Terms of Service

1. Introduction and definitions

1.1 These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of the Planning Appeals platform at planningappeals.co.uk (the “Service”), operated by Milk Street Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 17028935, whose registered office is at 14a Queen Square, Bath, BA1 2HN (“we”, “us”, “our”).

1.2 By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to these Terms, you must not use the Service.

1.3 In these Terms, unless the context otherwise requires:

“Account”

means a registered user account on the Service.

“Admin”

means the person who creates and manages a Team Account, including billing, seat allocation, and member access.

“Content”

means all text, data, images, maps, documents, extracted arguments, policy badges, categorisations, and other materials made available through the Service.

“Extracted Data”

means inspector reasoning, arguments, policy references, outcome categorisations, and other information derived from appeal decision letters through automated extraction processes, including the use of artificial intelligence and large language models.

“Original Documents”

means appeal decision letters, costs decisions, and other documents published by the Planning Inspectorate (England), Planning Environment Decisions Wales, Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (Scotland), and the Planning Appeals Commission (Northern Ireland).

“Source Data”

means data obtained from public sector data providers, including but not limited to the Planning Inspectorate, Ordnance Survey, and government designation datasets.

“Team Account”

means an account with multiple named seats, each with individual workspaces, managed by an Admin.

“User Content”

means saved searches, collections, notes, alerts, and any other content created by you within the Service.

“You”, “your”

means the individual or entity accessing or using the Service.

2. Account registration

2.1 To access the Service, you must create an Account. You may register using an email address and password, or by signing in with a Google or Microsoft account.

2.2 You must be at least 18 years of age to create an Account.

2.3 You must provide accurate and complete information when creating your Account and keep this information up to date.

2.4 You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your login credentials. Each Account is for a single named individual. You must not share your login credentials with any other person.

2.5 You are responsible for all activity that occurs under your Account. You must notify us immediately at support@planningappeals.co.uk if you become aware of any unauthorised use of your Account.

3. Free trial

3.1 We offer a 7-day free trial providing full access to the Service. No payment card is required to start a free trial.

3.2 At the end of the free trial period, your Account will become inactive unless you subscribe to a paid plan. You will not be charged automatically at the end of your trial.

3.3 We reserve the right to modify, limit, or discontinue the free trial at any time, or to limit the number of free trials available to any individual or organisation.

4. Subscriptions and billing

4.1 Paid access to the Service is available on a subscription basis. Current plans and pricing are published at planningappeals.co.uk/pricing.

4.2 Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period (monthly or annual, as selected) unless cancelled before the renewal date.

4.3 You may cancel your subscription at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. You will retain full access to the Service until the end of the period you have already paid for. No refunds are issued for partial billing periods. If you are a member of a Team Account and your Admin removes you or downgrades the plan, your access ends when the change takes effect.

4.4 All payments are processed by Stripe. By subscribing, you agree to Stripe's terms of service. We do not store your full payment card details on our servers.

4.5 We may change our prices from time to time. We will give you at least 30 days' written notice (by email) of any price change. The new price will apply from your next billing period after the notice period has elapsed. If you do not wish to continue at the new price, you may cancel before the next billing period.

4.6 If a payment fails, we will notify you and provide a reasonable grace period to update your payment method. If payment is not received within the grace period, we may suspend your access to the Service until payment is made.

4.7 All prices are quoted exclusive of VAT unless stated otherwise. VAT will be added where applicable.

5. Team accounts

5.1 Team Accounts allow an Admin to purchase multiple named seats. Each seat provides an individual user with their own workspace, including personal saved searches, collections, and alerts.

5.2 The Admin is responsible for managing seats, inviting and removing team members, and managing billing for the Team Account.

5.3 Each team member must accept these Terms individually when they accept their invitation to join a Team Account. Each team member is responsible for their own conduct and compliance with these Terms.

5.4 Seats are named and non-transferable between concurrent users. If a team member leaves your organisation, the Admin should remove them and may reassign the seat to a new member.

5.5 The Admin may enforce two-factor authentication (MFA) for all members of their Team Account.

6. Acceptable use

6.1 You may use the Service for your own professional research, case preparation, and analysis purposes. You must not use the Service for any unlawful purpose.

6.2 You must not, and must not attempt to:

1. scrape, crawl, or use automated means to access, extract, or download data from the Service, whether through bots, scripts, spiders, or any other automated tool;
2. systematically download or bulk-export Content beyond what is reasonably necessary for your own professional use;
3. resell, redistribute, sublicense, or commercially exploit Content obtained from the Service, whether in its original form or as a derivative work;
4. use Content to train, fine-tune, or otherwise develop any machine learning model, artificial intelligence system, or automated data processing tool;
5. reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble any part of the Service;
6. circumvent, disable, or interfere with any access controls, security features, or usage limits of the Service;
7. share your login credentials with any other person, or allow multiple individuals to access the Service through a single Account;
8. use the Service in any manner that could damage, overload, or impair the Service or interfere with any other user's use of the Service;
9. misrepresent your identity or affiliation when creating an Account; or
10. use the Service in any way that violates applicable law or regulation.

6.3 The CSV export feature is provided for your own professional analysis and record-keeping. Exporting data for the purpose of building a competing product or service, or for resale, is expressly prohibited.

6.4 We may apply reasonable usage limits to the Service, which may vary by subscription tier. Current usage limits, if any, are published on our pricing page. We reserve the right to introduce, modify, or remove usage limits at any time.

6.5 If your usage of the Service is materially excessive relative to typical usage patterns, or is indicative of automated or programmatic access, we may throttle, suspend, or restrict your access. We will endeavour to contact you before taking such action, except where immediate action is necessary to protect the Service.

7. Data sources and licensing

7.1 The Service aggregates and presents data from public sector sources across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Sources include the Planning Inspectorate (England), Planning Environment Decisions Wales, the Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (Scotland), and the Planning Appeals Commission (Northern Ireland), among others. Coverage varies by jurisdiction and time period.

7.2 Appeal decision letters and associated documents are Crown copyright and are made available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL). You must comply with the terms of the OGL when using Original Documents accessed through the Service.

7.3 The Service may incorporate data from additional public sector sources, including but not limited to Ordnance Survey data (used under licence), government designation datasets, and National Planning Policy Framework references. Where third-party data is used, it is subject to the applicable licence terms of the originating body.

7.4 While we take reasonable steps to ensure that data sourced from public sector providers is current and complete, we do not control these sources and cannot guarantee their accuracy, completeness, or timeliness. Data availability is dependent on publication by the relevant bodies.

8. Data accuracy and limitations

In plain terms: We work hard to make this data accurate and useful. We use AI to extract inspector reasoning, and we've built guardrails to catch errors. But no dataset of this scale is perfect, and sometimes the source data itself is wrong. Always check the original decision letter.

8.1 The Service uses automated extraction processes, including artificial intelligence and large language models, to analyse appeal decision letters and derive Extracted Data such as inspector reasoning, argument categorisations, policy badges, outcome classifications, and relevance indicators.

8.2 We have implemented quality assurance measures including anti-hallucination guardrails, confidence thresholds, spot checks, and ongoing analysis to maintain the accuracy of Extracted Data. Where a decision letter cannot be reliably extracted to our quality standards, it is flagged as such rather than presented with potentially inaccurate information. We prioritise accuracy over coverage.

8.3 Despite these measures, Extracted Data may contain errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. Automated extraction is not infallible. Argument categorisations, policy references, and outcome assessments should be treated as research aids, not as definitive statements of fact.

8.4 Source data from upstream providers may itself contain errors. For example, the Planning Inspectorate's published records may occasionally record an incorrect outcome, wrong date, missing documents, or other inaccuracies. While we cross-reference data where possible, we cannot verify every data point against the original source and we do not accept responsibility for errors that originate in the source data.

8.5 The Service is designed to support professional research by providing excerpts from decision letters alongside Extracted Data. We strongly recommend that you verify Extracted Data against the Original Documents, which are linked from each case where available. The “Show excerpt” feature exists for this purpose.

8.6 The Service does not constitute legal advice. Nothing in the Content or Extracted Data should be treated as a substitute for professional legal or planning judgment. You are solely responsible for any decisions you make based on information obtained from the Service.

9. Intellectual property

9.1 The Service, including its design, software, database structure, algorithms, Extracted Data, and all proprietary content, is owned by Milk Street Group Ltd or its licensors. All rights are reserved.

9.2 Original Documents are Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Our use of these documents does not grant us or you any proprietary rights over the original Crown copyright material.

9.3 You retain ownership of your User Content (saved searches, collections, notes, and alerts). You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, and process your User Content for the purpose of providing the Service to you.

9.4 We may collect, aggregate, and anonymise data derived from your use of the Service (including but not limited to search queries, feature usage patterns, and interaction with Content) to create datasets that do not identify you personally (“Aggregated Data”). We own all Aggregated Data and may use it without restriction for any purpose, including improving the Service, developing new features and products, conducting research, and generating market insights. Aggregated Data will never contain personally identifiable information and cannot be reverse-engineered to identify any individual user.

9.5 You must not reproduce, copy, distribute, or create derivative works from the Content, Extracted Data, or database structure of the Service, except as expressly permitted by these Terms or applicable law (including fair dealing for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, or review).

10. Availability and support

10.1 We will use reasonable efforts to maintain the availability of the Service, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. The Service may be temporarily unavailable due to maintenance, updates, or circumstances beyond our reasonable control.

10.2 Where planned maintenance is expected to cause disruption, we will endeavour to provide advance notice.

10.3 Support is available by email at support@planningappeals.co.uk.

10.4 We do not currently offer a service level agreement (SLA) as part of the standard Service. Organisations requiring guaranteed uptime commitments should contact us to discuss an enterprise agreement.

11. Limitation of liability

11.1 The Service and all Content are provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or accuracy.

11.2 To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability to you in connection with these Terms or your use of the Service, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, shall not exceed the total fees paid by you to us in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

11.3 To the maximum extent permitted by law, we shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to loss of profits, loss of data, loss of business opportunity, loss of goodwill, or the cost of procurement of substitute services, arising out of or in connection with your use of the Service.

11.4 Without limiting the foregoing, we are not liable for any loss, cost, or damage arising from:

1. errors or inaccuracies in Extracted Data, including incorrect argument categorisations, policy references, or outcome classifications;
2. errors or inaccuracies in Source Data provided by upstream data providers;
3. your reliance on Content obtained through the Service without independent verification;
4. decisions you make based on information obtained from the Service; or
5. any interruption, suspension, or discontinuation of the Service.

11.5 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited by English law.

12. Termination

12.1 You may cancel your Account at any time through your account settings. Cancellation is effective immediately upon confirmation through the Service. If you have an active subscription, you will retain access until the end of your current billing period as set out in clause 4.3. It is your responsibility to cancel through the Service; we cannot guarantee timely processing of cancellation requests made by email or other means.

12.2 We may terminate or suspend your Account immediately and without notice if you breach any provision of these Terms, including but not limited to the acceptable use restrictions in clause 6.

12.3 We may terminate your Account for any other reason by giving you 30 days' written notice by email.

12.4 On termination of your Account:

1. your access to the Service will be removed;
2. your personal data and User Content will be retained and then deleted in accordance with the retention periods set out in our Privacy Policy;
3. we may retain anonymised, aggregated usage data that does not identify you, for the purpose of improving the Service; and
4. any provisions of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination (including clauses 6, 8, 9, 11, and 14) shall survive.

13. Changes to these terms

13.1 We may update these Terms from time to time. The current version will always be available at planningappeals.co.uk/terms with the “Last updated” date shown at the top of the page.

13.2 For material changes, we will notify you by email at least 30 days before the changes take effect. We will clearly identify what has changed.

13.3 Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not agree with the changes, you should cancel your Account before the changes take effect.

14. General provisions

14.1 Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of the Service, and supersede all prior agreements, representations, and understandings.

14.2 Severability. If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, the remaining provisions shall continue in full force and effect.

14.3 No waiver. Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of that provision or any other provision.

14.4 Assignment. You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations under these Terms without our prior written consent. We may assign our rights and obligations under these Terms to any successor entity or acquirer of all or substantially all of our business or assets.

14.5 Third-party rights. Nothing in these Terms is intended to confer any right or benefit on any person who is not a party to these Terms. The Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 shall not apply.

14.6 Governing law. These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.

14.7 Jurisdiction. The courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction in relation to any dispute arising out of or in connection with these Terms.

14.8 Contact. If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us at support@planningappeals.co.uk.