Terms of Service

GroundPin is a technology platform. It lets construction and utility professionals record observations about buried services on the ground, attach photos and notes to those observations, and optionally share them within and between organisations.

GroundPin is not a utility asset register. It is not an alternative to the LinesearchbeforeUDig (LSBUD) service, the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR), or to utility record drawings supplied by asset owners. It does not replace any statutory or contractual obligation you or your organisation may have, including under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, or the Health and Safety Executive guidance note HSG47 “Avoiding danger from underground services”.

GroundPin does not verify, audit, or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or currency of any pin, photo, note, service record, or annotation made available through the platform. All such content is supplied by users and their organisations, and is provided to you on an “as is” basis.

Regardless of any information you obtain from GroundPin, you and your organisation remain responsible for following HSG47 and all other applicable safe-digging practice before excavating near buried services, including (without limitation):

• Carrying out an LSBUD search and reviewing all asset owner plans returned.
• Checking the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) where available to your sector.
• Using a cable avoidance tool (CAT) and signal generator on every dig.
• Trial holing to visually confirm service positions before mechanical excavation.
• Following your organisation’s permit-to-dig procedures and any CDM 2015 duties applicable to the works.

GroundPin pins are positioned by the GPS fix of the contributing device. Typical accuracy is 3 to 5 metres in open sky and can be significantly worse near tall buildings, under tree cover, or in urban canyons. Treat every pin as indicative of an area, never of an exact coordinate. The photograph attached to a pin is always more informative than the marker position.

When you create a pin, upload a photo, add a note, verify another pin, or contribute any other content (collectively, “Your Content”), you represent and warrant to us that:

• Your Content is accurate to the best of your knowledge at the time of contribution.
• You or your organisation have the right to contribute Your Content, and doing so does not breach any contract, non-disclosure agreement, statutory duty, or third-party right.
• Your Content does not contain personal data about identifiable individuals other than as required for legitimate site-safety purposes. You are responsible for complying with UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 when contributing content that may contain personal data.

You and your organisation retain ownership of Your Content. You grant GroundPin a worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, process, display, and make available Your Content as necessary to operate the platform, including to any users you invite to your site and to any recipient of a share link you or your organisation’s administrators issue.

We may remove or disable access to any content that we believe, in our reasonable discretion, breaches these terms or applicable law. We aim to notify the contributing organisation where possible, but we reserve the right to act without prior notice where the content presents an immediate risk.

GroundPin lets you share a site via an unguessable “share link”. Anyone who holds the link can view the shared site’s pins and photos in read-only form until the link’s expiry or revocation. Links expire automatically after the period chosen at issuance (up to a maximum of 90 days).

By issuing a share link you represent and warrant that you have authority from your organisation and, where applicable, from any third party whose data is represented on the site, to share the content. You accept that:

• Recipients may take screenshots, download photos, or otherwise copy the content while the link is live.
• Revoking a link prevents future loads but does not retrieve or invalidate copies already made.
• You remain accountable for the contribution and any consequences of its disclosure.

We may revoke any share link without notice if we have reasonable grounds to suspect misuse, abuse, scraping, or breach of these terms.

If you access GroundPin via a share link, you acknowledge that:

• The content you are viewing is contributed by a third-party organisation and has not been verified or endorsed by GroundPin.
• The content is informational only and is not a substitute for LSBUD or NUAR searches, CAT scans, trial holes, or professional ground surveys.
• You must comply with HSG47 and all other applicable safe-digging guidance before any excavation near buried services.
• GroundPin collects limited technical information (IP address hashed with a server-side secret, user-agent string, time of access) for each share-link view for audit and fraud-prevention purposes.

To the fullest extent permitted by English law, GroundPin, its directors, employees, and contractors exclude all liability arising from or in connection with:

• Any inaccuracy, incompleteness, or absence of content made available through the platform, including utility pin positions, depths, colours, or notes.
• Any loss or damage arising from your reliance on such content.
• Any utility strike, excavation damage, service interruption, property damage, business loss, or personal injury arising in the course of works where HSG47 or any other statutory requirement has not been fully complied with.
• Indirect, consequential, special, or incidental loss, including loss of profit, revenue, goodwill, or data.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for:

• Death or personal injury caused by our negligence.
• Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Any other liability which cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Where our liability is not excluded by these terms, our aggregate liability to you and your organisation under or in connection with these terms (whether in contract, tort including negligence, breach of statutory duty, or otherwise) is limited to the total fees paid by your organisation to us in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or £100, whichever is the greater.

You acknowledge that the limitations in this clause are reasonable in all the circumstances, reflect the allocation of risk between us, and are a fundamental basis on which GroundPin is made available to you at the price at which it is made available.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless GroundPin, its directors, employees, and contractors against all claims, losses, damages, costs (including reasonable legal costs), and expenses arising from or in connection with:

• Your Content being inaccurate, unauthorised, or in breach of any third-party right or applicable law.
• Your sharing of content in breach of these terms or any duty you owe to others.
• Your use of the platform (or any other person’s use of the platform using credentials issued to you) in breach of HSG47, the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991, CDM 2015, or any other statutory or regulatory requirement.

We aim to keep the platform available and accurate but we do not warrant uninterrupted service. We may change, suspend, or withdraw features at any time, including retiring beta functionality. We will give reasonable prior notice of material changes where practicable.

We may update these terms from time to time. The current version is always available at groundpin.co.uk/terms with the last-updated date. Material changes will be communicated to account holders by email or in-app notice at least 14 days before taking effect.

You may close your account at any time from the Profile page. We may suspend or terminate your account or your organisation’s account with immediate effect if we have reasonable grounds to believe you have breached these terms, or where required by law.

On termination, account data is retained or deleted in line with our Privacy Policy, including the 30-day grace period before hard deletion to allow recovery.

These terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that if you are a consumer, you may have the right to bring proceedings in the courts of your country of residence.

Questions about these terms go to hello@groundpin.co.uk. Registered office: D4N LTD, Derby, United Kingdom. Company number 17061504.