Terms & Conditions

These terms govern what we sell and provide through this website, and the relationship between you and Cornerstone Solutions & Services Ltd. Please read them before you buy, book or sign up. By placing an order, booking a course, starting a trial, registering a reporting channel or using our free tools, you accept them.

1. Who we are, and what these terms cover

We are Cornerstone Solutions & Services Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 13682285, with its registered office at 11 Orion Drive, Norwich, Norfolk, NR5 0WB. In these terms “we”, “us” and “our” mean that company, and “you” means the person or organisation buying from us or using our services.

These terms apply to:

• anything bought through our online shop, including documents, document kits and course places;
• training courses we run;
• free trials of the Cornerstone platform, and self-service signups;
• our free calculators, resources and articles;
• the confidential reporting service;
• the SchenGain mobile app;
• general use of this website.

They also set out the background terms for our consultancy, auditing and advisory work where we have not signed a separate agreement with you.

2. Which document wins if they disagree

Where you have signed a separate agreement with us, that agreement takes precedence over these terms for the work it covers. In practice that means:

If you have	The terms that govern it
A signed SaaS licence or subscription agreement for the Cornerstone platform	That agreement and its schedules, including the data processing agreement
A signed consultancy services agreement	That agreement
An accepted quotation or ad-hoc service agreement	That quotation and its terms
An associate consultant agreement with us	That agreement
None of the above, but you have bought or used something through this website	These terms

Where a signed agreement is silent on a point, these terms fill the gap. Nothing in a purchase order, your own standard terms, or any document you issue to us forms part of our contract unless we have agreed to it in writing and signed it.

3. Business customers and consumers

We sell primarily to businesses. If you are buying in the course of a business, trade, craft or profession, you are a business customer, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 do not apply to your purchase.

If you are buying as a consumer, meaning wholly or mainly outside a business, you keep all of your statutory rights. Nothing in these terms removes or reduces them. The specific consumer position on cancelling a digital download is in section 8.

4. Using this website

You may use this website for lawful purposes connected with your interest in our services. You must not misuse it, attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of it, introduce anything malicious, scrape it systematically, or use it in a way that damages it or interferes with anyone else’s use of it.

Where you hold an account with us, whether as a customer, a learner, a reseller or a platform user, you are responsible for keeping your login details confidential and for everything done under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has your credentials.

We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of the website at any time. We try to keep it available but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted.

5. Free calculators, resources and articles

We publish free tools, including the AQL calculator, the Julian date code tool, the weights and measures calculator, the barcode checker and the specific gravity cup calibration tool, along with articles and guidance on standards and compliance.

These are provided free of charge and as-is, to help you think, not to make your decisions for you. They are general in nature, they are not tailored to your operation, and they are not a substitute for your own verification or for professional advice on your specific situation.

You remain responsible for the decisions you make. If a calculation, a sampling plan or a piece of guidance is going to drive a quality, safety or legality decision, check it against the applicable standard, specification or legislation before you act on it. To the fullest extent the law allows, we accept no liability for any loss arising from reliance on a free tool or a free resource.

6. Orders, prices and payment

How an order is formed

Your order is an offer to buy. A contract is formed when we confirm the order, or when we make the download or course place available to you, whichever happens first. We may decline an order, and if we do we will refund anything you have paid.

Prices and VAT

Prices on the website are in pounds sterling. VAT is charged at the prevailing rate where it applies, and whether it is shown as included or added is stated at checkout. We may change prices at any time, but a change will not affect an order we have already confirmed.

We take care with prices, but if a product is listed at an obviously incorrect price we are not obliged to supply it at that price. We will tell you and give you the choice of paying the correct price or cancelling.

Payment

Card payments through the shop are handled by Stripe. Payment is taken at checkout, and we do not see or store your card details.

Where we invoice you instead, payment is due within 30 days of the invoice date unless we have agreed otherwise in writing. CONFIRM: 30 days is the usual default. Tell us if you work to 14 days or on payment before delivery. We may charge interest on late payment at the statutory rate under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, together with the fixed sum compensation that Act allows, and we may withhold delivery, access or certificates while an invoice is overdue.

Delivery of digital products

Digital products are made available for download once payment has cleared. Download links may be time limited or limited in the number of downloads. If you have trouble downloading something you have paid for, tell us and we will sort it out.

7. Documents and document kits: your licence

When you buy a document, a template or a document kit from us, you are buying a licence to use it, not ownership of it. The licence works like this.

What you may do. The licence is granted to the single legal entity that bought it. That company may:

• use the documents across all of its own sites, with no limit on the number of sites or users within that company;
• edit, rebrand, restructure and adapt them freely to suit its own management system;
• print and circulate them internally;
• show them to its certification body, its auditors, its customers and its regulators as part of its own management system.

What you may not do. You may not:

• resell, sublicense, rent, share or give the documents away, in original or edited form;
• supply them to another company, including a group company, a sister site under different ownership, or a client of yours;
• use them as, or within, a deliverable you provide to a third party for a fee;
• publish them, upload them to a public or shared repository, or include them in a product that competes with ours;
• remove or obscure our copyright notices from any document you have not substantially rewritten.

If you are a consultant and you want to use our documents with your own clients, that is a different licence and a different price. Talk to us and we will sort out something that works for both of us.

The licence is perpetual for the version you bought and it does not expire. It is not transferable, other than to a successor of your business, and it ends if you breach it materially and do not put that right within 14 days of us asking.

Updates to a kit after your purchase are not automatically included unless we have said so at the point of sale.

8. Refunds and cancellation of purchases

Business customers

Digital documents cannot be returned once they have been downloaded, so purchases by business customers are non-refundable once the download has been made available. That said, we are not unreasonable: if a kit is not what was described, is corrupt, is the wrong product, or clearly is not fit for the standard it was sold against, tell us within 14 days and we will replace it or refund it.

Consumers

If you are a consumer you normally have 14 days to change your mind about a digital purchase. That right is lost once the download starts, provided you agreed at checkout to immediate access and acknowledged that you would lose the right to cancel. If you have not downloaded the product, you may cancel within 14 days for a full refund. This does not affect your statutory rights if the product is faulty or not as described.

Refund method

Refunds are made to the original payment method, normally within 14 days of us agreeing to them.

9. Training courses

Booking and payment

A place is confirmed when we accept your booking and, where payment is due in advance, when we have received it. Course fees include the materials and any examination or assessment stated in the course description, and exclude travel, accommodation and subsistence unless we have said otherwise.

If you cancel or move a booking

Notice you give us before the course starts	What happens
More than 28 days	Full refund, or move the booking to a later course at no charge
14 to 28 days	50% of the fee refunded, or move the booking to a later course at no charge
Less than 14 days	No refund, and a transfer is at our discretion and may attract a fee
Any time	You may send a substitute delegate at no cost, as long as you tell us their name before the course starts

Each booking may be transferred once free of charge. A second transfer is treated as a new booking. Notice must be given to us in writing, and the notice period runs from when we receive it.

If we cancel or move a course

Occasionally we have to postpone a course, usually because the minimum number of delegates has not been reached or because the trainer is unwell. If that happens we will offer you a place on the next available course or a full refund, whichever you prefer. We are not liable for travel or accommodation you have booked, so please do not book non-refundable travel until we have confirmed the course is running. We will confirm at least CONFIRM: 14 days? 10 working days? before the start date that a course is going ahead.

Delegates, attendance and certificates

Delegates are expected to attend the whole course. Certificates, and any pass or competence statement, are issued only where the delegate has attended in full and met the assessment requirements. Where a course leads to a qualification or certificate issued by a scheme owner such as BRCGS, that organisation sets the pass criteria and issues the certificate, and its rules apply.

We may ask a delegate to leave a course, without refund, where their conduct is abusive, discriminatory, unsafe or persistently disruptive to other delegates.

We do not guarantee that any delegate will pass an assessment or achieve a qualification.

Recording

We will tell you before a remote session if it is going to be recorded. Delegates may not record, photograph or stream a course, or share course materials, without our written permission.

10. Consultancy, auditing and advisory work

Where we carry out consultancy, internal auditing, verification, label review, technical file work or advisory work for you under a signed agreement or an accepted quotation, that document sets the scope, the fees and the timetable. This section sets out the terms that apply in any event.

What we will do. We will carry out the work with reasonable skill and care, using suitably competent people, in accordance with the scope agreed.

What we need from you. Our work depends on the information, access and cooperation you give us. You agree to provide accurate and complete information, timely access to your site, systems, records and people, and a safe working environment for anyone attending on our behalf. If what you give us is incomplete or inaccurate, our findings and advice will be affected, and we are not responsible for that.

Decisions remain yours. We advise, recommend, audit and document. We do not manage your business and we do not make your quality, safety or legality decisions. Implementing what we recommend, and deciding whether it is right for your operation, is your responsibility.

No guarantee of certification. This is the important one. We do not guarantee that you will achieve or retain certification, pass a third party audit, satisfy a customer audit, or receive any particular grade or outcome. Those decisions are made by independent certification bodies and auditors, on evidence at the time of their audit, against criteria they control. Any figures we publish about past client outcomes describe what has happened previously and are not a promise about your result.

Independence. Where we act as your consultant we cannot also act as your certification body, and we will tell you if we think a conflict of interest arises.

Reports and deliverables. Reports, audit findings and documents we produce for you are for your internal use and for your certification body. They are prepared on the basis of the scope agreed and the evidence available at the time, and they should not be relied on by anyone else or for any other purpose. Please do not publish them or supply them to a third party as though they were an independent certification.

Non-solicitation. CONFIRM: do you want a clause preventing clients from directly employing your associate consultants for a period after an engagement? It is common in this trade and it protects your associate model. Say yes and we will add it.

11. The Cornerstone platform

Where you have signed a SaaS licence or subscription agreement with us, that agreement governs your use of the platform and this section does not replace it. This section applies to free trials, to self-service signups, and to any use of the platform where no signed agreement is in place.

Free trials

A free trial gives you access to the platform for 30 days at no cost and with no card required. Trials are provided as-is, with no service levels and no guarantee of availability. We may end a trial early if it is being misused. At the end of the trial your access stops unless you subscribe, and we delete the trial instance and its contents. Please export anything you want to keep before the trial ends.

Subscriptions

A subscription runs for the term stated at signup or on your order, and renews for successive terms unless either of us gives notice before the renewal date. Fees are payable in advance. We may change subscription prices for a renewal term by telling you before the renewal date, and if you do not want to continue at the new price you may decline to renew.

Acceptable use

You may use the platform for your own business. You may not use it to store or transmit anything unlawful, infringing or malicious, attempt to breach its security, reverse engineer it, resell access to it, or use it to build a competing product. You are responsible for the content you put into it, for the accuracy of that content, and for the users you give access to.

Your data

Your data stays yours. We host it, we act as your data processor for it, and we set out how we handle it in our Privacy and Cookie Policy and in the data processing terms of your agreement. We do not use it for our own purposes, we do not sell it, and we do not use it to train artificial intelligence models.

You can export your data at any time while your subscription is live. When a subscription ends we will make an export available for 30 days, after which we delete the instance.

Availability and support

We aim to keep the platform available and supported during UK business hours, and we will give reasonable notice of planned maintenance where we can. Unless your signed agreement includes a service level commitment, we do not guarantee any particular level of uptime or response time.

Suspension

We may suspend access where fees are overdue, where use of the platform threatens its security or stability, or where we are required to by law. We will tell you first wherever it is practical to do so.

12. Contracts issued through this website

We issue quotations, agreements and contracts through this website, accessed by a private link or a login. Where you accept a contract electronically, by clicking to accept or by signing on screen, that acceptance is as binding as a signature on paper, and you confirm you are authorised to accept it for your organisation.

We record the identifier of the link used, your name and email address, the date and time, and the IP address the acceptance came from, as evidence of the agreement. Keep your contract link confidential, because anyone who has it can view that contract.

13. The confidential reporting service

We provide confidential reporting channels free of charge so that sites can meet the confidential reporting requirement in the BRCGS Standards.

Free and as-is. The service is provided at no cost and as-is, with no warranty and no service level. We may change it, or withdraw it, at any time. If we withdraw it we will give you reasonable notice so you can put an alternative in place.

It is your system, not ours. Registering a channel does not discharge your obligations under any Standard. You remain responsible for communicating the channel to your personnel, for assessing the reports you receive, for recording your assessment and the actions taken, and for retaining that evidence for your audit. We host the channel. We do not run your process for you.

Anonymity. The reporting form is built so that we do not capture the reporter’s name, IP address or tracking data. We cannot identify reporters, and neither can you. That is the point of it, and it means we cannot help you trace a reporter.

Referral. Where a report raises a serious concern about product safety or legality and it appears not to have been addressed, we may refer the substance of that concern to the relevant certification body or authority. By registering a channel you accept that this may happen.

Liability. Because the service is free, our liability in connection with it is limited to the fullest extent the law allows. We are not liable for the content of a report, for a report that does not reach you, for the consequences of how you handle a report, or for any audit outcome connected with it. This does not limit our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

14. The SchenGain app

SchenGain is provided free of charge to help you keep track of days spent in the Schengen area. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use it on devices you control.

It is a calculator, not immigration advice. This matters. SchenGain does arithmetic on the dates you enter. It does not know your nationality, your visa, your residence status, any exemptions that apply to you, or how a particular border officer will apply the rules. Entry and stay decisions are made by border authorities, and the rules change. Do not treat the app as authoritative, and do not rely on it alone when planning travel. Check your position with the relevant embassy, consulate or immigration authority, or with a qualified immigration adviser.

Your data. Everything you enter stays on your device. We never receive it, so we cannot recover it for you. If you change or lose your phone, or clear the app data, your entries are gone. Keep your own record of your travel dates.

As-is. The app is provided as-is and free of charge. We do not warrant that it is error free or that its calculations are correct for your circumstances. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss arising from your use of it, including any refusal of entry, fine, overstay or disrupted travel. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

We may update, change or withdraw the app at any time, and the Google Play terms apply to your download of it.

15. Intellectual property

Everything on this website and in our products, including our documents, templates, course materials, calculators, software, text, graphics and branding, belongs to us or to our licensors, and is protected by copyright and other rights.

Buying from us or working with us does not transfer ownership of any of it. You get the licence described in these terms or in your agreement, and nothing more.

Course materials are for the delegate’s own use. They may not be copied, shared, resold or used to deliver training to anyone else.

Where we produce a bespoke document or report specifically for you as part of paid work, you own the content of that deliverable once you have paid for it in full, and we keep ownership of the underlying templates, methods, tools and know-how we used to produce it, along with the right to reuse those on other engagements.

BRCGS, ISO, Soil Association and other standard names and marks belong to their owners. We reference them to describe what our services relate to, and that reference does not imply their endorsement of us beyond any approval we actually hold and state.

16. Confidentiality

Each of us will keep the other’s confidential information confidential, use it only for the purposes of the work between us, and not disclose it to anyone else without permission. This does not apply to information that is already public through no fault of ours, that was already known, that is independently developed, or that we are required to disclose by law, by a regulator, or under section 13.

These obligations continue after our work together ends.

We may name you as a client, and use your company name and logo, in our marketing, only with your permission.

17. What we do not promise

We will provide our services with reasonable skill and care, and our products will match their description. Beyond that, and to the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all other warranties, conditions and terms that might otherwise be implied.

In particular we do not promise that:

• you will achieve or retain certification, pass any audit, or receive any particular grade or outcome;
• any delegate will pass an assessment or gain a qualification;
• our documents, as supplied, will satisfy a particular auditor, certification body or customer without you adapting them to your operation and implementing them properly;
• the website, the platform or the app will be uninterrupted, error free or free of vulnerabilities;
• our free tools, calculators or published guidance are accurate or suitable for your specific situation.

Standards, legislation and guidance change. Our materials describe the position as we understand it at the time of writing, and you should check the current position before you rely on them.

18. Our liability to you

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. If you are a consumer, nothing here affects your statutory rights.

Subject to that:

• we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of business, loss of contracts, loss of anticipated savings, loss of goodwill or reputation, loss of certification or its consequences, business interruption, wasted management time, or any indirect or consequential loss, however it arises;
• we are not liable for loss or corruption of your data, other than our obligation to restore it from the most recent backup we hold where we are hosting it for you;
• our total liability in connection with our contract with you, whether in contract, tort including negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited in aggregate to the total fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim;
• where the service in question was provided free of charge, including free tools, free resources, free trials, the confidential reporting service and the SchenGain app, our liability is limited to the fullest extent the law allows;
• any claim must be brought within 12 months of the date you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the circumstances giving rise to it.

19. Suspension and termination

Either of us may end a contract for services by giving the notice set out in the relevant agreement. Where no notice period has been agreed, either of us may end an ongoing arrangement by giving 30 days written notice.

Either of us may end the contract immediately, by written notice, if the other commits a material breach and does not put it right within 14 days of being asked, or becomes insolvent or enters an insolvency process.

On termination you must pay for work done and expenses incurred up to that date, each of us returns or deletes the other’s confidential information on request, and any licence granted to you continues only where these terms say it does.

20. Events outside our control

We are not liable for failing to perform, or for delay in performing, where the cause is outside our reasonable control. That includes illness, industrial action, failure of utilities, telecommunications or hosting infrastructure, cyber attack, fire, flood, severe weather, epidemic, war, terrorism, and changes in law or regulatory action. We will tell you promptly, and we will do what we reasonably can to limit the effect. If the situation continues for more than 30 days, either of us may end the affected contract and we will refund fees paid for work not yet done.

21. Complaints

If something has gone wrong, tell us. Email robert.low@cornerstonesolutions.uk with the detail and we will acknowledge it within five working days and give you a considered response within 20 working days.

We would rather resolve a dispute by talking than by lawyers. If we cannot agree, both of us will consider mediation before starting court proceedings. Neither of us is prevented from applying to the court for an injunction or for a debt claim.

Where a complaint concerns training delivered under a scheme owner’s rules, that scheme owner may also operate its own complaints process, and you are free to use it.

22. General

• Whole agreement. These terms, together with any signed agreement, accepted quotation and order confirmation, are the whole agreement between us on their subject matter, and they replace anything said or written before. Neither of us relies on any statement not set out in them, though this does not exclude liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Changes. We may update these terms. The version that applies to your purchase or booking is the one published when you placed it. Where terms govern an ongoing service, we will give you reasonable notice of a material change, and if it disadvantages you significantly you may end the service without penalty.
• Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations without our written consent. We may transfer ours to a successor of our business, and we will tell you if we do.
• Subcontracting. We may use associate consultants and subcontractors to deliver work, and we remain responsible to you for what they do.
• Notices. Notices must be in writing. Email is fine, to the addresses we use with each other, and is treated as received on the next working day.
• No waiver. If either of us delays enforcing a right, that does not mean the right is given up.
• Severance. If any provision is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues in force.
• Third parties. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.
• Anti-bribery and modern slavery. Each of us will comply with the Bribery Act 2010 and the Modern Slavery Act 2015 in connection with our work together.

23. Governing law

These terms and any dispute arising out of them, including non-contractual disputes, are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the UK, you may bring proceedings in the courts of your own part of the UK.

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Cornerstone Solutions & Services Ltd, 11 Orion Drive, Norwich, Norfolk, NR5 0WB. Company number 13682285. VAT 455358864.
See also our Privacy and Cookie Policy.