01Who we are

Career People Ltd (“we”, “us”, “our”), trading as Council People, operates this website and the services described in these terms.

02These terms and your agreement

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of the websites at councilpeople.co.uk, councilpeople.com and any associated subdomains or hosted job board pages (together, the “Site”), together with the services we provide through them.

By accessing the Site, subscribing to job alerts, creating an employer account, or posting a listing, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not accept them, you must not use the Site.

If you are entering into these Terms on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you have authority to bind that organisation, and “you” means that organisation.

These Terms should be read together with our Privacy Policy, which explains how we handle personal data.

03Definitions

04What Council People is — and is not

Council People is a job board and aggregator for UK local government vacancies. We bring vacancies together in one searchable place and direct interested candidates to the Employer's own recruitment website.

Accordingly, we are not a party to any application, interview, offer, contract of employment or engagement between a Candidate and an Employer, and we have no responsibility for any of them.

05Eligibility

• Anyone may browse and search the Site without providing personal data or creating an account.
• You must be 16 or over to subscribe to job alert emails. See our Privacy Policy, section 14.
• Employer accounts may only be created by a person aged 18 or over acting with authority on behalf of the organisation.

Many vacancies on the Site — including apprenticeships, work experience and graduate schemes — may interest younger people. Anyone of any age may view them. Eligibility to apply for a vacancy is determined by the Employer, not by us.

06Using the Site as a job seeker

Use of the Site by Candidates is free of charge. We do not charge you to search, view, or apply for any vacancy, and we never will.

• You do not need an account. The only personal data we hold about Candidates is an email address, and only if you subscribe to alerts.
• Listings are provided by Employers or aggregated from their published sources. We do not verify their accuracy, currency or lawfulness.
• A vacancy may be filled, withdrawn, amended or closed by the Employer at any time, including before it disappears from the Site.
• Salary, hours, location, closing date and all other particulars are the Employer's, not ours. Where a Listing conflicts with the Employer's own advertisement, the Employer's version prevails.

You are responsible for satisfying yourself as to the suitability, legitimacy and accuracy of any vacancy before applying. If a Listing appears to be inaccurate, expired or fraudulent, please tell us at support@councilpeople.com and we will investigate.

07Job alert emails

If you subscribe, we will send you emails containing newly published vacancies matching the alert you selected. By subscribing you consent to receive those emails.

• Alerts are compiled by matching new Listings against your chosen criteria. This is a simple filter, not a recommendation, endorsement or assessment of your suitability.
• Every email contains a one-click unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing takes effect promptly and permanently.
• We do not send you advertising or third-party marketing, and we do not pass your address to Employers, recruiters or advertisers.
• Alerts are provided as a free convenience. We do not guarantee that every relevant vacancy will be included, or that emails will arrive at any particular time.

Subscriptions that have been inactive for 12 months are deleted automatically.

08Employer accounts

To post Listings directly, you must register for an employer account and provide accurate, current and complete information.

• You are responsible for all activity under your account, and for keeping login credentials confidential. Tell us immediately at support@councilpeople.com if you suspect unauthorised access.
• Accounts are for the organisation named at registration. You may not sell, transfer, share or sublicense your account, your Plan, or any Listing allowance to another organisation.
• You must not post vacancies on behalf of a third party without our prior written consent. Recruitment agencies posting on behalf of councils require our written agreement.
• You warrant that every Listing you post relates to a genuine, currently open vacancy at the organisation named in it.

09Free apprenticeship listings

For these purposes, an Apprenticeship Listing means a vacancy that:

• is advertised as an apprenticeship, traineeship, or equivalent formal entry-level training role; and
• combines paid employment with structured, accredited training leading to a recognised qualification or occupational standard; and
• is open to applicants without prior professional qualification in the relevant field.

The following do not qualify as Apprenticeship Listings and require a paid Plan: general junior or entry-level roles without a formal training component; graduate schemes; internships or work experience placements that are unpaid or carry no accredited training; and roles requiring an existing professional qualification.

We reserve the right to determine, acting reasonably, whether a Listing qualifies. If we consider that a Listing has been posted as an apprenticeship in order to avoid a fee, we may reclassify it, require a Plan, or remove it under section 15. Repeated misuse may lead to suspension under section 25.

This offer is made at our discretion and may be varied or withdrawn for future Listings on reasonable notice under section 26. Any Apprenticeship Listing already published will run for its full duration.

10Paid plans and what they include

Employers who wish to post vacancies other than Apprenticeship Listings must hold a paid Plan. The Plans, their prices, and the features and limits of each are set out on our Pricing page, which forms part of these Terms.

At the date of these Terms we offer three Plans — Starter, Growth and Enterprise — differing in the number of Listings, the period for which they remain live, and additional features such as featured placement and social sharing. The Pricing page is the definitive statement of what each Plan includes.

• Prices are stated in pounds sterling. We are not currently registered for VAT, and no VAT is charged on our Plans. The price shown on the Pricing page is the total amount payable. If we become VAT-registered in future, we will give you at least 30 days’ notice before VAT is added, and any change will take effect on your next renewal.
• Listing allowances are per billing period and do not roll over to the next period if unused.
• Where a Plan states that Listings remain live for a number of days, that period runs from publication, and a Listing may end sooner if you remove it or if we remove it under section 15.
• We may change Plan prices and features. Changes take effect on your next renewal and we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email.

Purchasing a Plan gives you a licence to publish Listings on the Site for the period of the Plan. It confers no right to any particular level of traffic, applications, views or hires. We do not guarantee any recruitment outcome.

11Billing, renewal and cancellation

Payment is taken at the point of purchase and on each renewal.

• Card payments are processed by Stripe. We do not receive or store your card details. Stripe's own terms govern the payment transaction.
• Plans are monthly and renew automatically on the same date each month until cancelled, unless the Pricing page states otherwise.
• You may cancel at any time from your account, or by emailing support@councilpeople.com. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• On cancellation you keep access for the remainder of the paid period. Listings already published remain live for their stated duration; you may not publish new Listings after the period ends.
• You may upgrade or downgrade at any time. Upgrades take effect immediately, with the balance charged pro rata. Downgrades take effect at the next renewal.
• If a payment fails, we may suspend publication of new Listings and, after reasonable notice, unpublish live Listings and close the account.

You are responsible for keeping payment details current and for any bank, card or currency-conversion charges levied by your provider.

12Refunds

Plans are sold to organisations for business purposes. Except where these Terms or the law provide otherwise, fees are non-refundable once the billing period has begun, including where you cancel mid-period, do not use your full Listing allowance, or fill a vacancy early.

We will, however, refund you where:

• we remove or fail to publish a Listing through our error or a fault in the Site, and cannot remedy it within a reasonable time — in which case we will refund a fair proportion of the fee for the affected Listing; or
• we materially reduce the features of your Plan mid-period and you cancel within 30 days of being notified; or
• you were charged in error, or charged twice.

We will not refund fees where a Listing is removed because it breached section 13 or 14, or where an account is suspended or terminated for breach.

If you are an individual purchasing outside your trade or profession, nothing in this section affects your statutory cancellation rights under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, or your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Refund requests should be sent to support@councilpeople.com and will be answered within 14 days.

13Listing content standards

You are solely responsible for the content of every Listing you post. You warrant that each Listing:

• is accurate, current and not misleading, including as to salary, hours, location, contract type and closing date;
• relates to a genuine, currently open vacancy at the organisation named;
• complies with all applicable law, including the Equality Act 2010, and does not discriminate on the basis of any protected characteristic;
• complies with the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage Regulations, and (for apprenticeships) with the apprentice rate where applicable;
• does not infringe any third party's intellectual property, confidentiality, privacy or other rights;
• is free of malware, tracking beyond that necessary to operate a link, and hidden or misleading text; and
• contains no personal data of any individual other than a named contact who has consented to publication.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, reproduce, adapt for formatting, publish, index and distribute your Listing and your organisation's name and logo, for the purpose of operating and promoting the Site, including submission to search engines and Google for Jobs. This licence ends when the Listing is removed, save that we may retain archival copies and search engines may cache content beyond our control.

14Prohibited listings and conduct

You must not post, and must not use the Site to promote, any of the following:

• vacancies that do not exist, are speculative, or are posted to build a candidate database;
• roles requiring the Candidate to pay any fee, buy goods or services, make a deposit, or invest money;
• multi-level marketing, franchise, commission-only or “business opportunity” schemes presented as employment;
• vacancies with discriminatory requirements, or wording that would deter applicants with a protected characteristic;
• content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, harassing, threatening, or that incites violence or hatred;
• vacancies for adult services, or work that is illegal in the United Kingdom;
• advertising, sponsorship or promotional content unrelated to a specific vacancy; or
• any content that misrepresents the identity of the Employer, or the relationship between the Employer and the Site.

Listings that require an applicant to pay a fee are prohibited absolutely, including where the fee is described as optional, refundable, or for training, equipment, checks or accommodation.

15Moderation, editing and removal

We are not obliged to review Listings before publication, and we do not do so as a matter of course. We may, however, at our sole discretion and without notice:

• edit a Listing for formatting, length, spelling, categorisation or accessibility, without altering its substance;
• decline to publish, unpublish, or permanently remove any Listing that we reasonably believe breaches these Terms, is inaccurate or expired, or exposes us or our users to risk;
• reclassify a Listing that has been posted under the wrong category or as an Apprenticeship Listing when it does not qualify; and
• suspend or close an account under section 25.

Where we remove a Listing for breach, no refund is due. Where we remove one in error, section 12 applies. We will tell you the reason for removal on request, unless prevented by law.

16Aggregated listings and takedown requests

Many Listings on the Site are aggregated from publicly available sources — principally the recruitment pages and job feeds published by UK local authorities. We reproduce the vacancy particulars, link to the Employer's own advertisement, and send all applicants there.

We do this in reliance on our legitimate interests in operating a job board that helps candidates find public sector roles and helps councils fill them. We add no application step, charge no fee to the council, and do not present the vacancy as our own.

If you believe any content on the Site infringes your copyright or other rights, write to us at the address in section 1 or email us, identifying the content, the right infringed and your basis for the claim. We will respond promptly.

17Intellectual property

The Site, its design, layout, text, graphics, logos, the Council People name and brand, the arrangement and compilation of Listings, and all software underlying the Site, are owned by us or licensed to us, and are protected by copyright, database right and trade mark law.

• You may view, download and print pages of the Site for your own personal or internal business use in connection with seeking or advertising employment.
• You may not otherwise copy, reproduce, republish, systematically extract, re-utilise, distribute, sell or exploit any part of the Site or the compilation of Listings.
• Employers retain ownership of their own Listing content, logos and trade marks, subject to the licence in section 13.
• Council names, crests and logos remain the property of the relevant authority and are displayed to identify the Employer of a vacancy.

18Acceptable use of the Site

You must not:

• use any robot, spider, scraper or automated means to access, extract or index the Site or its Listings, except a search engine crawler acting in accordance with our robots.txt;
• circumvent, disable or interfere with any security, rate-limiting or access-control feature;
• introduce malware, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Site, its servers, or any account;
• impose an unreasonable load on our infrastructure, or conduct a denial-of-service attack;
• harvest email addresses or personal data from the Site;
• frame, mirror or deep-link to the Site in a way that misrepresents its origin, or remove any proprietary notice; or
• use the Site for any unlawful purpose, or in breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

We may report suspected criminal activity to the police or other authorities, and cooperate with them, including by disclosing your identity.

19Third-party websites and applications

The Site links to Employers' recruitment websites and may link to other third-party sites. When you follow such a link, you leave our Site.

We do not control those websites and are not responsible for their content, availability, security, accuracy, terms, or privacy practices. A link is not an endorsement. Any dealings you have with a third party — including submitting an application — are solely between you and that third party.

Each council is an independent data controller for the personal data you provide to it. Its privacy notice, not ours, governs your application.

20Availability and changes to the service

We aim to keep the Site available at all times, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free access. Access may be suspended, restricted or withdrawn temporarily, without notice, for maintenance, upgrades, repairs, or reasons beyond our control.

We may change, add to, or discontinue any part of the Site or its features at any time. Where a change materially and adversely affects a Plan you have paid for, section 12 gives you a right to a refund of the unused portion.

We are not liable for any failure or delay caused by an event outside our reasonable control, including failures of hosting or payment providers, internet or power outages, industrial action, or acts of government.

21Disclaimers

The Site and its content are provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we exclude all representations, warranties, conditions and terms implied by statute or common law.

In particular, we do not warrant that:

• any Listing is accurate, current, lawful, or relates to a genuine vacancy;
• any vacancy remains open, or that an application will be received, considered or answered;
• any Candidate will obtain employment, or any Employer will receive applications or make a hire;
• the Site will be secure, uninterrupted, or free from errors, viruses or harmful components; or
• alert emails will be delivered, or delivered on time.

Nothing on the Site is legal, employment, financial or career advice, and it should not be relied on as such.

22Limitation of liability

Subject to the paragraph above:

• We are not liable to Candidates for any loss or damage arising from use of the Site, since it is provided free of charge, except as required by law.
• We are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, opportunity, anticipated savings, goodwill, or data, whether arising in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty or otherwise.
• We are not liable for loss arising from any decision to hire or not to hire, from the conduct of any Employer or Candidate, from the accuracy of any Listing, or from any dealings you have on a third-party website.
• Our total aggregate liability to an Employer in respect of all claims arising in any 12-month period is limited to the total fees paid by that Employer to us in that period.
• Our total aggregate liability to a Candidate is limited to £100.

If you are a business, you acknowledge that these limits are reasonable given the price of the Plans and the nature of the service.

23Indemnity

If you are an Employer, you agree to indemnify us and keep us indemnified against all liabilities, losses, damages, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) that we suffer or incur arising out of or in connection with:

• any Listing you post, including any claim that it is inaccurate, discriminatory, unlawful, or infringes a third party's rights;
• your breach of these Terms; or
• your use of the Site in a way not permitted by these Terms.

This section does not apply to Candidates.

24Data protection

Our handling of personal data is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.

In summary: we hold Candidates' email addresses only; we never receive job applications; we do not sell personal data; and we carry no advertising. Employers are independent controllers of any personal data they receive through their own recruitment websites.

Where an Employer includes personal data in a Listing — for example a named contact — the Employer is responsible for having a lawful basis to publish it.

25Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Site, your account, or any Listing, with immediate effect and without refund, if we reasonably believe that:

• you have materially breached these Terms, including sections 13, 14 or 18;
• you have repeatedly posted Listings that do not qualify as Apprenticeship Listings in order to avoid fees;
• you have failed to pay a sum due, and have not paid it within 14 days of a written reminder;
• your use exposes us, our users or a third party to legal liability or material risk; or
• we are required to do so by law.

You may stop using the Site at any time. Candidates may unsubscribe at any time. Employers may cancel under section 11.

Sections 13 (licence), 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27 and 28 survive termination, together with any other provision that by its nature should survive.

26Changes to these terms

We may amend these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in our service, our providers, or the law. The effective date and version number at the top of this page always show the current edition.

• Minor or clarifying changes take effect when published.
• Changes that materially affect your rights — including changes to fees, to the free apprenticeship offer, or to sections 22 or 23 — take effect no less than 30 days after we publish them, and we will notify Employers by email.
• If you do not accept a material change, you may cancel before it takes effect and we will refund any unused portion of a prepaid period.
• Continuing to use the Site after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of it.

The version of these Terms in force when you post a Listing governs that Listing for its duration.

27General

• Entire agreement. These Terms, the Pricing page and the Privacy Policy constitute the entire agreement between us, and supersede any prior understanding, in respect of the Site.
• No waiver. A delay or failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of it.
• Severance. If any provision is held unlawful or unenforceable, it is severed and the remainder continues in force.
• Assignment. You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our written consent. We may assign ours to a successor of our business, provided your rights are not prejudiced.
• Third parties. No person other than you and us has any right to enforce these Terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
• Notices. We may give notice by email to the address on your account or by publication on the Site. You may give notice to us at support@councilpeople.com.

28Governing law and contact

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them (including non-contractual disputes), are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, save that if you are a consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in your home courts.

Before starting proceedings, please contact us — most issues are resolved quickly and informally.