1 Disclaimer statement
The aims of this website are to:
- provide information to residents, users of County Council services, businesses and the general public
- enable access to County Council services
- promote the county of West Sussex, the County Council and its services.
While every care has been taken in the compilation of this information, West Sussex County Council will not be held responsible for any loss, damage or inconvenience caused as a result of inaccuracy or error within these web pages. The County Council does not endorse any externally linked sites and is not responsible for their content. Customers should note that some external providers may use premium rate telephone numbers. See our Help page for further information.
West Sussex County Council uses reasonable efforts to include and update information on this website, but it is unable to confirm its accuracy or completeness. You should not assume that this website is error-free. There may be occasions where information is inaccurate or incomplete. You can help us to correct this by reporting it to osd.office@westsussex.gov.uk.
West Sussex County Council will not be responsible for errors or omissions in this website or other documents which are referenced by, or linked to, this website.
This information should not be relied upon as sole substitute for formal advice from the originating bodies or departments of West Sussex County Council and its partners.
We will try to resolve any issues which lead to our website not working properly or being unavailable as quickly as we can. However, West Sussex County Council will not be held liable for any loses arising in connection with the use of, or performance of, our website. We will not be held liable for any loss of data.
West Sussex County Council attempts to ensure the accuracy of material and to test it on various platforms, but does not guarantee that any of its contents is virus-free. You must take your own precautions, as we accept no responsibility for any infection by virus or other contamination or by anything which has destructive properties. Please visit the Get Safe Online website for advice.
2 Copyright
All material on our website, including text and graphics, is copyright of West Sussex County Council unless otherwise stated. It may be used only with the written permission of the County Council. The County Council does not object to the use of material which is included on the website for personal or private research. Educational use (within the classroom) is permitted provided that no changes are made to the material and West Sussex County Council is acknowledged as the owner.
4 Logos and artwork
The logos and artwork on the West Sussex County Council website are the copyright of its information providers and use of them is strictly prohibited without prior authorisation.
5 Use of text
Any use of text provided by West Sussex County Council is allowed within the Fair Dealing terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, such as for research and private purposes. If the text is changed in any way, resulting documents cannot be credited to West Sussex County Council.
Information produced and/or disseminated by West Sussex County Council may be subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights. All rights are reserved. Information should not be reproduced, modified, or distributed in any form, or used in any way for commercial purposes, without first obtaining the written permission of the County Council.
Census data used throughout the site has been obtained from the Office for National Statistics and is © Crown Copyright reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office and the Queen's Printer for Scotland, (C02W0002227). The source of all Census data is the Office for National Statistics.
Users are granted permission to reproduce Crown Copyright material for their personal use provided that a Click-Use Licence has been obtained. A Click-Use licence can be obtained from OPSI, where you can also check if your organisation already has a licence. When reproducing Census material, the source must be acknowledged.
All maps are produced from Ordnance Survey material with permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationary Office © Crown Copyright (C02W0002227).
Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown Copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings.
6 Copyright for contribution
Where you submit any contribution to West Sussex County Council (including but not limited to photographs or text) you agree to grant West Sussex County Council a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative work from, distribute, perform, play and exercise all copyright with respect to your contribution worldwide.
West Sussex County Council is also granted the right to incorporate your contribution in any other works in any media known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist and in accordance with privacy restrictions set out in the West Sussex County Council privacy policy. If you do not want to grant to West Sussex County Council the rights set out above, please do not submit your contribution to West Sussex County Council.
By submitting your contribution to West Sussex County Council, you guarantee that your contribution is:
- your own original work and that you have the right to make it available to West Sussex County Council for all purposes specified above
- not defamatory and does not infringe any law.
You will indemnify West Sussex County Council against all legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be incurred by West Sussex County Council as a result of your breach of the above guarantee.
7 Events
All events are listed at the sole discretion of West Sussex County Council. We reserve the right to reject or withdraw the listing of any event without explanation.
West Sussex County Council endeavours to provide up-to-date and accurate information, but we will not accept liability for the accuracy or currency of the information provided by third parties or for the content on any linked or related web sites.
Listings of promotional events on our website should not be taken as an endorsement of that event of any kind by West Sussex County Council.
We will not accept liability for any consequences arising from your attendance at the events described. Before attending any event, we recommend you contact the event organiser, at the phone number provided, to confirm dates, locations, and other important information relating to the event.
8 Communications
The County Council does not accept liability for the failure of any communications resulting from access to the site or linked sites. The County Council does not guarantee communications will be secure or error free, as information may be intercepted, corrupted, amended, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The County Council does not accept liability for any such matters or their consequences.
10 Online payments
Payments made on our website are through third party. It is safe to make payments to West Sussex County Council. It is our policy to protect your privacy by making your online transactions with the council secure. We have strict security measures in place to prevent the alteration, loss or misuse of information on our computers.
When you send us your payment details, they are encrypted, or changed to unreadable code, on their journey between your computer and ours. So any information you send us cannot be read between these two points.
When your payment details arrive they are held securely at our end. Access to your information is carefully restricted. We will only use your card details for the payment concerned. We will not disclose your card details to any third parties other than the bank which processes them for payment.
If you would like to check the secure status of our web server, where your details are held, please click on the VeriSign secure symbol, which is displayed on all payment pages.
Once your credit card company or bank has approved the payment, they will process it within two working days. Once your payment has been authorised, it will appear on a confirmation screen, which you may like to print out or save for future reference.
To make using the online payments service even more secure we automatically instruct most browsers to no longer cache personal information (store information in their memory). We are able to do this in the majority of instances but strongly advise that after you have completed making your payment that you return to the homepage using the link on the final page.
Where the browser does not cache information, you may not be able to retrieve the last page you have visited by using the browser's back button. In some cases you may have to follow additional steps to refresh the page you have seen. Using the navigation buttons on the online payments service pages avoids any navigation problems.
The council complies with the provisions of the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation and our online payments are subject to the tightest security under our control.
9 Social media
Acceptable use policy
West Sussex County Council maintain profiles on a range of social media platforms to help us communicate and engage with our local communities.
The county council encourages and welcomes constructive debate with and comments from our communities on these channels.
However, we balance this open approach with our duty of care to our staff, who work tirelessly to support communities across West Sussex, and with our aim to keep our social media channels free from abusive comments and content for the sake of all users.
We monitor comments on our social media platforms Monday to Friday during office hours.
We do not tolerate comments, posts or messages containing abusive or harmful content, whether in public or private.
We reserve the right to block, mute, hide, disable, or otherwise restrict accounts, comments and posts on the county council’s social media profiles that interact in an unacceptable way either with the county council directly or with other users.
The following behaviours will be treated as unacceptable:
We will take appropriate action based on the circumstances and content, and the terms, conditions and functionality of the relevant social media platform.
Threats, harassment, abuse and other suspected criminal behaviour will be reported to the police. There’s more information on reporting hate crimes and incidents and support available.
Sharing malicious or offensive posts on social media may also be found to be an offence under the Malicious Communications Act.
Restricting accounts, comments and posts on our social media channels does not prevent members of the public from contacting the county council directly via our regular contact methods, details of which can be found on the contact us pages.
We will not notify people when they are blocked or otherwise restricted and we will not discuss on social media, either in public or in private, the reasons for a block or restriction being enforced.
If you are blocked or otherwise restricted from interacting with the council on social media and believe the action to be taken in error, please contact us by email with details and we will look into what has happened. Please note, accounts that have been blocked for the above behaviours will not be interacted with by email. This does not affect your right to make a complaint.
If you are blocked or otherwise restricted from interacting with the council on social media and believe the action taken to be unfair you can make a complaint.
Accounts seen to be impersonating or parodying West Sussex County Council, a council service, team, councillor or member of staff, or otherwise using the council branding or logo without permission will be reported to the social media platform.
We may take action to restrict content on our social media profiles in order to prevent further harm if the information shared presents a safeguarding concern to one or more individuals.
This policy is published on the West Sussex County Council website and is reviewed regularly.