Terms of use

a. Terms of use

1. Accessibility of our websites

2. Copyright notice

3. Our presence on social media sites

4. User Generated Content (UGC)

5. Freedom of information

b. Pink Book disclaimer 

a) Terms of use

The terms of use below apply to your access to and use of any websites owned and/or operated by the British Tourist Authority (“BTA”, “we” or “us”), a statutory body incorporated under the Development of Tourism Act 1969 including websites made available to you under the “Visit Britain” and “VisitEngland” brands.

Accessing and/or using any part of this site constitutes your acceptance of these Terms of Use. We reserve from time to time the right to make amendments to these Terms of Use and your continued use of the site will constitute your acceptance of any changes made.

Whilst we endeavour to ensure that the information on this site is correct, no warranty, express or implied, is given as to its accuracy and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions,

Usage of the site is at your own risk. We shall not be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business or loss of profits) arising in contract, tort or otherwise from the use of or inability to use this site, or any material contained in it, or from any action or decision taken as a result of using this site or any such material.

We accept no responsibility for any third party owned tools, products or content featured or made available to you on our site(s) or for any third-party site(s) which our site(s) may link to via any hypertext links, banners, buttons or other such functionality. Such links to third-party sites are provided for your convenience on an “as is” basis with no warranty, express or implied, for the information provided in any third-party sites.

If any of these terms should be determined to be illegal, invalid or otherwise unenforceable by reason of the laws of any state or country in which these terms are intended to be effective, then to the extent and within the jurisdiction in which that term is illegal, invalid or enforceable, it shall be severed and deleted from the clause concerned and the remaining terms and conditions shall survive, remain in full force and effect and continue to be binding and enforceable.

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law.

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1. Accessibility of our websites

We have developed this website to serve the largest possible audience by addressing the needs of people and systems with differing abilities. The site conforms to the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium, 2.0 Level AA.

Useful sites: Accessibility Standards: W3C Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA

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2. Copyright notice

Unless otherwise stated, the copyright and any other rights in all material on this site are owned by us.

You are permitted to print and download extracts from this site on the following conditions: 

 a. Use of documents and related graphics on this site is for information and/or personal, non-commercial use only; 

b. Any copies of these pages saved on to disk or to any other storage medium may only be used for subsequent viewing purposes or to print extracts for personal, non-commercial use; 

c. No documents or related graphics on this site are to be modified in any way; 

d. Graphics on this site are not to be used separately from the accompanying text; 

e. A copyright notice (© British Tourist Authority) must appear in all copies; 

f. No part of this site may be reproduced or stored in any other website without our prior written consent.

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3. Our presence on social media sites

We have accounts on social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Flickr. 

We welcome your comments or questions on our social media pages and we encourage open debate. 

However, we do ask that our followers adhere to certain good practices to ensure that our page complies with the law and regulations governing the Civil Service, and to create a welcoming environment for all of our followers. 

Therefore, we will remove comments that: 

• Contain swearing, abusive, offensive or obscene language; 

• Make potentially libellous or defamatory statements; 

• Constitute spam or promote or advertise products except where it is for an event, publication or similar item that has direct relevance to us; 

• Contain material which is potentially confidential, commercially sensitive, or which may cause personal distress or loss; 

• Are designed to cause nuisance to the page administrator or other users.

We may remove any posts that violate the above rules without prior notice, and our decision will be considered final. We will not edit any of your comments. 

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4. User Generated Content (UGC)

Any user generated content (UGC) such as any written content including blogs, photos, pictures, audio or video content posted or uploaded by you to our sites are subject to moderation. 

Moderation guidelines

 ‘Pre-moderation’ means that comments will not be published instantly; they will first be checked by moderators. Moderators will be monitoring the site during office hours Monday to Friday, and aim to process comments as quickly as possible. 

This is not about censoring your views. The aim is to ensure the discussion is fair, inclusive, relevant and constructive. Moderation will not be used to suppress legitimate, reasoned discussion about the issues in this document. 

We will normally approve comments for publication as long as they: 

• Respect other people. Comments should not be malicious or offensive in nature, and should not constitute a personal attack on a person’s character. 

• Don’t incite hatred on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality or sexuality or other personal characteristic. 

• Don’t include swearing, hate-speech or obscenity. 

• Don’t reveal personal details, such as private addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details. 

• Don’t break the law – this includes libel, condoning illegal activity, and breaking copyright.  

• Are reasonably concise, and don’t constitute spamming of the site. 

• Don’t advertise commercial products and services – you can mention relevant products and services as long as they support your comment. 

• Don’t impersonate or falsely claim to represent a person or organisation. 

• Submitted or posted in the English language – unfortunately, we do not currently have the resource to moderate comments in other languages. 

• Are on-topic. Please don’t post messages that are unrelated to this channel 

• If you are aged 16 or under, please get your parent/guardian’s permission before submitting a comment. Users without this consent are not allowed to participate or provide us with personal information.  

We reserve the right to suspend any UGC at any time. Where we choose not to publish a comment for a reason other than those listed above, we will reply to the user by email explaining our reasons and inviting them to make appropriate changes so that the UGC can be reconsidered for publication on our sites. 

The copyright of the original texts and the copyright of all comments remain with their respective authors.

If you wish to contact us for official correspondence, visit the contact us section of our website. 

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5. Freedom of information

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives the public a right of access to information held by public authorities. The Who we are section on this website contains information about us as an organisation including our roles and responsibilities, organisational structure and our Board.

If the information you require is not available on our website, please complete this FOI form or email us at: [email protected]

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b) Pink Book disclaimer

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in the Pink Book online guide and publication, we regret that we cannot be responsible for any errors. This guide is not intended to be a definitive statement of the law in England. If you require precise or detailed information on the legislation mentioned in this guide, or on the legal implications for you in particular, you should consult a professional legal adviser.