Acceptable Usage

The website www.cpdinstitute.org and The Institute of CPD app (collectively, the “Platform”) operated by The Professional Development Consortium Limited, trading as the Institute of CPD (“ICPD”, “we” or “us”). We are registered in England and Wales under company number 08293321 and have our registered office at 21 Navigation Business Village, Navigation Way, Ashton-On-Ribble, Preston, Lancashire, United Kingdom, PR2 2YP. Our main trading address is The Old Station, Moor Lane, Staines, TW18 4BB.

These terms of use (the “Terms of Platform Use” or the “Agreement”), together with the documents referred to in it, informs you of the terms on which you may make use of the Platform. Use of the Platform includes accessing and browsing the Platform and registering for any features of the Platform (such as newsletters).

By using our Platform, you confirm that you accept these Terms of Platform Use and that you agree to comply with them.

If you do not agree to these Terms of Platform Use, you must not use our Platform.

We recommend that you print a copy of these terms for future reference.

Other applicable terms

These Terms of Platform Use refer to the following additional terms, which also apply to your use of our Platform:

• Our Cookie Policy, which sets out information about the cookies on our Platform;

• Our Privacy Policy, which sets out the terms on which we process any personal data that we collect from you, or that you provide to us. By using the Platform, you consent to such processing and you warrant that all data provided by you is accurate; and

• Our Terms and Conditions of Sign-up, which govern your membership with ICPD should you sign up to be a member of ICPD.

Prohibited uses

You may use the Platform only for lawful purposes. You may not use our Platform:

• in any way that breaches any applicable local, national or international law or regulation;

• in any way that is unlawful or fraudulent or has any unlawful or fraudulent purpose or effect;

• for the purpose of harming or attempting to harm minors in any way;

• to bully, insult, intimidate or humiliate any person;

• to send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use or re-use any material which does not comply with our content standards (as detailed below);

• to transmit, or procure the sending of, any unsolicited or unauthorised advertising or promotional material or any other form of similar solicitation (spam);

• to knowingly transmit any data, send or upload any material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time-bombs, keystroke loggers, spyware, adware or any other harmful programs or similar computer code designed to adversely affect the operation of any computer software or hardware; or

• to upload terrorist content.

You also agree:

• not to reproduce, duplicate, copy or re-sell any part of our Platform in contravention of the provisions of our Terms of Platform Use; or

• not to access without authority, interfere with, damage or disrupt:

• any part of our Platform;

• any equipment or network on which our Platform is stored; 

• any software used in the provision of our Platform; or 

• any equipment or network or software owned or used by any third party.

Breach of the Terms of Platform Use and Acceptable Usage

We will determine, in our discretion, whether there has been a breach of this Acceptable Use Policy through your use of the Platform. When we consider that a breach of this Acceptable Use Policy has occurred, we may take such action as we deem appropriate.  

Failure to comply with this Acceptable Use Policy constitutes a material breach of our Terms of Platform Use upon which you are permitted to use our Platform, and may result in us taking all or any of the following actions:

• immediate, temporary or permanent withdrawal of your right to use our Platform;

• immediate, temporary or permanent removal of any Contribution uploaded by you to our Platform;

• issue of a warning to you;

• legal proceedings against you for reimbursement of all costs on an indemnity basis (including, but not limited to, reasonable administrative and legal costs) resulting from the breach;

• further legal action against you; and/or

• disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as we reasonably feel is necessary or as required by law.

We exclude our liability for all action we may take in response to breaches of this Acceptable Use Policy. The actions we may take are not limited to those described above, and we may take any other action we reasonably deem appropriate.

Changes to these terms

We amend these Terms of Platform Use from time to time. Every time you wish to use our Platform, please check these terms to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time.

Changes to the Platform

We may update and change our Platform from time to time. However, please note that any of the content on the Platform may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update it.

We do not guarantee that the Platform, or any content on it, will be free from errors or omissions.

Accessing the Platform

Our Platform is made available free of charge.

We do not guarantee that our Platform, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Platform for business and operational reasons. We will try to give you reasonable notice of any suspension or withdrawal. But we will not be liable to you if for any reason the Platform is unavailable at any time or for any period.

You are responsible for making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to the Platform.

You are also responsible for ensuring that all persons who access our Platform through your internet connection are aware of these Terms of Use and other applicable terms and conditions, and that they comply with them.

Transfer of this Agreement

We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation. We will always tell you in writing if this happens and we will ensure that the transfer will not affect your rights under the Agreement.

Geographical availability of the Platform

Our Platform is available in all jurisdictions, but is directed to people residing in the United Kingdom. We do not represent that content available on or through our Platform is appropriate for use in all locations other than the United Kingdom.

Security of account details

If you choose, or you are provided with, a user identification code, 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.

We have the right to disable any user identification code or password, whether chosen by you or allocated by us, at any time, if in our reasonable opinion you have failed to comply with any of the provisions of these Terms of Use.

If you know or suspect that anyone (other than you) knows your user identification code or password, you must promptly notify us at hello@cpdinstitute.org.

Intellectual property rights

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our Platform, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

You may print off one copy, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our Platform for your personal use and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to content posted on our Platform.

You must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.

Our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of content on our Platform must always be acknowledged (except where the content is user-generated).

You must not use any part of the content on our Platform for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors.

If you print off, copy, download, share or repost any part of our Platform in breach of these Terms of Use, your right to use our Platform will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.

No text or data mining, or web scraping

You shall not conduct, facilitate, authorise or permit any text or data mining or web scraping in relation to our Platform or any services provided via, or in relation to, our Platform. This includes using (or permitting, authorising or attempting the use of):

• Any “robot”, “bot”, “spider”, “scraper” or other automated device, programme, tool, algorithm, code, process or methodology to access, obtain, copy, monitor or republish any portion of the Platform or any data, content, information or services accessed via the same; or

• Any automated analytical technique aimed at analysing text and data in digital form to generate information which includes but is not limited to patterns, trends and correlations.

This clause shall not apply insofar as (but only to the extent that) we are unable to exclude or limit text or data mining or web scraping activity by contract under the laws which are applicable to us.

No reliance on information

The content on our Platform is provided for general information only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our Platform.

Although we make reasonable efforts to update the information on our Platform, we make no representations, warranties or guarantees, whether express or implied, that the content on our Platform is accurate, complete or up-to-date.

Third party links in the Platform

Where our Platform contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked websites or information you may obtain from them.

We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

Limitation of ICPD’s liability

Nothing in these Terms of Use excludes or limits ICPD’s liability for death or personal injury arising from the negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation of ICPD or its employees, agents or subcontractors, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by English law.

To the extent permitted by law, ICPD excludes all conditions, warranties, representations or other terms which may apply to the Platform or any content on it, whether express or implied.

ICPD will not be liable to any user for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:

• use of, or inability to use, the Platform; or

• use of or reliance on any content displayed on the Platform.

If you are a business user:

• ICPD excludes all implied conditions, warranties, representations or other terms that may apply to the Platform or any content on it.

• Please note that in particular, ICPD will not be liable for:
• loss of profits, sales, business, or revenue;

• business interruption;

• loss of anticipated savings;

• loss of business opportunity, goodwill or reputation; or

• any indirect or consequential loss or damage.

If you are a consumer user:

• Please note that ICPD only provides the Platform for domestic and private use. You agree not to use the Platform for any commercial or business purposes, and ICPD has no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption, or loss of business opportunity.

• If defective digital content that ICPD has supplied, damages a device or digital content belonging to you and this is caused by ICPD’s failure to use reasonable care and skill, ICPD will either repair the damage or pay you compensation.

ICPD will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a virus, distributed denial-of-service attack, or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programmes, data or other proprietary material due to your use of the Platform or to your downloading of any content on it, or on any website linked to it.

ICPD assumes no responsibility for the content of websites linked on the Platform. Such links should not be interpreted as endorsement by ICPD of those linked websites. ICPD will not be liable for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them.

Different limitations and exclusions of liability will apply to liability arising as a result of the supply of any services to you, which will be set out in the Terms and Conditions of Sign-up.

No approval of user-generated content

The Platform may include information and materials uploaded by other users of the Platform, including to bulletin boards, chat rooms and live chats. This information and these materials have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by other users on our Platform do not represent our views or values.

If you wish to complain about content uploaded by other users, please contact us on hello@cpdinstitute.org.

Use of your personal information

We will only use your personal information as set out in our Privacy Policy.

Uploading content to our Platform

Whenever you make use of a feature that allows you to upload content to our Platform, or to make contact with other users of our Platform, you must comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.

You warrant that any such contribution does comply with those standards, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.

Any content you upload to our Platform will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. You retain all of your ownership rights in your content, but you are required to grant us a limited licence to use, store and copy that content and to distribute and make it available to third parties.

We also have the right to disclose your identity to any third party who is claiming that any content posted or uploaded by you to our Platform constitutes a violation of their intellectual property rights, or of their right to privacy.

We will not be responsible, or liable to any third party, for the content or accuracy of any content posted by you or any other user of the Platform.

We have the right to remove any posting you make on our Platform if, in our opinion, your post does not comply with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.

You are solely responsible for securing and backing up your content.

Rights you license to ICPD

When you upload or post content to our Platform, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform such content in connection with the services provided by the Platform and across different media.

Viruses

We do not guarantee that our Platform will be secure or free from bugs or viruses.

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our Platform. You should use your own virus protection software.

You must not misuse our Platform by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our Platform, the server on which our Platform is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our Platform. You must not attack our Platform via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our Platform will cease immediately.

Linking to the Platform

You may link to the homepage of the Platform, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it.

You must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval or endorsement on our part where none exists.

You must not establish a link to our Platform in any website that is not owned by you.

Our Platform must not be framed on any other site, nor may you create a link to any part of our Platform other than the home page.

We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

The website in which you are linking must comply in all respects with the content standards set out in our Acceptable Use Policy.

If you wish to link to or make any use of content on our Platform other than that set out above, please contact us.

Applicable Laws

If you are a consumer, please note that these Terms of Use, their subject matter and their formation, are governed by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction except that if you are a resident of Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in Northern Ireland, and if you are resident of Scotland, you may also bring proceedings in Scotland.

If you are a business, these Terms of Use, their subject matter and their formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by English law. We both agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Trademarks

We are the owner or licensee (as the case may be) of a number of registered and unregistered trademarks, including but not limited to “The Institute of Continuing Professional Development” and “CPD Institute”. 

You are not permitted to use them without our approval, unless they are part of material you are using as permitted under the section headed “Intellectual property rights” above.

Document Last Updated: 31st March 2022