Terms of Service
Last updated 8 November 2026
These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your use of decodED and set out what Net Zero Advisory does with the information you and your organisation enter. By signing up or using decodED you agree to these Terms. If you use decodED for a school or other organisation, you also agree to them on its behalf. If you do not agree, please do not use decodED.
1. About us
1.1 decodED is operated by NZA Consultancy Ltd, trading as Net Zero Advisory ("NZA", "we", "us" or "our"), a company registered in England and Wales under company number 14478434, whose registered office is at 10 Kenmore Crescent, Bristol, BS7 0TN.
1.2 You can contact us at info@netzeroadvisory.uk.
2. Definitions
In these Terms:
- "Account" means a person's user account on decodED;
- "Organisation" means a nursery, school, college, university, university department, trust, local authority, business or other body set up on decodED, including an individual's own personal organisation;
- "Project" means an Organisation's own working copy of one school on decodED, holding everything entered for that school;
- "School Data" means the information entered into a Project: carbon, climate and nature figures, buildings and grounds, plans, risk registers, nature records, lessons, notes and files;
- "Service" means the decodED website, application and related services provided by NZA;
- "decodED Pro" and "Subscription" mean the paid plan that allows a Project to be edited;
- "you" means the person using the Service and, where applicable, the Organisation on whose behalf they act.
3. The Service
3.1 decodED helps educational settings, and those who support them, to understand their carbon emissions, climate risks and natural environment, and to plan improvements. It starts from public records about every school, such as those of the Department for Education, Display Energy Certificates and Ordnance Survey, and lets an Organisation add its own information.
3.2 Anyone may explore decodED for free, without an Account. To add your own information and build a climate action plan, you sign up for decodED Pro (clause 7).
4. Accounts
4.1 An Account is created in one of two ways: when you sign up, which means buying a decodED Pro Subscription for one or more schools; or when you accept an invitation from an Admin of an Organisation that already has one. There are no free sign-ups.
4.2 You must be at least 18 years old to hold an Account. The Service is intended for adults acting for or on behalf of an Organisation. Pupils never sign in to decodED, and Accounts must not be created for them.
4.3 You must provide accurate registration information, confirm your email address and keep your details up to date.
4.4 You are responsible for keeping your login credentials confidential and for all activity under your Account. Please tell us promptly if you become aware of any unauthorised use.
4.5 By signing up for, claiming or joining an Organisation, or accepting an invitation to one, you confirm that you are authorised to act on its behalf.
5. Saving, claiming and holding schools
5.1 Saving. Anyone with an Account may save schools to it, together with where they were in decodED. A saved school without a Subscription is read-only. Many people may save the same school.
5.2 Claiming. When you add a school, we ask whether you are employed by it. A person employed by the school may start the school's own Organisation, which holds the school's own Project, shared by everyone at the school, and becomes its first Admin. Where their confirmed email address is on the school's own domain, it is the school's own Organisation at once. Otherwise it is marked "Awaiting NZA check" until NZA confirms it, or until a member of staff whose confirmed email address is on the school's domain claims it. That person then becomes an Admin; the people already in it stay, as Editors unless an Admin changes their role.
5.3 Joining. Only a school's staff work in its own Project. Where a school is already on decodED, others who work there may ask to join, and the school's Admins decide whether to accept. Admins may also invite colleagues.
5.4 Trusts and several schools. You may sign up for several schools at once, or for an academy trust and some or all of the schools beneath it. A trust works in the Projects of the schools beneath it. Each school is priced on its own, as in clause 7.2.
5.5 University departments. A department of a university may claim its own Organisation with a university email address and hold its own Project for the university, separate from the university's own Project. Until that address is confirmed, the department is marked "Awaiting NZA check", as in clause 5.2. Each is paid for separately. Arrangements for individual buildings or multi-campus estates are agreed separately with NZA.
5.6 Other organisations. Any other Organisation, such as a local authority, a business, a consultant or an individual, may hold its own separate Project for a school. It starts from the public data, and it never sees or changes the school's own Project or any other Organisation's Project.
5.7 NZA's test copies. NZA may make its own copies of any school, free of charge, to test and support the Service. They are separate Projects and never change a school's own.
5.8 Nothing entered into a Project changes the public data that decodED shows for every school.
6. User roles
6.1 Each member of an Organisation has one of three roles: Admin, who may decide requests to join, invite and remove members, change roles and manage the Organisation's settings; Editor, who may change the Organisation's Projects; and Viewer, who has read-only access.
6.2 Members of an Organisation can see its Projects and the names, email addresses and roles of its other members.
6.3 Each Organisation is responsible for managing who has access to its Projects.
7. decodED Pro and payment
7.1 Editing a Project requires an active decodED Pro Subscription for that school. Without one, a Project can be viewed but not changed.
7.2 Subscriptions are priced per school, by the school's size (its number of pupils, or a nursery's registered places), and the price is the same for every Organisation. A Subscription covers an unlimited number of users in the Organisation. Prices exclude VAT:
| School size | Yearly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Under 100 pupils | £500 a year | £50 a month |
| 100 to 599 pupils | £700 a year | £70 a month |
| 600 to 1,199 pupils | £900 a year | £90 a month |
| 1,200 pupils and more | £1,100 a year | £110 a month |
The price for several schools, or for a trust, is the sum of each school's price. Prices are also shown on our Pricing page and always before you pay.
7.3 Colleges, universities, estates spread over several campuses, schools whose size we do not know, and payment by invoice are priced by quote and agreed with NZA directly.
7.4 You pay by card, yearly or monthly. Payments are taken by our payment provider, Stripe. Your card details go to Stripe and are never received or stored by NZA.
7.5 Subscriptions renew automatically at the end of each year or month until cancelled. Before a yearly Subscription renews, we email you a reminder with the date and the amount.
7.6 You may cancel at any time from Manage billing in Your account, with no cancellation fee. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period already paid for, and you can keep using decodED Pro until then.
7.7 When a Subscription ends, the Project becomes read-only. Nothing in it is deleted, and it can be edited again if you sign up again.
7.8 Refunds. If you change your mind within 14 days of first signing up for a school, or of a yearly renewal, email us and we will refund that payment in full. After 14 days, fees already paid are not refunded, except as set out in clause 15.2 or where the law requires.
7.9 If you purchase as a consumer (that is, for purposes outside your trade, business or profession), you also have the right to cancel within 14 days of purchase under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights.
8. School Data
8.1 The Organisation that holds a Project owns the School Data entered into it.
8.2 School Data is stored in NZA's database, hosted for us by Supabase in Ireland, within the UK and European Economic Area. We do not keep it in any other system, other than with the service providers listed in our Privacy notice, which process it on our behalf to run the Service.
8.3 The Organisation grants NZA a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, process and display School Data to provide the Service and for the purposes in clauses 9 and 10.
8.4 We do not sell School Data. We do not share it with anyone outside NZA without the Organisation's consent, except with our service providers or where the law requires.
8.5 You are responsible for ensuring that you have the right to enter School Data and that doing so does not breach any law or third-party right.
8.6 When a person leaves an Organisation or closes their Account, the School Data they entered remains with the Organisation.
9. How NZA uses School Data
9.1 By agreeing to these Terms, the Organisation agrees that NZA receives the carbon, climate and nature data in its Projects and uses it to:
- (a) provide and run the Service;
- (b) support the Organisation and other customers; and
- (c) combine it with other schools' data to benchmark schools and improve decodED and its methods.
9.2 For the purpose in clause 9.1(c), NZA works from a separate, read-only aggregate view. The aggregate view leaves out names, email addresses and account details, and notes and pictures about people; the people on a plan, for example, are counted, not named. Text that describes the school's buildings, grounds and plans is kept as written, so please do not name individuals in it.
9.3 We will not publish findings that identify a school or Organisation without its consent.
9.4 Sharing with NZA's aggregate view is on by default. An Admin may switch it off for their Organisation at any time under Share with NZA in Your account; a trust's Admin switching it off also covers the schools beneath the trust. Once sharing is switched off, the Organisation's data is removed from the aggregate view within about an hour and is left out until an Admin switches sharing back on. Switching sharing off does not affect NZA's provision of the Service or NZA support under clause 10.
10. NZA support
10.1 NZA's support team can open any Organisation's Project, read it and make changes, so that we can help you, answer questions and put problems right.
10.2 Every change NZA support makes is labelled "NZA support" in the Project's history.
10.3 The Organisation can see when NZA support opened or saved changes to its Projects under NZA support in Your account. This record is kept for 12 months.
10.4 NZA support access covers Projects only. It does not extend to an Organisation's members, invitations or billing.
10.5 Keeping data working with new versions of decodED. As part of providing the Service, NZA may update how a Project's data is structured so that it keeps working with new versions of decodED, for example when a framework changes or free-text entries are turned into categories. NZA may use automated tools, including AI agents that NZA runs, to make these updates across all Projects. The original entries are kept, every change is labelled "NZA support" in the Project's history, and the Organisation can undo it. This applies whether or not sharing with NZA is switched on; the sharing setting governs only the aggregate view in clause 9.
11. Personal data and pupils
11.1 decodED is for staff, not pupils. Pupils never sign in, though teachers may show decodED in lessons. You must not enter personal data about pupils, such as their names, photographs or other details. Pupil groups may be recorded by the group's name and size only.
11.2 Keep personal details in School Data to what your Organisation needs, such as the names and roles of the staff and partners responsible for a plan.
11.3 Where School Data contains personal data, NZA processes it on the Organisation's behalf. Our Privacy notice explains how we handle personal data. A data processing agreement is available on request for schools, trusts and other Organisations.
12. Estimates and limitations
12.1 The Service combines public data with School Data to produce figures, many of which are estimates. Climate projections are subject to inherent uncertainty.
12.2 Targets shown in the Service are indicative until adopted by your Organisation. Actions suggested in a plan are illustrative and have not been assessed for savings unless NZA has expressly confirmed otherwise.
12.3 The Service is a planning tool and does not constitute professional, engineering, legal or financial advice. You should obtain appropriate professional advice before making significant decisions. NZA can provide review and advisory services under a separate agreement.
13. Third-party data
13.1 The Service is built on public records and other data from third parties, including the Department for Education, Ordnance Survey, the Environment Agency, the Met Office and Esri. Each dataset is subject to its own licence terms and attribution requirements, which are shown where the data is used.
13.2 You may use information displayed in the Service for your Organisation's own planning, reporting and educational purposes. You must not copy, extract, scrape or resell the underlying data, or use the Service to compile a competing dataset.
14. Acceptable use
14.1 You must not:
- (a) use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or submit material that is unlawful, harmful, offensive or infringes the rights of others;
- (b) attempt to gain unauthorised access to any Account, Organisation, Project or part of the Service or its systems;
- (c) interfere with or disrupt the Service, including by overloading, scanning or scraping it, or by using automated means to extract data;
- (d) copy, modify, reverse engineer or create derivative works of the Service, its software or its methods, except as permitted by law.
14.2 We may suspend or end access for any breach of these Terms. Where reasonable, we will give notice and an opportunity to remedy the breach first.
15. Availability and changes to the Service
15.1 We aim to keep the Service available and accurate but do not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or available at all times.
15.2 We may modify, suspend or withdraw features of the Service. If a change materially reduces the features of a paid Subscription, we will notify you, and you may cancel and receive a pro rata refund for the unused part of your term.
16. Liability
16.1 Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be limited or excluded by law.
16.2 If you use the Service for business purposes, including on behalf of an Organisation: (a) we shall not be liable for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill or data, or for any indirect or consequential loss; and (b) our total aggregate liability arising under or in connection with these Terms in any 12-month period shall not exceed the greater of the fees paid by you in that period and £100.
16.3 If you are a consumer, we are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for any loss or damage that is not foreseeable.
17. Closing an Account
17.1 You may stop using the Service at any time and may ask us to close your Account by emailing us from the address registered to it.
17.2 When an Account is closed, School Data entered into an Organisation's Projects remains with that Organisation. Our handling of personal data on closure is described in our Privacy notice.
17.3 Clauses 8.3, 9, 12, 13.2, 16 and 19 survive the closure of an Account or the end of a Subscription.
18. Changes to these Terms
We may amend these Terms from time to time. The date at the top shows when they were last revised. Where changes are material, we will tell account holders by email or within the Service before they take effect. Continued use of the Service after that date constitutes acceptance of the amended Terms.
19. Governing law and jurisdiction
19.1 These Terms and any dispute arising from them are governed by the law of England and Wales. Subject to clause 19.2, the courts of England and Wales shall have exclusive jurisdiction.
19.2 If you are a consumer resident in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in the courts of that country.
20. Privacy
Our use of personal data is described in our Privacy notice and Cookie policy.