Terms & Conditions of Use

Pollution Watch - Terms of Use

We are Pollution Watch UK Ltd (company number 15016010) ("PW", "us", "we" or "our") and we own and operate the mobile application and web platform known as “Pollution Watch” (“Service”). You must be at least 13years old to use and access the Service.

By downloading the app and/or accessing the Service, you are agreeing to these Terms of Use which are legally binding. Please read these terms of use, together with our Privacy Policy (https://pollutionwatch.org.uk/privacy-policy), before downloading the app, registering an account, and/or accessing the Service.

If you do not agree to these Terms of Use, you may not access or use the app or register an account for the Service.

TERMS OF USE - THIS SECTION APPLIES TO ALL USERS

Service and app licence
1. Subject to you accepting and continuing to comply with these Terms of Use, we grant you the limited, personal, revocable, non-exclusive, non-sublicenseable, non-transferable right to access and use the Service in accordance with this agreement and any other acceptable use requirements we specify.
2. Where applicable, we license you to access and use the app on the same basis. This licence:
  1. starts when you download the app; and
  2. covers content, materials, or services accessible from the app. It also covers updates to the app unless they come with separate terms, in which case we will give you an opportunity to review and accept the new terms.
3. The licence granted under these Terms of Use is only for you personally (and anyone else that the app store lets you share the app with) and for non-business use (unless you have purchased a relevant licence from us for business/professional use).
4. The agreement made subject to these Term so Use is made between you and us. App store providers such as Apple and Google are not a party to this agreement and have no responsibility for the app or its content.
5. In these Terms of Use, we refer to the site that you download the app from as the ‘app store’ and we refer to their rules and policies as the ‘app store rules’. You must comply with the app store rules as well as these Terms of Use but, if there is any conflict between them, you should follow the app store rules rather than the equivalent rule here. If you have downloaded the app through Apple’s app store, you may be referred to as an ‘iOS User’ in this agreement and related references to the ‘app store’ and ‘app store rules’ means those provided by Apple, including the Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions.
6. You do not own the app, Service or any of their contents (apart from your uploaded Content - see paragraph 7 below) but you may access and use the Service on devices that you own or control (and in the case of iOS Users, on Apple-branded products only), as permitted by the app store rules.
7. If you sell or give away the device on which you have downloaded our app, you must first remove the app from the device.
8. You are not allowed to:
  1. hack the app (which might include accessing its code, inserting new code, or modifying the way it functions in any way); or
  2. pretend that the app is your own or make it available for others to download or use.
Technical requirements
1. In order to use our app, your device needs to comply with the following minimum requirements:

Device compatibility

Android and IOS

Operating system

Requires iOS 12 or later

Requires Android 12 or later

1. Minimum hardware and internet browser requirements may apply to your access to our Service by means other than our app.
Support and contact
1. If you need to get in touch with us, you can use any of the following methods:

Website	https://pollutionwatch.org.uk/contact-us/
Email	[email protected]
Post	Platt Mill, Ruyton Xi Towns, Shrewsbury, United Kingdom, SY4 1LS

1. We are responsible for customer service in relation to the app and Service and can help you if you are having any issues. iOS Users acknowledge that Apple has no obligation whatsoever to provide any support or maintenance services in relation to the app
2. If we need to get in touch with you, we will do so by email or via an in-app notification.
Privacy and your personal information
1. Protecting your personal information is important to us. Our privacy policy (https://pollutionwatch.org.uk/privacy-policy/) explains what personal information we collect from you, how and why we collect, store, use and share such information, your rights in relation to it and how to contact us and supervisory authorities if you have a query or complaint. By accessing and using the Service, you agree that you have read and understood the terms of our privacy policy and accept that we will process your personal information as described therein.
2. We may collect and use technical data that might include, for example, the specifications of your device and its software in order to help us provide software updates, product support, and other services related to the app. We may also use this information, as long as it is in a form that does not personally identify you, to improve products or to offer new services or technologies to you.
Account and Service access
1. You may be required to create an account in order to access and use the Service. Where you do so, you agree to keep any access credentials for the Service secure and not to share them with any third party or permit any third party to use your account. You are responsible for your access and use of the Service, even if the access or use is by another person using your device or access credentials. You agree to notify us if you know or suspect that the confidentiality of your access credentials has been compromised or that someone has had unauthorised access to your account.
2. We do not accept any responsibility for any loss or damage arising from unauthorised access or use of your access credentials and may suspend or terminate an account if we become aware or suspect that the access credentials have been shared or there has been any unauthorised access.
3. You agree not to create accounts through unauthorized means, including but not limited to, by using an automated device, script, bot, spider, crawler or scraper.
4. We will use reasonable efforts to ensure that the Service is available at all times. However, we do not promise or commit to making the Service available on a continuous, uninterrupted basis, nor that all functions and features available via the Service will remain in place. We reserve the right to suspend access to the Service as necessary for any maintenance, update, or upgrade, and we also reserve the right to modify, suspend or withdraw any functions and/or features available via the Service from time to time.
5. We may update the Service (including the app) from time to time for reasons that include fixing bugs or enhancing functionality. App updates will either download automatically or you may need to trigger them yourself, depending on your device, its settings and the app store. We strongly suggest that you download updates as soon as they become available. Depending on the nature of the update, the app may not work properly (or at all), or you may be exposed to security vulnerabilities, if you do not keep the app updated to the latest version that we make available.
Acceptable Use of the Service
1. When using the Service to report a pollution event, you should keep your reports and updates civil, factual and relevant to the pollution event. In particular, you shall not:
  1. Make defamatory comments. A defamatory comment is one that is capable of damaging the reputation of a person or organisation. You could be held liable for considerable damages and costs should your comment lead to successful legal action;
  2. Implicate other people in your reports. The Service should not be used for reports or updates that implicate a person; you should never identify anyone as a wrongdoer or polluter by name, description or address. Reports not directly related to the pollution types listed on this website in the ‘Pollution Guide’ page should not be reported on the Service and, if identified, will be removed.
  3. post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive;
  4. impersonate other people. Reports or comments deliberately intended to look as though they are coming from someone else may leave you liable to legal action
  5. use the Service as a place to air personal grievances about other people or organisations;
  6. swear. People of all ages read and contribute to the Service. Please don't use profanities or other words which might offend them; or
  7. spam. Do not repost the same report or update, or very similar report or update, more than once.
2. When using the Service be aware that the reports and updates you contribute to the Service are displayed publicly on the website. For this reason, please do not include personal details such as your (or another person’s) address or telephone number in your report or update. All reports and updates will be made anonymously, as ‘Guest’, unless to choose to select the ‘Show your name publicly’ checkbox. Your email address is never displayed on the website.
3. When using the Service, talk to other people online with the same degree of civility as you would in person. PW does allow for anonymous updates but anonymity should never be used as a cover for inappropriate or abusive comments.
4. You are solely responsible for your interaction with other users of the app. We reserve the right, but shall have no obligation to, monitor or intervene (where appropriate) in disputes between you and other users and take such action as we deem necessary.
5. Violation of any of the Acceptable Use provisions above will lead to the immediate suspension of your account meaning you will no longer be able to make reports or updates on the Service. In some cases, breaking these rules could lead to legal action being taken against you by an aggrieved party. Please be aware that in exceptional circumstances PW could be legally obliged to reveal your registration information to the authorities.
6. If you wish to report any content or user conduct which you believe may contravene these Terms of Use, please contact us at [email protected]. We are not obliged to monitor or moderate content, submissions or interactions accessible via our Service but will use reasonable efforts to review and address any report submitted to us.
7. If you believe that any of the content, submissions or interactions accessible via our Service infringe your copyright or other intellectual property rights, please contact us at [email protected]. Please provide your details, together with sufficient information regarding the infringing content and evidence of your rights. We are not responsible for the conduct of users of the Service but will use reasonable efforts to restrict or remove any material that you can demonstrate infringes intellectual property rights.
Your uploaded content
1. The Service will enable you to upload and share publicly data, text, and images relating to pollution (Content). In doing so, you confirm to us that the Content is original to you, that you own the Content, and that such Content shall comply with these Terms of Use, including paragraph 6 above.
2. You remain the legal owner of any Content you upload and post via the Service. By uploading your Content, you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sub-licenseable, perpetual, worldwide licence to use, adapt, modify, enhance or create derivative works from such Content, subject to this agreement and our Privacy Policy, as necessary or desirable for the purposes of distributing and displaying such Content within the Service, as well as providing, improving, expanding and promoting the Service, our brand and any other products or services we may offer or provide from time to time. The deletion, suspension or removal of your account for whatever reason shall not affect the continuation of this licence.
3. You acknowledge and agree that, by virtue of the licence referred to in paragraph 7.2, the Content will be visible to other users of the Service who can interact with such Content in connection with their use of the Service. We are not responsible for third party use of your Content.
4. We reserve the right to suspend, remove and permanently delete any Content from the Service for any reason, without prior notice. Content removed from the Service may continue to be stored by us, including, without limitation, in order to comply with our legal obligations.
5. You agree that the Service is not intended to act as a data storage or back-up solution and, accordingly, we will not be responsible for any loss or damage to or corruption of your Content. We encourage you to maintain your own backup of your Content. We will not be liable to you for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation of the Service.
6. We may, but shall have no obligation to, remove, edit, block, and/or monitor Content or accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion violates this agreement. We reserve the right to refuse access to any or all of the Service to anyone for any reason at any time.
External websites and services
1. The Service may enable you to access websites and services that we do not own or operate (referred to as ‘external services’). We are not responsible for these external services, nor have we examined or evaluated the suitability, accuracy or reliability of these external services.
2. External services may be subject to separate terms of use and privacy practices. Before using any external services, make sure you have read and agreed to the terms on which they are being offered to you, including the way in which they may use your personal information.
3. From time to time, we may change or remove the external services that are made accessible through the Service.
4. In the event that any parts of the Service display advertisements and promotions, you agree to the placement of such advertisements and promotions as we see fit. You acknowledge and agree that clicking on any advertisement or promotion may take you to external services, for which we do not accept any responsibility.
Disclaimers
1. Except as set out in these Terms of Use, the Service is provided “as is” and without any guarantee, warranties or representations. To the fullest extent legally permissible, we disclaim any and all conditions and warranties, whether express or implied, including but not limited to those as to quality, fitness for purpose, non-infringement, title, quiet enjoyment, or freedom from viruses or malware.
2. The Service is provided to enable users to interact with each other and share information relating to pollution. The Content available on the Service is provided by individuals. Whilst we make it clear any Content should be provided in accordance with these Terms of Use, we are not responsible for and do not accept any liability for the Content.
3. We do not accept any liability for the actions of users you interact with via the Service and any breach by them of the terms of their service to you.
Our responsibility to you
1. If we breach this contract or are negligent, we may be liable to you for foreseeable loss or damage that you suffer as a result. By ‘foreseeable’ we mean that, at the time this agreement was made, either it was clear that such loss or damage would occur or you and we both knew that it might reasonably occur, as a result of something we did (or failed to do).
2. Except as set out in paragraph 10.1 and to the fullest extent legally permissible, we shall not be liable to you for any losses, whether in contract, tort, statutory duty or otherwise (including but not limited to direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential losses or damages), that are directly or indirectly related to:
  1. your access and use of the Service or that of third parties;
  2. user-based or originating content, including but not limited to Content;
  3. your inability to use the Service;
  4. use of your Content by third parties in accordance with this agreement and our Privacy Policy;
  5. any third party claim of intellectual property infringement in relation to your Content or any other user content;
  6. any damage to any devices, including any computer, mobile device, or other equipment or technology, including but not limited to any damage which results from any security breach or from any virus, bug, malware or fraud;
  7. loss of, or damage to, any Content or other data; or
  8. accuracy of information or results.
3. We are not liable to you for any loss or damage that was not foreseeable, any loss or damage not caused by our breach or negligence, any special, exemplary, punitive, indirect or consequential damages of any kind, or any business loss or damage, including any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity (whether direct or indirect and whether or not foreseeable).
4. Subject to the foregoing provisions, and to the extent permissible by law, our maximum aggregate liability to you under or in connection with our agreement with you (including your use of the Service) whether in contract, tort (including negligence) or otherwise, shall in all circumstances be limited to £5,000.00. This does not apply to the types of liability set out in paragraph 10.5.
5. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for any death or personal injury caused by our negligence, liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that the law does not allow us to exclude or limit.
Intellectual property rights and licence restrictions
1. You acknowledge and agree that:
  1. all intellectual property rights in and to the Service and associated software and content existing anywhere in the world belong to us or our licensors;
  2. that rights in the Service are licensed (not sold) to you; and
  3. that you have no rights in, or to, the Service other than the right to access and use it in accordance with this agreement.
2. You acknowledge that you have no right to have access to the Service, app or any other software provided by us in source-code form.
3. Our trademarks may not be copied, imitated or used, in whole or in part, without our prior written permission.
4. If any third party claims that our app or your possession and use of the app infringes their intellectual property rights, we (and not the app store) will be responsible for investigating the claim and, where appropriate, for defending, settling and/or discharging it.
5. You agree not to do any of the following (or permit anyone else to do so):
  1. interfere with or disrupt the operation of the Service, app or the servers or networks used to make them available, or violate any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of such networks;
  2. reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell, or otherwise exploit for any commercial purposes, any portion of, use of, or access to the Service or any Content;
  3. modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any portion of the Service (including associated software). If you wish to reverse engineer any part of the Service to create an interoperable program you must contact us and we may provide interface data subject to verification of your identity and other information;
  4. use the access to the Service to create any competing product, service or solution;
  5. remove any copyright, trade mark or other proprietary rights notice from the Service, Content or other materials originating from or accessible via the Service;
  6. frame or mirror any part of the Service or Content without our express prior written consent;
  7. create a database by systematically downloading and storing any Content; or
  8. use any manual or automatic device in any way to gather Service content or reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the Service without our express prior written consent (except public online search engines, which are granted limited permission to use search retrieval applications to reproduce materials from the Service for the sole purpose of and solely to the extent necessary for creating publicly available searchable indices of such materials solely in connection with each operator’s public online search service).
Ending this agreement
1. We can end our agreement with you immediately if you do not comply with any part these Terms of Use or if our agreement with the app store ends for any reason whatsoever.
2. We may give you a reasonable amount of notice before the agreement ends but if what you have done is serious then we may end this agreement immediately and without advance notice to you. ‘Serious’ means that you are causing harm (or attempting to cause harm) to other users, interfering with the operation of the app or doing anything else that we think presents a big enough risk to justify us ending the agreement quickly.
3. The consequences of the agreement ending are as follows:
  1. you are no longer allowed to access and use the Service or associated Content in any form and we may remotely limit your access to it;
  2. you must delete our app and any other software provided by us from any devices that it has been installed on; and
  3. we may delete or suspend access to any accounts that you hold with us.
4. You have the right to close your account and cease use of the Service via your profile within the Service. We do not retain or archive a copy of your data or Content in the event that you delete your account, though some Content may continue to be made accessible via the Service as described in this agreement.
Prohibited territories and persons
1. By downloading and accessing the app and Service, you represent and warrant to us that you are not:
  1. located in a country that is subject to a UK, EU, or US Government embargo, or that has been designated by the US Government as a ‘terrorist supporting’ country; and
  2. on any UK, EU, or US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
2. If either of the situations in paragraph 13.1 apply to you, you are not permitted to download and access the app and/or Service.
3. We do not warrant or represent that your use of the Service is lawful in any particular jurisdiction and you are responsible for ensuring that your access and use of the Service complies with all local laws and regulations. You warrant to us that your activities are lawful in every jurisdiction in which you access or use the Service.
Third parties
1. If you are an iOS User, Apple and Apple’s subsidiary companies are third party beneficiaries of this agreement. This means that if you breach any of its terms, Apple has the right to enforce it and to take action against you directly, with or without our involvement.
2. Other than Apple and Apple’s subsidiaries, no one other than us or you has any right to enforce any term of this agreement.
Transferring this agreement
1. We may transfer our rights under our agreement to another business without your consent, but we will notify you of the transfer and make sure that you are not adversely affected as a result.
2. You are not allowed to transfer your rights under this agreement to anyone without our prior written consent.
Entire agreement

These Terms of Use, together with any documents referred to in them constitute the entire agreement between you and us and govern your use of the app, superseding any prior agreements between you and us.

Events outside our control

We will not be liable or responsible for any failure to perform, or delay in performance of, any of our obligations under this agreement that is caused by any act or event beyond our reasonable control, including failure of public or private telecommunications networks.

Severance
1. If any provision of this agreement (or part of any provision) is or becomes illegal, invalid or unenforceable, the legality, validity and enforceability of any other provision of this agreement shall not be affected.
2. If we fail to insist that you perform any of your obligations under this agreement, or if we do not enforce our rights against you, or if we delay in doing so, that will not mean that we have waived our rights against you and will not mean that you do not have to comply with those obligations. If we do waive a default by you, we will only do so in writing, and that will not mean that we will automatically waive any later default by you.
Governing law and jurisdiction

The laws of England apply to these Terms of Use, although if you are resident elsewhere you will retain the benefit of any mandatory protections given to you by the laws of the country in which you live. Any disputes will be subject to the jurisdiction of the English courts, except that if you are resident in Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland, you may bring a claim in your local court.

Terms & Conditions of Use

Get the latest pollution news in your inbox?