Terms of service

1. Who we are

Fair Band is operated from the United Kingdom. You can reach us at hello@checkfairband.co.uk. These terms are a contract between you and us when you use checkfairband.co.uk (the “service”).

2. What the service does

Fair Band checks whether a home in England may be in the wrong Council Tax band. It compares the home with similar homes nearby, using bands you copy from gov.uk, and estimates the home's value on 1 April 1991 from HM Land Registry sale prices and the UK House Price Index. It then tells you whether we think challenging the band is worthwhile and safe, and why.

The service is information only. It is not legal, financial, tax or valuation advice. We are not the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), your council or any part of government, and we are not connected to them. Only the VOA decides bands. Our verdict is our opinion based on public data, our 1991 values are estimates shown as ranges, and savings and refunds are estimates too. We don't promise any outcome.

A challenge can lead to a band going up as well as down, for your home or a neighbour's. Your report explains the risks we found. Whether to challenge is your decision.

3. Your account

You must be 18 or over and use a real email address that you control. Keep your password and sign-in codes private: you are responsible for what happens under your account. One account is for one person.

4. The information you give us

Your report is only as good as what you enter. Check that the postcode, house, dates and home type are right, and paste the complete gov.uk results for your postcode.

The gov.uk band checker allows personal use of its results. Only paste results you looked up for your own use, about a home you live in, own or are responsible for paying Council Tax on.

5. Price and payment

A full report costs £8.99 for one home, paid once. It is not a subscription and nothing renews. You pay through our payment provider, Stripe, in pounds sterling, before the report is shown. The price shown before you pay is the price you pay.

We check your details before taking payment, so you aren't charged for a check that can't be done.

6. Getting your report straight away

Before you pay, you ask us to provide the report immediately and confirm that you understand you lose your right to cancel once it has been provided. We confirm this by email after you pay. Our Cancellation and refunds policy explains when you can still get your money back.

7. Your report

Your report is saved in your account, and you can open it whenever you sign in for as long as we run the service. If we ever decide to close the service, we will email you at least 60 days before so you can keep a copy.

A report reflects the data available on the day it was made. We don't update it afterwards. Reports are for your personal use: don't resell or republish them.

8. Our coming service and waiting list

We are building a service to help you challenge your band. If you join the waiting list, we will email you when it launches. Joining doesn't commit you to anything, and we may change or not launch that service.

9. Fair use

Don't copy, scrape or resell the service or its data in bulk, don't try to break or overload it, and don't use it for anything unlawful. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, after notice where reasonable. If we close an account without fault on your side, you keep access to the reports you paid for, or we refund them.

10. Third-party data

We use public data: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data and the UK House Price Index (Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0), Council Tax figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and postcode data from the Office for National Statistics via postcodes.io. Public data can contain mistakes, and we can't correct it at source.

11. Our liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law, and nothing affects your rights as a consumer, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 for digital content that isn't of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose or as described.

Otherwise, we are not responsible for your decision whether to challenge, for any decision the VOA or your council makes, for any change to your band or anyone else's, for losses caused by mistakes in public data or in details you entered, or for indirect losses. Our total liability to you for a report is limited to the amount you paid for it.

12. Changes to the service and these terms

We may improve or change the service. If we change these terms in a way that matters, we will tell you by email or on the site before the change takes effect. The terms that applied when you bought a report continue to apply to that report.

13. Law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. If you are a consumer, you can bring a claim in the courts of the part of the UK where you live.