Welcome to the online Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community

By using the online Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community, which is being managed by Explain Research, you are agreeing to comply with the terms and conditions of use set out below, which together with our privacy notice, form Explain and Northern Powergrid’s relationship with you in relation to this community.

If you are not happy with any part of these terms and conditions, please do not use the Citizens Panel research community. You can unsubscribe from the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community or delete your user account at any time by clicking here and selecting ‘leave the community’.

Northern Powergrid has commissioned Explain Research to host and manage the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community on their behalf, as part of the delivery of the Citizens Panel research workshops.

Definitions

“We”, “us” and “our” refers to Explain Research.

“Content” means everything contained in, or accessible from, the online community which has been produced by or on behalf of Explain Research. “Content” does not include Postings made by members.

 “Postings” means all information, data, artwork, text, photographs, videos, messages and any other material which you or any other any member posts on or uploads to the Citizens Panel research community.

“Northern Powergrid Sub-contractors” means any sub-contractor or agency that has been formally tendered to Northern Powergrid and Northern Powergrid’s partnership company.

“Website” means the website which hosts the Community. These terms and conditions only apply to the website which hosts the Community.

 “You”, “your” and “yours” refers to you, the person using the Citizens Panel community.

Changes to Terms

From time to time we may make changes to these terms; this will be done without any specific notice.

If the terms and conditions do change, the next time you login you will be presented with the revision and asked to agree to the revised terms before proceeding to use the Citizens Panel community.

We may suspend or withdraw our site.

Our site is made available free of charge.

We do not guarantee that our site, or any content on it, will always be available or be uninterrupted. We may suspend or withdraw or restrict the availability of all of any part of our site for business and operational reasons.

Terms of use

Content

This community contains material which is owned by or licensed to us. This material includes, but is not limited to, the design, layout, look, appearance and graphics.

Reproduction of the content is prohibited other than in accordance with the copyright notice, which forms part of these terms and conditions.

All trademarks reproduced in this community, which are not the property of, or licensed to us, are acknowledged on the website.

If you would like to share a text link to the Citizens Panel community from your own, you do not need any permission for this. However, we reserve the right to require you to remove any such link if we do not feel that it is appropriate.

Neither we nor any third parties provide any warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of the Content, nor its suitability for any particular purpose.

You acknowledge that such information and materials may contain inaccuracies or errors and we expressly exclude liability for any such inaccuracies or errors to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Your use of any information or materials on this community is entirely at your own risk, for which we shall not be liable. It shall be your own responsibility to ensure that any products, services or information available through this website meet your specific requirements.

The experiences, ideas and opinions posted on the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community are those of individual members. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of information posted. People who work at Explain will participate in conversations and provide accurate information and answers to questions as needed. We cannot, in any circumstances, accept responsibility for errors or omissions in any of the content of this website, or for any action or decisions based on the content. Neither can we be responsible for the consequences of reliance on any content no matter how it is presented. Any advice given on the Citizens Panel community will be of a general nature. 

Personal information

We treat your personal information with great care, and have an extensive data protection compliance programme throughout our business. Our Privacy Notice explains in more detail how we handle your personal information.

In order to keep your personal information safe, please do not include any personal information, whether about yourself or someone else, in your Postings. You need to be aware that, if you include any personal information in your Postings, it may not be secure. If you include personal information about other people you may be liable yourself and may also do something which makes us liable.

You agree to indemnify Explain and any relevant third party against any claim or proceeding which is related to any personal information in your Postings. When selecting your member username and profile picture, be mindful that these can be seen by all other members in the Citizens Panel community. Please do not select a username or picture that is personally identifiable. 

Postings

You are welcome to upload your Postings as you wish, subject to these terms and conditions, and to the guidance in the Northern Powergrid community guidelines. You warrant that any such Posting does comply with those guidelines, and you will be liable to us and indemnify us for any breach of that warranty. This means you will be responsible for any loss or damage we suffer as a result of your breach of warranty.

You are responsible for all your Postings. If you did not create your Postings yourself, you are responsible for obtaining the owner’s consent to use it on the Website [or in connection with the Citizens Panel community].

Your Postings will be visible by all members of the Citizens Panel community.

In order to share in full, and make the Citizens Panel community a success, we need your permission to make your Postings available to all users. By using the website you agree to grant us a worldwide, royalty-free licence to use your Postings – as outlined in our Privacy Policy.

This licence will not be exclusive to us, in that you can allow other people to use the material too. The licence is also transferable in that the material can be used by, for example, other site users, or sub-contractors of Explain. 

How we may use your Postings

We have the right to download and copy Postings for:

• content analysis and customer research purposes; and
• documenting the findings from the discussions, surveys and polls that take place on the Citizens Panel research community including in publicly available Northern Powergrid communications, media publications and marketing.

Prior to using any Postings in publicly available communications or marketing:

• all member details, including username, will be removed. Please note however that it may be possible for other users of the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community to link such Postings back to your username in this community; and
• you will receive notification from the Explain moderators via an email to the email address registered on the Community.

Content

While we host the Citizens Panel community we are not responsible for the content of the Postings, which are provided by site users. We can have no liability for any losses or damage which are in any way related to the content of these Postings.

If anyone notifies us that anything in your Postings has infringed their intellectual property rights, we may withdraw any, or all, of your Postings immediately, in order to investigate such claims.

If anything in your Postings is found to have infringed another party’s intellectual property rights, and we suffer any losses or damages as a result, you agree to indemnify us against all claims and proceedings arising from such infringement.

Moderation and member conduct

You are responsible for how you behave towards other users of the Website. Explain will act as site moderator, and will monitor any disputes between individual users, and we cannot be responsible for resolving them.

Unauthorised use of this Website may give rise to a claim for damages and/or be a criminal offence.

Cookies

The Website uses cookies to track user sessions. Alongside Google Analytics, we only use two cookies. The first cookie is ‘session’, which is deleted when your browser is closed.

If you would like information on Google Analytics cookies please visit:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cookie-usage.

Your use of this community and any dispute arising out of such use of the website is subject to the laws of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

We reserve the right to suspend or withdraw the Website and/or the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community at any time without notice. Equally we reserve the right to suspend or terminate your individual registration at any time. While we would try to explain our reasons for doing so, it may not always be possible to provide such an explanation at the same time as the suspension or termination.

Viruses

We do not guarantee that our site will be secure from bugs or viruses.

You are responsible for configuring your information technology, computer programmes and platform to access our site. You should use your own virus protection software.

You must not misuse our site by knowingly introducing viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful. You must not attempt to gain unauthorised access to our site, the server on which our site is stored or any server, computer or database connected to our site. You must not attack our site via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of service attack. By breaching this provision, you would commit a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report any such breach to the relevant law enforcement authorities and we will co-operate with those authorities by disclosing your identity to them. In the event of such a breach, your right to use our site will cease immediately.

Communications and email alerts

By creating an account on the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community, you are giving consent to receiving communication emails from the Community. The receipt of these emails is important to help you keep up to date on the Community and its content, these emails will contain information relevant to the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community, such as updates and reminders on new Community Postings and member interactions and prize draw announcements.

Community moderators may also email you in relation to any user account queries or issues, such as infringements on the Citizens Panel community guidelines.

If you do not wish to receive emails alerts from the Community please do not use the Citizens Panel community.

Third party links

On occasion we include links to third parties on this Website. Where we provide a link it does not mean that we endorse or approve that site’s policy towards visitor privacy. You should review their privacy notice before sending them any personal data.

Where Northern Powergrid wish you to take part in any research which is not moderated by Explain, and a link to such research appears in the Citizens Panel Community, this will be made clear.

Contact

If you are unclear about anything in these terms, or have any queries about anything relating to the Northern Powergrid Citizens Panel community, please contact Explain Market Research by emailing mailto:bryony.iles@explainonline.co.uk