Terms & conditions

1. About these terms

These terms and conditions (the "Terms") govern your access to and use of the Lobby Insider website, newsletters, comment facilities, bookmarks, RSS feeds and any other service we operate (together, the "Services"). By accessing or using the Services you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Services.

The Services are operated by Lobby Insider ("we", "us", "our"). You can contact us at any time via our contact page or by emailing hello@lobbyinsider.co.uk.

2. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect changes in the law, our Services or our practices. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page tells you when the Terms were last revised. Where changes are material we will notify registered users by email or through an in-product notice. Continuing to use the Services after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

3. Accounts and registration

You can browse most of Lobby Insider without an account. To comment, bookmark articles, subscribe to newsletters from your account, or take out a paid subscription, you will need to register using an email address and password.

• You must be at least 16 years old to register an account.
• The information you provide must be accurate and kept up to date.
• You are responsible for keeping your password confidential and for all activity under your account.
• Tell us immediately via our contact page if you believe your account has been compromised.
• Staff accounts (authors, moderators and admins) are required to have two-factor authentication enabled.

We may suspend, restrict or terminate your account if you breach these Terms, abuse the Services, or use them in a way that risks harm to other users, our staff or our reputation (see section 12).

4. Our content and intellectual property

All editorial content on the Services — including articles, headlines, photographs, illustrations, live updates, newsletters, designs and code — is owned by Lobby Insider or licensed to us, and is protected by copyright, trade mark and other intellectual property laws.

You may, for personal and non-commercial use only:

• read and view our content on the Services;
• share links to articles on social media or by email;
• quote short extracts (up to roughly 150 words) with clear attribution and a link back to the original article.

You may not, without our prior written permission:

• republish, redistribute, broadcast or sell our content in whole or in part;
• use our content to train, fine-tune or evaluate any artificial intelligence or machine learning model;
• scrape, crawl, copy or aggregate our content using automated tools beyond what is permitted by our published RSS feeds and robots.txt;
• remove or alter copyright notices, bylines or watermarks;
• frame, mirror or deep-link to our content in a misleading way.

For syndication, licensing or republication enquiries, please get in touch via our contact page.

5. Subscriptions and paid services

Some Lobby Insider content and features are reserved for paying subscribers. We currently offer two paid tiers: Ad-free (removes on-site advertising) and Premium (removes on-site advertising and unlocks premium articles). Pricing, billing frequency and any free trial are shown clearly before you commit, and prices are inclusive of VAT where applicable.

• Payment processor: subscription payments are processed by Stripe. We do not store your full card details.
• Automatic renewal: subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each billing period using your stored payment method, until you cancel.
• Cancellation: you may cancel at any time from your billing settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period and you will retain access until then.
• Refunds: outside your statutory cancellation rights under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, subscription payments are non-refundable.
• Price changes: we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email of any change to your subscription price, so you can cancel before the new price takes effect.
• Free tier: ad-supported access remains available without payment, subject to these Terms.

6. Comments and community guidelines

Registered users can post comments on articles. By posting a comment ("User Content") you agree to follow our community guidelines:

• Be civil. No personal abuse, harassment, threats, hate speech or incitement to violence.
• Stay on topic and contribute constructively to the discussion.
• Do not post content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, discriminatory or infringes anyone's rights.
• Do not impersonate other people, including our journalists or public figures.
• Do not post spam, advertising, scams, affiliate links or links to malicious sites.
• Do not share private information about other people without their consent.

By posting a comment you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to host, store, reproduce, display, edit and publish that content in connection with the Services. You retain ownership of your User Content. You confirm that you have the right to grant this licence and that your contribution does not breach anyone else's rights.

Any user can report a comment using the in-thread "Report" control. Our moderation team reviews reports and may edit, hide or remove comments and restrict accounts where the guidelines have been broken.

7. Bans and account restrictions

Where a user repeatedly or seriously breaches these Terms or our community guidelines, we may restrict their account. A restricted (banned) account:

• can still browse Lobby Insider and read articles;
• cannot post new comments while the restriction is active;
• cannot access the staff dashboard;
• will see a sitewide notice showing the reason for the restriction and, where a duration was set, when it expires.

Restrictions may be temporary (with a stated expiry) or permanent. Temporary restrictions lift automatically once the duration has elapsed. If you believe a restriction has been applied in error, please get in touch via our contact page.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the Services in a way that breaks any law or regulation;
• interfere with the operation of the Services, the servers that host them, or other users' access;
• introduce viruses, trojans, worms or other malicious code;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Services, our systems or related networks;
• circumvent any technical measures we use to restrict access (for example, paywalls, rate limits, comment bans or IP blocks).

9. Newsletters and communications

When you sign up to one of our newsletters we will send you the editions you have subscribed to. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link at the foot of every newsletter or from your account settings. Service messages — for example, billing receipts, security alerts and important account notices — are not optional while you have an active account.

10. Third-party links, advertising and embeds

The Services contain links to third-party websites, embedded social media posts and advertising provided by third parties (including Google AdSense for users on the free tier). We do not control these third parties and are not responsible for their content, products, services or privacy practices. Following a link or interacting with an advert is at your own risk and any contract you enter into with a third party is between you and them. See our Privacy & cookies policy for more on how third-party cookies are used.

11. Disclaimers

We aim to publish accurate, well-sourced journalism (see our editorial guidelines) but the Services are provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not warrant that the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free or free from harmful components, or that the content will always be complete, current or accurate.

Nothing on the Services constitutes legal, financial, medical or other professional advice. You should not rely on it as a substitute for advice from a qualified professional.

12. Suspension and termination

We may suspend, restrict or terminate your access to the Services (or any part of them) at any time if you breach these Terms, if we are required to do so by law, or if continuing to provide the Services becomes commercially unviable. Where reasonable, we will give you notice first. You may stop using the Services and close your account at any time by contacting us.

13. Liability

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

Subject to that:

• we are not liable for any loss or damage that is not reasonably foreseeable;
• we are not liable for any indirect, incidental or consequential loss, including loss of profits, revenue, business, opportunity, goodwill or data;
• our total liability to you in connection with the Services in any 12-month period will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us for the Services in that period, or (b) £100.

If you use the Services for the purposes of a business, we have no liability to you for any loss of profit, loss of business, business interruption or loss of business opportunity.

14. Privacy

Our Privacy & cookies policy explains how we collect and use your personal information and how we use cookies and similar technologies. By using the Services you acknowledge that policy.

15. Complaints

If you have a complaint about our journalism, please follow the process set out in our editorial guidelines. For all other complaints, please get in touch via our contact page. We aim to acknowledge complaints within five working days and to provide a full response within 28 days.

16. Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in your local courts.

17. General

• If any part of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest will continue to apply.
• Our failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of that right.
• You may not transfer your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may transfer ours, for example as part of a corporate reorganisation, provided your rights are not adversely affected.
• These Terms, together with our Privacy & cookies policy and any subscription terms, form the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Services.