Terms of use

1.1. By visiting our Website, you confirm that you accept these Terms of Use and agree to abide by them. If you do not agree to any of these terms, please refrain from using our Website. We recommend that you print a copy of this document for future reference.

1.2. We reserve the right to amend these Terms of Use and any of our Policies from time to time. Every time you wish to use our Website, please check them to ensure you understand the terms that apply at that time.

1.3. You are expected to check this page from time to time to take notice of any changes we make, as they are legally binding on you. Some of the provisions contained within our Policies may also be superseded by provisions or notices published elsewhere on our Website.

2.1. We may update and change our Website from time to time to reflect changes to our services, our users' needs or any other aspect of the way we run our business.

2.2. Through the Website, you may gain access to the commercial products and services of IOSH Services Limited, which is wholly owned by IOSH. In addition to these Terms of Use, there may be additional Terms and Conditions relating to your use/purchase of such products or services which you should read carefully before using/purchasing any such products or services.

2.3. You must not use the Website in any way that causes or may cause the Website to be damaged or access to the Website to be interrupted at all.

3.1. If you have a membership account with us, this should belong to and only be accessible by you. Each membership account is available to one person only and must not under any circumstances be registered or operated automatically by a computer programme or otherwise.

3.2. If you choose, or you are provided with, a password or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential. You must not disclose it to any third party.

4.1. We do not guarantee that our Website, or any content on it, will always be available or that your ability to use it will be uninterrupted. Some parts of our Website are only accessible to IOSH members. We may suspend, withdraw or restrict the availability of all or any part of our Website for business or operational reasons.

4.2. The content on our Website is provided for general information only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action based on the content on our Website.

4.3. While the information contained in the Website has been compiled from sources reasonably believed to be current and reliable, we make no warranties, representations or guarantees, whether express or implied, about the accuracy, reliability, completeness or timeliness of such information and will not be liable for any loss or damage suffered because of any error or omission which may occur.

4.4. Where our Website contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties, these links are provided for your information only. Such links should not be interpreted as approval by us of those linked sites or any information that you may obtain from them. We have no control over the contents of those sites or resources.

4.5. The information on the ‘Choosing a qualification’ page is correct at the time of being published on the Website. Qualifications may have been added or removed since this list was published. We bear no responsibility for the information given on this page, which is produced for guidance purposes only. We reserve the right to refuse any application submitted to join IOSH as a member, irrespective of the qualifications held.

4.6. The opinions expressed in Branch or Group articles, presentations and other documents, posted on the Website are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH). Where the content includes discussion and information about UK law or occupational health matters, this should not be regarded as legal or medical advice. Where legal advice is required, a suitably qualified lawyer should be consulted. Where medical advice is required, a suitably qualified medical practitioner should be consulted.

Save as set out in the Terms of Use, IOSH, fully permitted by law, excludes all warranties, conditions and implied terms, including the warranty of non-infringement of third parties' rights.”

5.1 Some information or material, such as on our Website forums, are uploaded to the Website by other users. These forums are monitored by us to safeguard individuals against defamatory content which may be uploaded by users from time to time. However, any information or materials uploaded by other users of the Website have not been verified or approved by us. The views expressed by other users on our Website do not represent what we think or what our business believes.

5.2 If you wish to complain about any information or materials uploaded by other users, please go to our feedback page to get in contact.

6.1. We do not exclude or limit in any way our liability to you where it would be unlawful to do so. This includes liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence or the negligence of our employees, agents or subcontractors and for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.

6.2. We exclude all conditions, warranties, representations or other terms implied by law that may apply to our Website or any content on it.

6.3. We will not be liable to you for any loss or damage, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise however it arises and, even if foreseeable, arising under or in connection with:

    6.3.1. your use of, or inability to use, our Website or

    6.3.2. your use of or reliance on any content displayed on our Website.

6.4. Without prejudice to any other provision contained within these Terms of Use, we shall not be liable for any damages arising from the use of, or inability to use, the Website or any of its contents. Whilst precautions are taken (such as checking that all documents uploaded are virus-free), we do not guarantee that any part of the Website is free of infection by viruses or anything else that may be harmful or destructive to the device used to access this Website. For the avoidance of doubt, if any use of the Website results in the need for servicing or replacing equipment or data, we shall not under any circumstances be responsible for those costs.

6.5. The exclusions of liability in this section apply to the fullest extent permissible by law.

7.1. Unless expressly stated otherwise, all intellectual property rights in our Website (this means copyright, design rights, trade marks, patents, rights in any inventions and any other rights that are similar) and the material on our Website are, as between you and us, vested in us (except for any pre-existing rights belonging to you or others).

7.2. You must not use any part of the content on our Website (except any content that you have generated) for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from the owner of that content.

7.3. In connection with your use of the Website, you are however permitted to view, copy, download, store, retransmit, display, distribute, show or play in public any part or content of the Website for the purposes of research, private study or for internal circulation within an organisation, if all the following conditions are adhered to:

    7.3.1. you retain all copyright notices and other proprietary notices contained in the original material on any copy you make

    7.3.2. IOSH is quoted as the source and the content of the material is not adapted or modified in any way and

    7.3.3. you do not use the Website nor the material in any manner which would otherwise constitute an infringement of any third-party rights (including any intellectual property rights).

7.4. The IOSH acronym and IOSH logo are registered trademarks and cannot be reproduced without our prior written permission, save as permitted by Clause 7.3.1 above.

7.5. The permission to allow any person to use the IOSH logo shall only be given in our absolute discretion to:

    7.5.1. partners or collaborators of IOSH, for use in a project in which IOSH is formally involved

    7.5.2. organisers of events which IOSH is sponsoring or is officially associated with or

    7.5.3. approved training organisations.

7.6. Where we give you permission to use our logo in accordance with Clause 7.4, your usage shall be restricted to direct, specific references to a project, event or training programme with which we are involved. The logo shall not under any circumstances be permitted to be used to imply a broad or generic association with IOSH.

7.7. For the avoidance of doubt, the IOSH logo shall not available for members to use on an individual basis. Full reproduction guidelines and logo configurations are only usually available to authorised users. If you would like to seek permission to use the IOSH logo, please get in touch so that we can confirm whether you have our permission to do so and instruct you on how to use the logo correctly.

7.8. All other trademarks or trade names in the Website are the marks of the respective owner(s) and any unauthorised use is prohibited.

7.9. We reserve the right to vary and change our branding either totally or in part with or without notice and irrespective of medium or format.

8.1. Where you submit any contribution to the Website, including through forums, consultation document responses, or blogs, you agree to grant us, free of any charge, the right to reproduce, create derivative works from and exercise copyright and publicity rights with respect to your contribution and in accordance with any restrictions set out in our Privacy Notice from time to time. We will not reproduce or use any private messages sent by you through our Website in any way unless we are permitted or required to do so by law.

8.2. You are responsible for making sure that any contributions you make, or which are made on your behalf on our Website do not breach the rights (including intellectual property rights) of anyone else. If any third party makes a claim against us that any contributions made by you or on your behalf infringes any of their rights in any way, you must indemnify us for all claims, liabilities, loss, damage, costs, and expenses (including reasonable legal expenses) that we suffer or incur because of or in connection with such contribution.

8.3. You must read and agree to abide by our forum rules which are published on our Website before posting a message on the forums or sending a private message through our Website. If you do not agree to abide by our Forum rules, you must not use our forums or private messaging facilities on our Website.

9.1. All IOSH members are welcome to supply their views on consultation documents to be considered as part of an IOSH response.

9.2. IOSH reserves the right not to include in an IOSH response to a consultation document, any comment that it feels should not be included, for example comments that:

• are racist, sexist, or abusive
• promote individuals, organisations, or products/services
• are outside the IOSH consensus view (e.g. of an extreme or contrary nature) or
• are inaccurate or irrelevant to the issues in the consultation document.

9.3. We will not pass your details on to any other party. The only reason we may use your details is if we need to contact you for administrative reasons regarding the consultation document you have commented on. For further information on how we handle personal data, please visit our Privacy notice.

9.4. The comments you submit to IOSH on consultation documents are covered by our ‘Contributions to iosh.com’ statement. Find out more about consultation on documents.

10.1. Remember our public forums and blogs are accessible to everyone and are ‘crawled’ by search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, daily. This means anything you post on one of our public forums and blogs could be indexed by a search engine and returned in search engine results. We accept no responsibility for any contribution made by you which is returned in search engine results. Member-only forums are not crawled by search engines.

10.2. Your email address is not visible to other forum users. To contact another user outside the forums, you should use our private messaging service. If you disclose your email address in a forum posting or private message, you do so at your own risk, and we do not accept any liability for any consequences you suffer because of this.

Children of 16 years and under are not allowed to post messages or contributions on the Website. If you are under 16 years and need advice or have a question for our forum users, why not ask your parent, guardian or teacher to post the question on your behalf, and you will still be able to read the responses without having to register for the forums.

12.1. The Website may provide links to other third-party websites which are not under our control, including those which may refer to IOSH. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the privacy policies, content or practices of these other websites. If you decide to access linked third-party websites, you do so at your own risk. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, we do not endorse any of the products or services advertised or available on any of the sites that we link to.

12.2. In our events calendar, we may include links to other third-party websites; for example, where you can see a map of the event venue location. These links are provided for general information purposes only are we shall not be responsible for the content of these websites, or the accuracy of the information given.

12.3. We retain the right to add or remove links on the Website at any time.

13.1. You may link to the home page of our Website (www.iosh.com), provided you do so in a way that is fair, legal and does not damage our reputation in any way, nor imply without our prior consent that we have approved or endorsed you in any way.

13.2. Requests for permission to link to other areas of our Website should be made to the Marketing Communications team.

13.3. All links to our Website must be appropriate and relevant in the context of IOSH’s activities and must not give the impression that IOSH is in any way associated with or has approved such other website.

13.4. You must not establish a link to our Website in any website without permission. We may withdraw linking permission at any time.

14.1. By subscribing to our news feeds, you agree to abide by our news feed terms of use.

• You may use the IOSH news feed ("Feed") to place the content on your electronic device. We will use reasonable endeavors to ensure the general availability of the Feed; however, we do not guarantee that this will be the case.
• You agree to abide by all applicable laws, regulations and codes of conduct in your use of the Feed its content.
• Any content available via the Feed belongs to IOSH. We own the copyright and all other intellectual property rights associated with the content.

14.2. You may not do any of the following without prior written permission from IOSH:

• reproduce the content (other than allowed under the News Feed Standard License Terms), or modify, or in any way commercially exploit any of the content
• redistribute any of the content (including using it as part of any library, archive or similar service)
• remove the copyright or trademark notice(s) from any copies of content made in accordance with these terms or
• create a database in electronic or structured manual form by systematically downloading and storing all and any of the content.

15.1. You must not post complaints on the forums or post a complaint about identifiable users, IOSH moderators or moderating action.

15.2. If you are concerned about a moderating decision, posts or communications from a moderator, the forum rules or another user’s behaviour/profile/post/private message, please use the Report Message link available beneath every post. Make sure that you explain your concerns when using the report function - there is a text box on the report form for this purpose. Alternatively, you can email socialmedia@iosh.com.

15.3. All concerns are considered by the Social Media and Community Team and then discussed by the moderating team where appropriate. Will usually aim to get back to you in five working days.

16.1. The Website provides a link to the Occupational Safety and Health Consultants Register (OSCHR) The register aims to assist businesses to find advice on general health and safety management. IOSH is one of the professional bodies that have worked together in partnership to develop the register, which has established a benchmark standard for safety consultants and help to raise the quality of advice being given to businesses.

16.2. It is the responsibility of the client to satisfy him or herself that the consultant concerned has current professional indemnity and public liability insurance, and that they can provide the service(s) required.

16.3. IOSH cannot accept any liability for any service, advice, guidance or information provided by consultants listed on the Website.

Please note that these Terms of Use, their subject matter, and their formation (and any non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by English law. You and we both agree that the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction.