Statutory guidance

Environment Agency Conditional Licence

Updated 5 May 2016

Applies to England

You are encouraged to use and re-use the Information that is available under this licence with the conditions that follow.

1. Using Information under this licence

Use of copyright and database right material expressly made available under this licence (the ‘Information’) indicates your acceptance of the terms and conditions below. We grant you a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the Information subject to the conditions below.

This licence does not affect your freedom under fair dealing or fair use or any other copyright or database right exceptions and limitations.

2. You are free, subject to the conditions identified below, to:

  • copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information;
  • adapt the Information;
  • exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

3. You must (where you do any of the above):

  • Identify whether an abstract is available for this data. For online data this will be the metadata record on data.gov.uk. For other data it will be the record on the Register of Licence Abstracts or in an email or letter sent to you, or is available on request.
  • ensure that you take appropriate note of the Abstract, including any information warnings, attribution statements and licence conditions;
  • if you are supplied the information for use in a contract you have with us, only use the information [internally and ]for the purposes and duration of the agreed contract.
  • do not mislead others or misrepresent the Information or its source;
  • acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by us and, where possible, provide a link to this licence;

If we do not provide a specific attribution statement, you must use the following:

“Contains Environment Agency information © Environment Agency and/or database right”.

If you are using Information from several Information Providers and listing multiple attributions is not practical in your product or application, you may include a URI or hyperlink to a resource that contains the required attribution statements.

These are important conditions of this licence and if you fail to comply with them the rights granted to you under this licence, or any similar licence granted by us, will end automatically.

4. Exemptions

4.1 This licence does not cover:

  • Information that has not been accessed by way of publication or disclosure under information access legislation (including the Freedom of Information Acts for the UK and Scotland) by or with our consent;
  • logos, except where they form an integral part of a document or dataset;
  • other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade marks, and design rights;

5. Non-endorsement

This licence does not grant you any right to use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that we endorse you or your use of the Information.

6. No warranty

The Information is licensed ‘as is’ and we exclude all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law.

We are not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. We do not guarantee the continued supply of the Information.

7. Ending the Licence

We have the right to end this Licence at any time:

  • if you are wound up, declared bankrupt, placed in the hands of receivers or creditors or otherwise stop operating;
  • if there is a material breach of the terms of this Licence and you do not put this right within 60 days of our telling you in writing or by email, or
  • in order to comply with any legal requirement including the legal requirement of a third party whose Content is used in the creation of our Content.

8. Governing Law

This licence is governed by the laws of England and Wales.

9. Definitions

In this licence, the terms below have the following meanings:

‘Abstract’ comprises the description for the data including any guidance, information warnings, licence conditions, attributes, and all required attribution statements.

‘Information’ means information protected by copyright or by database right (for example, literary and artistic works, content, data and source code) offered for use under the terms of this licence.

‘Use’ means doing any act which is restricted by copyright or database right, whether in the original medium or in any other medium, and includes without limitation distributing, copying, adapting, modifying as may be technically necessary to use it in a different mode or format.

‘You’, ‘you’ and ‘your’ means the natural or legal person, or body of persons corporate or incorporate, acquiring rights in the Information (whether the Information is obtained directly from the Licensor or otherwise) under this licence.

10. About the Environment Agency Conditional Licence

The Environment Agency licenses information under an Open Government Licence wherever possible.

This Conditional Licence is used where an Open Government Licence is not possible. For example:

  • The Information contains third party data that we only have permissions to release to certain people or with certain restrictions.
  • We need to apply Special Conditions to protect use of Personal Data or National Security, where we would otherwise have to refuse a licence.

The Environment Agency will also use legacy ‘Special’ licences for a small number of datasets until April 2018. This is information which still carries a charge for commercial use.