Legal

Terms of Use

Last updated: 24 March 2026 — These terms govern your use of WaterWatch at water-watch.co.uk.

1. Acceptance of these terms

By accessing or using WaterWatch, you agree to these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, you must stop using the service.

2. Legal status of WaterWatch

WaterWatch is an independent side project run by an individual. It is not a registered company, partnership, charity, or public authority.

In these terms, “WaterWatch”, “we”, and “our” refer to the individual operator of the service.

3. What WaterWatch provides

WaterWatch provides public-interest environmental information, including live and historic combined sewer overflow (CSO) activity, site rankings, and optional email or SMS alerting features.

We aim for accuracy and uptime, but the service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.

4. Data and no warranty

  • Most monitoring data shown on WaterWatch is sourced from third-party public datasets.
  • Data feeds may be delayed, incomplete, corrected retroactively, or temporarily unavailable.
  • WaterWatch does not guarantee that displayed data is always accurate, complete, or current.

You should not rely on WaterWatch as the sole source for emergency, regulatory, legal, engineering, health, or commercial decisions.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • Use the service in any unlawful way.
  • Attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or reverse engineer the service.
  • Scrape or bulk-download data in a way that causes performance or availability issues.
  • Use automated tools to abuse authentication, alerting, or account endpoints.
  • Impersonate others or provide false account details.

6. Accounts and alerts

  • You are responsible for keeping your account credentials secure.
  • You are responsible for configuring your alert preferences correctly.
  • We may rate-limit or suspend accounts that abuse the platform or create operational risk.

7. Intellectual property

WaterWatch branding, website design, and original content are owned by WaterWatch unless otherwise stated. Third-party datasets remain subject to their own licences and terms.

You may share links and non-misleading screenshots for personal, educational, journalistic, or civic use. For commercial reuse, contact us first.

8. Service changes and availability

We may add, change, pause, or remove features (including account and alert functionality) at any time. We may also apply maintenance windows, quotas, or technical controls to protect service reliability.

9. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, WaterWatch and its operators are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or exemplary damages arising from your use of (or inability to use) the service.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability where this would be unlawful under applicable legislation, including (where relevant) the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

10. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Continued use of WaterWatch after changes means you accept the updated terms.

11. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, unless applicable consumer law provides otherwise.

12. Contact

Questions about these terms can be sent to hello@water-watch.co.uk.