1. Terms and conditions

This page and any pages it links to explain the terms of use of www.instituteforapprenticeships.org, which will be referred to as our website. You must agree to these to use our website.

Who we are

Our website is managed by IfATE, a crown non-departmental public body. 

 

Using our website

You agree to use our website only for lawful purposes. You must also use it in a way that doesn’t infringe the rights of, or restrict or inhibit the use and enjoyment of, this website by anyone else. 

We update our website frequently. We may change or remove content at any time without notice. 

 

Linking to our website

We welcome and encourage other websites to link to our website. You must contact us for permission if you want to either:

  • charge your website’s users to click on a link to any page on our website 
  • say your website is associated with or endorsed by us or our website 

 

Linking from our website

Our website links to websites that are managed by other government departments and agencies, service providers or other organisations. We do not have any control over the content on these websites. 

We are not responsible for: 

  • the protection of any information you give to these websites
  • any loss or damage that may come from your use of these websites, or any other websites they link to

You agree to release us from any claims or disputes that may come from using these websites. 

You should read all terms and conditions, privacy policies and end-user licences that relate to these websites before you use them. 

 

Using our website content

Most content on our website is subject to Crown copyright protection and is published under the Open Government Licence (OGL).

Some content is exempt from the OGL - check the list of exemptions.

Our logo is exempt from the OGL, except when it forms an integral part of a document or dataset.

If any content isn’t subject to Crown copyright protection or published under the OGL, we’ll usually credit the author or copyright holder. 

You can reproduce content published on our website under the OGL as long as you follow the licence’s conditions. 

Contact us if you want to reproduce a piece of content but aren’t sure if it’s covered by Crown copyright or the OGL.

We make content on our website available through feeds for other websites and applications to use. The websites and applications that use our feeds aren’t our products, and they might use versions of our content that have been edited and stored for later use (‘cached’). 

We don’t give any guarantees, conditions or warranties about the accuracy or completeness of any content used by these products. We’re not liable for any loss or damage that may come from your use of these products. 

 

Disclaimer

While we make every effort to keep our website up to date, we don’t provide any guarantees, conditions or warranties that the information will be:

  • current
  • secure
  • accurate
  • complete
  • free from bugs or viruses

We publish guidance on matters related to our statutory functions but do not give specific advice on our website. You should get professional or specialist advice before doing anything on the basis of the content.

We’re not liable for any loss or damage that may come from using our website. This includes:

  • any direct, indirect or consequential losses
  • any loss or damage caused by civil wrongs (‘tort’, including negligence), breach of contract or otherwise
  • the use of our website and any websites that are linked to or from it
  • the inability to use our website and any websites that are linked to or from it

This applies if the loss or damage was foreseeable, arose in the normal course of things or you advised us that it might happen.

This includes (but isn’t limited to) the loss of your:

  • income or revenue
  • salary, benefits or other payments
  • business
  • profits or contracts
  • opportunity
  • anticipated savings
  • data
  • goodwill or reputation
  • tangible property
  • intangible property, including loss, corruption or damage to data or any computer system
  • wasted management or office time

 

Requests to remove content

You can ask for content to be removed from our website. We’ll remove content:

  • in order to comply with data protection legislation covering the rights and freedoms of individuals
  • if it breaches copyright laws, contains sensitive personal data or material that may be considered obscene or defamatory

Contact us to ask for content to be removed. You’ll need to send us the web address (URL) of the content and explain why you think it should be removed. We’ll reply to let you know whether we’ll remove it.

 

Information about you and your visits to our website

We remove content at our discretion. You can still request information under the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act.

 

Virus protection

We make every effort to check and test our website for viruses at every stage of production.

You must make sure that the way you use our website doesn’t expose you to the risk of viruses, malicious computer code or other forms of interference which can damage your computer system.

We’re not responsible for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or computer system that might happen when you use our website.

 

Viruses, hacking and other offences

When using our website, you must not introduce viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or any other material that’s malicious or technologically harmful.

You must not try to gain unauthorised access to our website, the server on which it’s stored or any server, computer or database connected to it.

You must not attack our website in any way. This includes denial-of-service attacks.

We’ll report any attacks or attempts to gain unauthorised access to our website to the relevant law enforcement authorities and share information about you with them.

For more information on reporting vulnerabilities please review our Vulnerability Disclosure policy.

 

Governing law

These terms and conditions are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.

Any dispute you have which relates to these terms and conditions, or your use of our website (whether it be contractual or non-contractual), will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

If any of these terms and conditions are held to be invalid, unenforceable or illegal for any reason, the remaining terms and conditions will still apply.

 

Changes to these terms and conditions

Please check these terms and conditions regularly. We may update them at any time without notice.

You’ll agree to any changes if you continue to use our website after the terms and conditions have been updated.

 

2. Cookies

Our website puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

  • measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs
  • remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again

Our website cookies aren’t used to identify you personally.

You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer.

How cookies are used on our website

Cookie name Purpose Expiry  
CookieNoticeAcknoledged Set by us when a user closes the cookie message to ensure it isn't needlessly displayed again.  12 months  
ARRAffinity

A Microsoft Azure cookie, which looks to ensure all traffic is sent to the correct server for each request (commonly used for load balancing, but not in use here).

 Session (until browser window closed)  
AI_Session, and AI_User Both used for Azure Application Insights, server and performance monitoring to ensure we can keep an eye on the site performance and any issues that may arise. Currently in the testing environment - could be disabled for production but we would recommend it stays in place if possible.  12 months  
__RequestVerificationToken

This is in place to mitigate against CSRF attacks (cross-site request forgery), to ensure that when forms are submitted, they are being sent from the same location that loaded the page, and not from a 3rd party location.

 Session (until browser window closed)  
XSRF-Token/XSRF-V

Used if a user is on a page with a form.

Session (until browser window closed)  


Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use our website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements, for example improving site search.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • the pages you visit on our website
  • how long you spend on each our website page
  • how you got to the site 
  • what you click on while you’re visiting the site

We don’t collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address) so this information can’t be used to identify who you are.

We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Cookie name Purpose Expiry
_ga This helps us count how many people visit our website by tracking if you’ve visited before  12 months
_gid This helps us count how many people visit our website by tracking if you’ve visited before  1 day