Terms of Service

1. Agreement

By using Planning Consult ("the service") you agree to these Terms of Service. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

The service is operated by Freestart plc (company number 03855529, registered in England and Wales, registered office at 12 Lord Street, Wigan, WN1 2BN), trading as Planning Handbook ("we", "us"). The service is published under the Planning Handbook editorial framework.

2. Service description

Planning Consult provides automated planning constraint information for UK addresses by combining live data from public sources (planning.data.gov.uk, Historic England, Environment Agency, Natural England, and others). The service offers:

• Free constraint check — an on-screen 15-layer constraint screen for any UK postcode.
• £19 PDF report — a one-off fee for the same check rendered as a citable PDF, plus an approval-likelihood score, written analysis, and a 24-month nearby application history.
• £69 planning statement — an AI-drafted planning statement anchored to the local plan policies your site triggers, delivered as an editable Word document.

3. Accounts

When you submit an email to unlock a free report, or pay for the £19 or £69 service, we create a free account for that email so you can return to your dashboard. Sign-in is by passwordless magic-link sent to that email; you don't need to set or remember a password.

You must be aged 18 or over to create an account. The service is intended for use in the United Kingdom — features, data and pricing assume a UK context.

You are responsible for keeping your sign-in credentials confidential and for all activity on your account. Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

4. Fees and payment

Paid services are charged at the prices shown on the website at the time of purchase. All prices include VAT where applicable. Payment is processed by Stripe; we never see or store your card details. Receipts are emailed to the address associated with your account.

5. Refunds

Because each report and statement is generated specifically for your postcode and project on demand — and is therefore digital content supplied with your express consent — your statutory 14-day cancellation right under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 ends as soon as we begin generating it.

That said, we'll refund any purchase if the report fails to generate, contains a clear factual error in the underlying constraint flags, or you contact us within 7 days and haven't downloaded the deliverable. Email [email protected].

6. Indicative-only output

Constraint checks, approval likelihood scores, and planning statement drafts are indicative only. They are intended to inform an early-stage feasibility view and to support — not replace — professional advice from an architect, planning consultant, or solicitor.

Planning Consult is not a substitute for:

• A formal pre-application enquiry to your local planning authority.
• Advice from a chartered town planner (RTPI) on a borderline scheme.
• A solicitor's property search.
• Site-specific surveys (heritage, ecology, flood risk).

Public planning data is updated periodically and may lag the most recent designations. We refresh from the source feeds daily, but you should always verify a critical decision against the LPA's own records before committing financial or design resource.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use the service to infringe anyone's rights or to do anything unlawful.
• Scrape, mass-query, or otherwise place an unreasonable load on the service.
• Reverse engineer, copy, or resell our reports or statements as your own product.
• Misrepresent the output as something other than what it is (an indicative summary).

We rate-limit by IP and email and may suspend accounts that abuse these limits.

8. Intellectual property

The website, the constraint-check output, and the planning statement template are owned by Freestart plc (trading as Planning Handbook) and are licensed to you for your own use (personal, or by your firm in the course of professional advice you're providing to a client).

The underlying public planning data (Crown copyright, Open Government Licence) remains the property of its respective publishers.

You retain ownership of the project description and any inputs you provide.

9. Limitation of liability

Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot be excluded under English law (including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud). Subject to that:

• Our total liability to you for any one matter is limited to the fees you've paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or £500, whichever is greater.
• We're not liable for indirect, consequential, or business losses (including loss of profit, loss of goodwill, planning permission refusals, project delays, or the cost of professional advice).
• The service is provided "as is". We don't warrant that the public planning data is complete, accurate, or up to date — we surface it as published.

10. Termination

You can delete your account at any time by emailing [email protected].

We may suspend or terminate access if you breach these terms, abuse the service, or if we're required to by law. We'll give reasonable notice unless suspension is needed urgently.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page tells you when. Material changes will be flagged on the homepage and emailed to active accounts at least 14 days before they take effect.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.