Terms & conditions

Terms of use

Please read these terms of use carefully before you start to use the site. By using our site, you indicate that you accept these terms of use and that you agree to abide by them. If you do not agree to these terms of use you should leave the site immediately.

Reliance on information Posted and Disclaimer

The materials contained on our site are provided for general information purposes only and do not claim to be or constitute legal or other professional advice and shall not be relied upon as such.

We do not accept any responsibility for any loss which may arise from accessing or reliance on the information on this site and to the fullest extent permitted by English law, we exclude all liability for loss or damages direct or indirect arising from use of this site.

Information about us

www.healthwatchcornwall.co.uk is a site operated by Healthwatch Cornwall.

Accessing our site

Healthwatch Cornwall website is maintained for your personal use and viewing. Access and use by you of this site constitutes your acceptance of our Terms and Conditions. We reserve the right to withdraw or amend the service we provide on our site without notice (see below). We will not be liable if for any reason our site is unavailable at any time or for any period.

Intellectual rights

We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our site, and in the material published on it. Those works are protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved.

Healthwatch Cornwall copyright protected material may be reproduced free of charge or copied to others in any format or medium for research, private study or for internal circulation within an organisation. This is subject to the material being reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. You must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.

Where any of the Healthwatch Cornwall copyright material on this site is being republished or copied to others, the source of the material must be identified and the copyright status acknowledged.

Permission to reproduce the Healthwatch Cornwall material does not extend to any materials on this site as identified as being the copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the copyright holders concerned.

You must not use any part of the materials on our site for commercial purposes without obtaining a license to do so from us or our licensors.

If you print off, copy or download any part of our site in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our site will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made.

Use of the Healthwatch logo

We are licensed by Healthwatch England to use the Healthwatch logo. Healthwatch England only allows those organisations which it has licensed to use the Healthwatch logo.

The Healthwatch logo is a registered trademark and is protected under trademark law. The use of the Healthwatch logo without permission of Healthwatch England constitutes an infringement of its trademark.

Out site changes regularly

We aim to update our site regularly, and may change the content at any time. If the need arises, we may suspend access to our site, or close it indefinitely. Any of the material on our site may be out-of-date at any given time, and whilst we will endeavour to ensure information is up to date we are under no obligation to do so.

Our liability

The material displayed on our site is provided without any guarantees, conditions or warranties as to its accuracy. To the extent permitted by law, we, and third parties connected to us hereby expressly exclude:

All conditions, warranties and other terms which might otherwise be implied by statute, common law or the law of equity.

Any liability for any direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage incurred by any user in connection with our site or in connection with the use, inability to use, or results of the use of our site, any websites linked to it and any materials posted on it, including, without limitation any liability for:

• loss of income or revenue;

• loss of business;

• loss of profits or contracts;

• loss of anticipated savings;

• loss of data;

• loss of goodwill;

• wasted management or office time;

• and for any other loss or damage of any kind, however arising and whether caused by tort (including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise, even if foreseeable, provided that this condition shall not prevent claims for loss of or damage to your tangible property or any other claims for direct financial loss that are not excluded by any of the categories set out above.

This does not affect our liability for death or personal injury arising from our negligence, nor our liability for fraudulent misrepresentation or misrepresentation as to a fundamental matter, nor any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law.

Information about you and your visits to the site

We process information about you in accordance with data protection legislation. By using our site, you consent to such processing and you warrant that all data provided by you is accurate. Please read our Privacy Policy.

Viruses, hacking and other offences

You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material which is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack.

By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.

We make every effort to check and test material at all stages of production. It is always wise for you to run an anti-virus program on all material downloaded from the internet.

We will not be liable for any loss or damage caused by a distributed denial-of-service attack, viruses or other technologically harmful material that may infect your computer equipment, computer programs, data or other proprietary material due to your use of our site or to your downloading of any material posted on it, or on any website linked to it.

Links from our site

Where our site contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. When accessing a site via our website we advise you check their terms of use and privacy policies to ensure compliance and determine how they may use your information.

Although we will endeavour to maintain links to other websites, we cannot guarantee that these links will work all the time and we have no control over the availability or reliability of linked pages.

Jurisdiction and applicable law

The English courts will have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any claim arising from, or related to, a visit to our site.

These terms of use and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of England and Wales.

Variations

We may revise these terms of use at any time by amending this page. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we made, as they are binding on you. Some of the provisions contained in these terms of use may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our site.

Your concerns

If you have any concerns about material which appears on our site, please contact enquiries@healthwatchcornwall.co.uk

Amendments of terms

We may make changes to Healthwatch Cornwall, including these terms, at any time. You will be legally bound by the updated or amended terms from the first time that you use Healthwatch Cornwall after we put the changes on-line.

Editorial control

We reserve the right (on behalf of ourselves and any moderator which we may appoint) to edit, not put on the website or delete any posts you submit.

Online conduct

All feedback is reviewed and monitored. We will seek permission to use any comments in publicity materials.

Criteria.

Your feedback must be for a relevant publicly-funded health and/or social care service in Cornwall or a Devon service if you are a Cornwall resident accessing one.

a.  Comments should relate to your own personal experience. You should not name any individuals (other than yourself) or include information through which someone else could identify such an individual. For example, use “a doctor at” rather than the doctor’s name or a personal description such as “the young, female GP”.

If you want to comment on someone else’s experience, (e.g. a relative or someone you care for) then you may do so if you ensure that you are not named in the posting and you state how the other person is connected to you (e.g. “my father”).

b.  Comments should be constructive, truthful, and not abusive.

c. You should not use your feedback to make complaints about individual hospitals, GP practices or treatment centres, if you wish the matter to be dealt with under the NHS complaints procedures.

d. You are legally responsible for the content of any material you submit on healthwatchcornwall.co.uk 

e. Any comments solicited by service providers or a related party are not permitted. Service providers should never post comments on behalf of patients, their friends or family members.

f. You can comment anonymously if you wish. You should respect the anonymity of other patients and staff at the service you are commenting on by not using their names.

g. Whether you are speaking for yourself, a friend or a family member, do not name the individuals you are talking about. If you are making a comment on another person’s behalf, it is best instead to talk of ”my husband” “my uncle” and so on to protect their privacy.

h. To protect your privacy any information you contribute that reveals personal information, such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, twitter handles, addresses and so on will be removed.

i. Where there are comments that are part of a current, formal complaints procedure we will consider the impact of publishing them on the site.

j. If we are concerned that the author of a comment may be vulnerable, we will take appropriate action to protect that person. This may include signposting the person to an appropriate organisation for support, not publishing the comment or, in the most serious cases, we may contact the appropriate authority.

Legal issues

Current court cases and court injunctions

Contempt of court rules mean you cannot make comments that could prejudice the outcome of a court case or General Medical Council hearing. Comments on something that subsequently becomes the subject of a court case or hearing will also be removed if they risk being in contempt of court. Contributions that break a court injunction will be removed.

Clinical negligence or criminal activity

Specific accusations of clinical negligence in which an individual is identified will not be published. If you have an allegation of clinical negligence by a particular clinician please use the NHS complaints procedure. Accusations of specific criminal activity will not be published. If you believe that criminal activity is or has taken place at any NHS organisation please contact the police or the organisation directly.

Defamation

Defamation is a complex area. Defamation may occur when someone makes a statement that damages a person’s reputation. The law allows you to post comments containing your honestly held opinion. Knowingly posting untrue statements is against the law. Comments deemed to contain defamatory statements will be removed.

Disclaimer

It is not to be regarded as a statement of the law nor should it be relied upon to make any judgement as to whether content is potentially defamatory. It is up to you to decide whether to take specific legal advice.

Threats

Comments containing threats of public fear, terrorism or threats towards any individual are not permitted.

Your Legal Responsibility

You are legally responsible for the content of any material you submit for posting on Healthwatch Cornwall. If Healthwatch Cornwall suffer any loss or damage as a result of your contributions, whether this loss arises as a result of us being subject to legal action or otherwise, you agree to indemnify us for our loss or damage and legal expenses

Prize draws

The prize will be clearly specified in any prize draw competition/survey we promote.

By taking part in a prize draw you agree that your name and post code location may be used in any subsequent Healthwatch Cornwall marketing/publicity materials. If under 18, parental/guardian permission will be sought for acceptance of prize if the winner.

The winner will be chosen at random. No alternatives will be offered to prize specified.

If the winner does not responded to Healthwatch Cornwall’s attempts to contact them a new winner will be drawn after two weeks of the closing date/end of survey.

None of the social media platforms we share our prize draws on are associated with these promotions. They are not involved in any sponsorship, endorsement or administration of it. Participants provide a total release of these social media platforms.

Healthwatch Cornwall is not responsible for the accuracy of the information supplied in blogs by external contributors. Articles of 450 words max. and with a head and shoulders photo can be sent to: enquiries@healthwatchcornwall.co.uk for consideration.