Terms of use

1. About these terms

1.1 Golden Ledger is a trading name of MatchKey Technology Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16292336), registered office 100 High Ash Drive, Leeds LS17 8RE ("we", "us").

1.2 These terms apply when you use the Golden Ledger website and service. By creating an account or submitting information, you agree to them. If you do not agree, please do not use the service and contact your council instead.

1.3 How we use personal information is explained in our privacy notice, which is not part of these terms.

1.4 With your consent, we use analytics and advertising cookies to understand how people use Golden Ledger and to reach councils and owners who may need it. MatchKey uses what it learns this way for its own marketing, including advertising. We never share your answers, documents or building details with analytics or advertisers. Using Golden Ledger never depends on your consent: if you reject these cookies, the service works the same.

1.5 You can give or withdraw consent at any time with "Cookie settings" at the foot of every page of Golden Ledger, or on our cookies page. Withdrawing does not affect what was collected before. Our cookies page and privacy notice explain what each cookie does and how long it lasts.

2. What Golden Ledger is

2.1 Your council uses Golden Ledger to collect fire and building safety information about buildings in its area. Golden Ledger lets you link a building to your account with the access code on your council's letter, answer questions about it and upload documents to your council.

2.2 Golden Ledger is paid for by councils. There is no charge to building owners or managing agents.

2.3 Your council, not us, decides what it asks you for, reviews what you send and decides what to do with it. Questions about your council's requests, deadlines or decisions should go to your council.

3. Not legal advice

3.1 Golden Ledger does not enforce the law, is not the Building Safety Regulator and does not give legal advice. Your council reviews what you send. Fire safety law is enforced by your fire and rescue authority. In higher-risk buildings, the Building Safety Regulator also enforces the duties in Part 4 of the Building Safety Act 2022.

3.2 General information, not legal advice. Golden Ledger shows which rules and funding routes may apply, based on your answers. A qualified professional should confirm them.

3.3 Building heights, ownership details and other information we show come from public and licensed sources such as Ordnance Survey and HM Land Registry. They may be out of date or wrong. Please correct them in your answers if they are.

4. Who may use the service

4.1 You may use Golden Ledger if you are:

• the owner of a building your council has written to about, or a person authorised to act for that owner (for example a director, employee, or managing agent); or
• a person your council or MatchKey has invited to use it.

4.2 You must be 18 or over.

4.3 If you act for a company or another person, you confirm that you have their authority to do so and that you accept these terms for them as well as for yourself.

5. Your account and access codes

5.1 Keep your sign-in details private and tell us straight away at security@goldenledger.co.uk if you think someone else has used your account.

5.2 An access code links one building to one owner. Use only an access code that was sent to you, or to the owner you act for. Do not use, share or try to guess any other code. Attempts to enter codes are limited and recorded.

5.3 If a building has been linked to you by mistake, or you no longer act for the owner, tell your council or support@goldenledger.co.uk.

6. What you agree to when you submit information

6.1 You will give information that is true, complete and not misleading to the best of your knowledge, and correct it if you find it is wrong.

6.2 Where Golden Ledger suggests an answer read from a document, you will check it before you confirm it. A confirmed answer is your answer.

6.3 You will upload only documents you are entitled to share with your council. You keep ownership of what you upload. You give us and your council a free, non-exclusive permission to store, copy, read and display it, only to run the service and for your council's fire and building safety functions. The permission lasts while your council keeps the document and ends when it is deleted.

6.4 Avoid uploading personal information about residents that your council has not asked for, especially about health or disability.

7. Acceptable use

You must not:

• try to see or change buildings, answers or documents that are not yours or your company's;
• upload anything containing viruses or harmful code (every file is scanned and an infected file is not accepted);
• try to get around security, rate limits or access controls, or test the service for weaknesses other than as our security page allows;
• copy, scrape or resell information from the service;
• impersonate anyone, or use the service for anything unlawful.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, and tell your council. Unless there is a security risk or the law prevents it, we will tell you why first and give you a reasonable chance to put it right.

8. Availability and changes to the service

8.1 We aim to keep Golden Ledger available but cannot promise it will always be available or free of errors. We may change or pause parts of it, for example for maintenance or security.

8.2 If your council stops using Golden Ledger, your access to that council's buildings may end. Your council decides what happens to what you submitted, and we follow its instructions. Where we can, we will tell you before your access ends.

9. Our liability to you

9.1 Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law.

9.2 Golden Ledger is a tool for collecting and sending information. Your council, not us, reviews your answers and decides what to do with them. We are not responsible for the content of your answers or documents, for your council's decisions, or for whether your building complies with the law. This does not reduce our duty to run the service with reasonable care and skill.

9.3 If you use the service in the course of a business, including as a company or for one, we are not liable for loss of profit, business, revenue or opportunity, or for indirect or consequential loss. Our total liability to you arising from your use of the service in any 12 months is limited to £100, because the service is free to you. These limits apply only so far as they are reasonable under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, and they do not limit your rights under data protection law.

9.4 If you use the service as a consumer (for example as an individual who owns a building in your own name), we are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable. Your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 are not affected.

9.5 Clauses 9.1 to 9.4 apply whether or not these terms form a contract between us.

10. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the service or the law changes, and will show the date of the latest version at the top. If a change affects you significantly, we will tell you by email or when you next sign in, at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless it is needed sooner for legal or security reasons. If you do not agree, you can stop using the service and ask us to close your account. Otherwise the new terms apply from that date.

11. Contact

For help: support@goldenledger.co.uk. For security problems: security@goldenledger.co.uk. For privacy: privacy@goldenledger.co.uk.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction, except that if you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in your local courts, and you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of the place where you live.