liability arising as a result of any term implied by common law or statute, order, regulation or any other enactment.

14.3 Subject to clause 14.1 above, our total liability to you for all other losses arising under or in connection with these Website Terms of Use, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, shall in no circumstances exceed the greater of:

(a) a sum equal to the total amount of fees paid by you to us under these Website Terms of Use during the preceding 12 months immediately prior to the act or omission giving rise to the loss (or, if the event giving rise to the loss occurs during the first 12 months of this contract, the amount of fees paid by you to us under this contract during that period); and

(b) £100.00 (one hundred pounds sterling).

15.1 Our website may include links to other websites owned and operated by third parties. Such links are provided for information only and are not recommendations or endorsements by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them.

15.2 We have no control over third party websites and their contents, and:

Clause 15.2(a)applies to consumers only.

(a) if you are a consumer, we accept no responsibility for such third party websites or their contents (or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them), other than as provided for by clause 13.1); and

Clause 15.2(b) applies to business users only.

(b) if you are a business user, we accept no responsibility for such third party websites or their contents (or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them), other than as provided for by clause 14.1.

16.1 Without prejudice to our other rights under these Terms of Website Use, if you breach these Terms of Website Use in any way, or if we reasonably suspect that you have breached these Terms of Website Use in any way, we may:

(a) send you one or more formal warnings;

(b) temporarily suspend your access to our website;

(c) permanently prohibit you from accessing our website;

(d) block computers using your IP address from accessing our website;

(e) contact any or all of your internet service providers and request that they block your access to our website; or

(f) commence legal action against you, whether for breach of contract or otherwise.

16.2 Where we suspend or prohibit or block your access to our website or a part of our website, you must not take any action to circumvent such suspension or prohibition or blocking (including without limitation creating and/or using a different account).

17.1 We may revise these Terms of Website Use from time to time.

17.2 If you are a registered user of our website, we will give you a written notice of any revision of these Terms of Website Use, and the revised Terms of Website Use will apply to the use of our website from the date that we give you such notice. If we update these Terms of Website Use the version to which you originally agreed will no longer be available on our website. We recommend that you print a copy of these Terms of Website Use for future reference.

17.3 If you are not a registered user of our website, the revised Terms of Website Use shall apply to your use of our website from the date of publication of the revised Terms of Website Use on the website.

18.1 Severability. If a provision of these Terms of Website Use is determined by any court or other competent authority to be unlawful and/or unenforceable, the other provisions will continue in effect. If any unlawful and/or unenforceable provision of these Terms of Website Use would be lawful or enforceable if part of it were deleted, that part will be deemed to be deleted, and the rest of the provision will continue in effect.

18.2 Rights of third parties. No one other than a party to these Terms of Website Use has any right to enforce any of its terms.

18.3 Disputes. We will try to resolve any disputes with you quickly and efficiently. If you are unhappy, please contact us as soon as possible.

18.4 Law and Jurisdiction.

(a) These Terms of Website Use shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. Any disputes relating to these Terms of Website Use shall (subject to clause 18.4(b)) be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England.

This clause 18.4(b) applies to consumers only.

(b) If you use our website as a consumer (as defined at clause 3.2), this clause 18.4 shall not have the effect of depriving you of the protection afforded to you by mandatory provisions of the applicable laws regulating the choice of the governing law and/or jurisdiction in consumer contracts. For example, if you live in Scotland, you can bring legal proceedings in respect of these Terms in either the Scottish or the English courts, and if you live in Northern Ireland, you can bring legal proceedings in respect of these Terms in either the Northern Irish or the English courts.