Terms and Conditions for the use of the Essex Support Directory as a Provider of Goods and/or Services

The definitions and rules of interpretation in this clause apply in these Terms and Conditions:

• 'Website Operator' means Public Partnerships, which is a trading name of Public Consulting Group UK Limited, company registration number 06654748, whose registered office is at:
  • 1 Smithy Court,
  • Pemberton,
  • Wigan,
  • WN3 6PS

and any other party that it may use to process data on its behalf;

• 'We', and 'us' means Essex County Council;
• 'You', 'Provider' and related expressions mean the organisation uploading product and services information to the Portal;
• 'Portal' and 'this website' means the website located at: https://www.essexsupportdirectory.org/

Paragraph headings shall not affect the interpretation of these conditions.

Words in the singular shall include the plural and vice versa.

These Terms and Conditions apply to users who are applying on behalf of Providers for the purposes of uploading product and services information on the Portal. They describe the terms and conditions that apply to users of the Portal and what we will do with any personal information collected from you when using the Portal.

By using the Portal, you are deemed to have accepted these Terms and Conditions.

If you do not accept these Terms and Conditions, you should not access the Portal.

Public Partnerships is registered with the Information Commissioner responsible for the Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts. Public Partnerships’ notification can be viewed on the Information Commissioners website at http://www.ico.org.uk/.

The Portal enables providers of adult social care to upload information about their products and service provision on the Portal.

Personal information is primarily collected and stored for the purposes of enabling accredited providers to access the Portal to upload information about adult social care provision or other relevant product and / or service.

In addition, personal information will be used for the following purposes in relation to the running of the Portal:

• dealing with enquiries about the Portal or responding to a request for support from the Portal support service to assist a registered user in the operation and use of the Portal
• assisting organisations in supporting the registered user in relation to the Portal
• notification of changes to the Portal
• notification of developments to the Portal
• if required to do so by law in urgent circumstances, to protect personal safety, the public or the Portal
• Essex County Council may use the information as part of the accreditation process but will only use the information for this specific purpose and no records will be retained outside of the Portal
• Anonymised and statistical data will be shared with Essex County Council.

Any personal information obtained from the Portal may be used by the Website Operator for the purposes described above, but will not be shared with any other party other than as described or where the Website Operator is legally obliged to disclose the data.

As a service provider you have responsibilities and obligations to protect data. 

If you handle personal information about individuals, you have a number of legal obligations to protect that information. You can find out more here:

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/

The links are good practice to help protect and support businesses, we recommend that you visit The Information Commissioner's Office website for more details.

No financial transactions are managed via the Portal. The Portal is solely used as a method to display products and services, relating to adult social care, available to residents in the Essex County Council area.

In the event that you breach any of the provisions above, we reserve the right to remove that content or disable access to the Portal and to respond to any complaints made by a third party in respect of that content. We will not be liable to you if we remove any content because we believe that such content breaches the provisions of these Terms.

We shall have the right without notice to record the IP address from which any user submitted content is transmitted or communicated through this Website.

We may also preserve any content that you send or receive if required to do so by law or if reasonably required to ensure compliance with the Terms or to respond to third party complaints about such content.

We reserve the right to delete any data, or take action against any account, at any time, for any reason.

If you post any data on the Portal (other than private account details) you agree to it being published on the Portal which is a public website.

 If you upload any image, media file or video you must have permission and/or the appropriate licence from the original owner of the item

The Website Operator will use reasonable effort to ensure that all personal information relating to the Provider Portal is secure against unauthorised access.

You will keep any passwords or usernames created for the purpose of your use of the Portal confidential and you agree not to disclose your password and username to anyone else.

The Portal is intended to be available 7 days a week 24 hours a day, subject to any pre-agreed maintenance slots, and the Website Operator will endeavour to make this so. However, the Website Operator will not be liable for any failure to achieve this level of availability.

The Portal may be suspended with reasonable notice for maintenance or repair and for Portal failure or reasons beyond our control.

The Website Operator will endeavour to exclude viruses from the Portal and the Data but cannot guarantee such exclusion. The user should take appropriate steps in respect of any such risk from virus attack.

The Website Operator is not responsible for the content of external internet sites that link to the Portal or which are linked from it and cannot guarantee that these links will work all of the time and have no control over the availability of the linked pages.

Although the Website Operator has made reasonable efforts to ensure that the information on the Portal is as full and accurate as possible it does not purport that the data is fully comprehensive or accurate.

The Website Operator accepts no liability in contract, tort or otherwise including negligence for:

• loss of access to the Portal due to routine or emergency maintenance or due to excessive demand for the Portal;
• loss of data including both data sent and other data held by or on behalf of the user;
• delay or failure in receipt of data;
• indirect or consequential damages arising from the use of the Portal or relying on its content.

Copyright

The Website Operator owns the copyright in the contents of the Portal. Reproduction in any form or by any means of text, logos or graphics is not allowed without the express, written permission of the Website Operator unless otherwise stated.

General

This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law and each party to this Agreement submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Public Partnerships or Essex County Council may, at their sole discretion, take action against your account or accounts, including, but not limited to suspension of your account or accounts for a pre-determined period of time or permanent suspension of your access to the Portal. If your access has been suspended temporarily or permanently you must not re-register or otherwise attempt to re-access the Portal without our prior consent.

You acknowledge that you are solely responsible for any content or other materials that you post to the Portal and that we reserve the right to remove any information which is considered by us to be inappropriate.

In addition, you agree not to use the Provider Portal:

• for any unlawful purposes;
• to transmit or communicate any material which is obscene, offensive, blasphemous, pornographic, unlawful, threatening, menacing, abusive, harmful, an invasion of privacy, defamatory, libellous, vulgar or otherwise objectionable;
• to transmit or communicate any material which infringes our or any other person's copyrights, trademarks, patents, moral rights or other intellectual property rights without formal permission or licence;
• to transmit or communicate any material that contains images, audio or video recordings, software or other material protected by intellectual property laws (or by the rights of confidentiality or privacy, where applicable) unless you own or control the rights thereto and have received all necessary consents and agreement in relation to any third parties' interest in the material;
• to transmit or communicate any material which is likely to have a detrimental effect on our or any other person's reputation;
• harvest content or IP addresses or transmit or communicate any material which contains software viruses or any other files or programs that may interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of this Website or server or any other computer or that contains any unsolicited or unauthorised materials, chain letters, junk mail, spam or similar;
  to transmit any material which is likely to cause harm to our or anyone else's computer systems, including but not limited to any virus, code, worm, data or other routine purposely designed to damage or cause any defect, error, malfunction or corruption to any computer system;
• to restrict or in any way inhibit any person from using this Website;
• to transmit or communicate any material in breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990;
• to impersonate or falsely state or misrepresent your organisation with any entity or person including without limitation ourselves, or other Portal members;
• to delete any author contributions, legal notices or proprietary designations or labels in any file which is uploaded or falsify the origin or source of the material which is transmitted or communicated;
• to provide services or goods that are not appropriate to adult social care and service users of adult social care;
• to operate the account in such a way that is not appropriate when dealing with vulnerable people;
• to advertise or trade any goods or service specifically targeted at children;
• to use the data collected from users of the website for anything other than the delivery of goods and services.

By uploading data to the Portal you warrant that your data complies with these Terms and Conditions, and/or any relevant laws and regulations in force from time to time, and agree to indemnify us against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be incurred by Us as a result of your breach of this warranty.

Your registration on the Portal does not automatically grant any rights to you to display or trade any goods or services via the Portal.

All Providers must be accredited by Essex County Council. Part of the registration process for the Portal includes authorisation by Essex County Council. Only accredited Providers will be authorised. Your goods and services will only be made visible to Portal end users once your access has been approved by Essex County Council.