Terms of use

The terms on which StreetOwl is provided, what the data is, and — just as importantly — what it is not.

Last updated 29 August 2026 · This is version 1.0

1. Who runs StreetOwl, and what these terms cover

StreetOwl (streetowl.co.uk) is run by Michael Rossi, an individual in the United Kingdom. It is a free, non-commercial site run in his own time — there is no company behind it and nothing on it is for sale. Using the site means you accept these terms. If you don't accept them, please don't use it.

StreetOwl is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or acting on behalf of any council, government department or public body, whatever data it happens to be showing.

2. What StreetOwl is

StreetOwl gathers information published by government bodies and other organisations and arranges it around a postcode, so that you can see what is going on where you live without visiting thirty different websites. It is free, and there is nothing to buy.

3. What StreetOwl is not

Nothing on this site is professional advice, and it should not be used as a substitute for it. In particular it is not:

• Financial advice. Tax rates, benefits figures, inflation and prices are general information. Speak to a qualified adviser before making a financial decision.
• Legal advice. Where we describe a law — minimum energy efficiency standards for rented homes, say, or what an insolvency notice means — we are summarising, not advising on your situation.
• Medical or emergency advice. Our first aid page reproduces guidance from St John Ambulance with attribution. In an emergency, call 999.
• A safety assessment of a place. Crime figures, permitted industrial sites and flood risk describe records and permissions, not danger.

4. The data, and its limits

We take the accuracy of what we publish seriously — it is the entire point of the site — and we try hard never to present stale data as current. Every live tile carries the time it was last checked, and figures that change slowly are dated where they appear. But we do not warrant that the information is complete, accurate or up to date, because in most cases we are not the ones who produced it. Specifically:

• We are a messenger. If a public body publishes a wrong figure, we will show a wrong figure. Where we can check something we do; where we cannot, we say so.
• A feed can fail. When it does we try to say "we could not check" rather than show you an empty space that looks like "nothing here". Silence and absence are different answers and we work hard to keep them apart, but no system is perfect.
• Coverage is uneven. Some registers cover England only, or England and Wales only. Where we know, the tile says so.
• Some figures are ours. A small number of things on this site are our own calculation or our own writing rather than a publisher's figure — a cost estimate, a derived percentage, a rewritten cooking method. These are marked as ours wherever they appear. Treat the publisher's own number as the one that wins.

5. Information about named businesses, properties and people

This section matters, so it is not buried. Parts of StreetOwl republish public registers that name things: homes with low energy ratings, care homes and their inspection ratings, companies registered at an address, companies subject to insolvency proceedings, and sites holding environmental permits.

• A record describes a date, not today. An energy certificate lasts ten years. A care home rating can be a decade old. A company's status changes. We print the date beside the record for exactly this reason — read it.
• A record is not an accusation. A low energy rating is not proof a landlord is breaking the law; exemptions exist and are registered elsewhere. A permit is not a hazard. An insolvency notice is a stage in a legal process, not a verdict on anybody's conduct.
• A registered office is not a trading address. Companies frequently register at their accountant's address. That a company is registered at a postcode does not mean it operates there.
• We publish companies, not private individuals' financial affairs. Personal insolvency and bankruptcy notices are published in the same public register we read, and we deliberately leave them out.
• Tell us if we are wrong. If something here about you, your home or your business is inaccurate, write to privacy@streetowl.co.uk. We will check it against the source, correct it if it is wrong, and say what changed.

6. Your account

You don't need an account. If you make one, keep control of the Google or Microsoft account you sign in with — anyone with access to it has access to your StreetOwl account. You can delete your account and everything in it yourself, at any time, from the account panel. We may suspend or remove an account that is being used to attack or abuse the service.

7. Things you add yourself

Where the site lets you add something — an event, for instance — you are responsible for what you add, and you must have the right to post it. Don't post anything unlawful, misleading, or that infringes somebody else's rights. Today, events you add are stored only in your own browser and are not published to anyone else; if that ever changes, we will say so clearly before it does.

8. Fair use

Please use StreetOwl the way it was meant to be used. Don't try to break it, don't try to get at data you are not meant to see, and don't hammer it with automated bulk requests — it runs on one small server, and one badly-behaved script degrades the site for everyone. Most of the underlying data is public and free; if you want it in bulk, go to the source, which we always name.

9. Who owns what

• The source data belongs to whoever published it and stays under its own licence. Most is Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Where a licence carries a condition — an attribution, a copyright notice that has to travel with an address — we carry it, and so must you if you take that data from us.
• Our own work — the design, the code, the explanatory writing, the cooking methods we wrote ourselves — belongs to us. You are welcome to quote it with a link. Please don't republish it wholesale.
• Third-party content such as photographs, news headlines and event listings belongs to the people who made it and is credited and linked back where it appears.

10. Other people's websites

StreetOwl links out constantly — that is deliberate, because the source should always be one click away. We are not responsible for those sites or what they do with your data once you get there.

11. Availability

StreetOwl is free and provided as it is. We don't promise it will always be available, or that it will be free of faults. We may change, suspend or withdraw any part of it, and one day we may stop running it altogether. If that happens we will try to give notice.

12. Our liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited — including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Subject to that, and because StreetOwl is provided free of charge, we are not liable for any loss arising from your use of it or your reliance on anything published on it — in particular any business loss, loss of profit, or loss arising because information taken from a public register turned out to be out of date or wrong. If a decision matters, check the original source. We link it on every tile precisely so that you can.

If you use StreetOwl in the course of a business, you accept it entirely at your own risk and we exclude all liability to you to the fullest extent the law allows.

13. Changes, and the law that applies

We may update these terms. The date and version at the top will change when we do, and a significant change will be flagged on the site rather than slipped in quietly.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer living elsewhere in the UK, you keep the protection of your local mandatory consumer law and may bring proceedings in your own courts.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

14. Getting in touch

Everything — corrections, complaints, data requests, or a question about these terms — goes to privacy@streetowl.co.uk. Corrections are genuinely the most useful thing you can send.

See also our privacy policy and the About page.