Terms of service

1. About these terms

These terms apply between Doffy Labs Ltd, trading as Stedwise (“we”; company number 17183964, registered office 66 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NA), and the organisation that uses it (“you”). By starting the free readiness check or creating an account you agree to them. If you use Stedwise for an organisation, you confirm you may accept these terms for it.

2. What Stedwise is, and what it is not

Stedwise is self-serve software that helps supported housing providers and managing agents prepare for licensing and quality assessment. In particular:

• It is not legal advice. Stedwise summarises published rules and labels how certain each one is. It does not advise you on your legal position. Take professional advice before relying on anything for a legal decision.
• Stedwise never decides who holds a licence. Where more than one party could hold a licence, it shows the facts you have recorded and the questions to put to the council. The decision is yours, the other parties’ and the council’s.
• It does not interpret contracts. Where it shows a duty from a contract, it quotes the clause and page; a person confirms it.
• Scores are not outcomes. The Readiness Index is our estimate of readiness against a rule set. It is not a licensing decision or an award. Licences are granted by councils and awards by their assessors, who are not bound by anything Stedwise shows.
• Forecasts are not law. Some rules are shown as proposed or as our forecast, with a probability. They may turn out to be wrong.
• It is independent. Stedwise is not endorsed by BVSC, Birmingham City Council, any other council or MHCLG.

3. Generated documents are starting points

Policies, protocols and other documents that Stedwise generates are starting points, not compliance guarantees. Each is marked for you to review, adapt to your service and adopt. You are responsible for the content of anything you adopt, publish or rely on, and for making sure it reflects what you actually do.

4. Accounts and users

You sign in with a link sent to your email address. Keep access to that mailbox secure, and remove users who no longer need access. You are responsible for what your users do in Stedwise and for giving each the right role. Owners and managers must turn on two-step verification within 14 days of joining an organisation. Anyone who can open resident records, referrals, safeguarding records or criminal record check outcomes must turn it on before they can see them.

5. Your data

You own the data you put into Stedwise. Where it includes personal data about residents, staff or other people, we process it on your behalf under our data processing agreement, which forms part of these terms. Our privacy notice explains the data we control ourselves. Stedwise never shares data between organisations without a recorded consent and data sharing agreement.

6. The free readiness check

The check is free, and you can take it without an account. If you ask us to email you a link to carry on, a sign-up link or the report, opening that link creates a free account for your email address. The result comes only from your own answers. While you use the check, your email address (if you gave one) stays with it so the check can come back to you. 24 months after a check was last used we remove the email address and anything else that identifies you, and keep only the answers and scores, which we use to improve the accuracy of our scoring.

7. Plans, prices and billing

• There are two plans. The free Ready plan includes the readiness check, licence cards for the law in force today, the gap list and the responsibility map. The paid plan includes every module. Housing associations overseeing the managing agents that share with them do so free.
• The paid plan is priced by units. A unit is one bed space at an active address in an active scheme on your account: registered capacity, not occupancy, so empty rooms count. Archived addresses and schemes do not.
• The monthly price is graduated, and each rate applies only to the units in its band: £149 for the first 10 units (the minimum, which also applies with fewer than 10 units or none), then £9 a unit for units 11 to 50, £7 for units 51 to 200, £4.50 for units 201 to 1,000 and £2.50 for each unit above 1,000. Above 1,000 units you may ask us for a price instead.
• You can pay monthly or yearly. The annual price is ten times the monthly price: two months free.
• Your units are counted from the addresses and bed spaces you record, and your subscription follows them. When your units go up, the extra units are charged straight away for the rest of the current billing period, in proportion to the time left. When they go down, the lower count applies from your next renewal; there is no credit or refund for the period already paid.
• Founding customers: the first 25 organisations to take an annual subscription pay 30% less than the list price on annual billing until 31 March 2028, then the list price. The discount does not apply to monthly billing; a founding customer who moves to monthly billing pays the monthly list price, and gets the founding price again if they return to annual billing before it ends. A founding place is not transferable.
• Packs are one-off purchases. The S.E.A.Q.A.S. pack (£995) is credited in full against a subscription you start within 90 days of buying it. The licence application pack (£495 per council area, included free for annual subscribers) will be available once the national application form is published.
• We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged.
• Prices will be reviewed when licensing begins. If they change, existing customers keep their price for 12 months, and we will tell account owners by email before any change affects them.
• Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep access until the end of the period you have paid for, and there is no refund for the rest of that period.

8. Acceptable use

Do not use Stedwise to break the law, to upload data you have no right to process, to test or attack its security, or to present its output as endorsed by a council, BVSC or MHCLG. Do not upload resident personal data into document checks: those are for organisational documents only, and Stedwise will refuse documents that contain resident data.

9. Changes to the rules and the service

Supported housing rules are changing. We update rubrics, templates and obligations as sources change, and record content changes in the public changelog. Past assessments stay pinned to the rubric version they used. We may change these terms; we will tell account owners by email before a material change takes effect.

10. Liability

Our total liability to you under or in connection with these terms, whatever the cause, is capped at the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the event that gave rise to the claim. For the free readiness check, where no fees are paid, we accept no liability beyond what the law does not allow us to exclude.

We are not liable for loss of Housing Benefit, loss of income, a refused or revoked licence, a missed award, or decisions you make on the basis of a score, forecast or generated document. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

11. Ending

You can close your account at any time. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. When a contract ends you can export your data, and we then delete it in line with the data processing agreement.

12. Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction.

13. Contact

Email hello@stedwise.co.uk.