Legal

Data Use Policy

Last updated: May 2026.

Sweetstep's mission is to make transport connectivity gaps visible and reduce transport poverty. This creates foreseeable tensions with some commercial uses. This policy defines what the data is for, what it is not appropriate for, and how we enforce those boundaries.

The underlying connectivity data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and is free to download and reuse with attribution. This policy covers the Sweetstep platform, API, derived indices, and enriched data products — not the raw OGL source data.

The purpose–profit alignment test

At each commercial contract decision, we ask: does this sale make the product more or less likely to be trusted by the person in a rural area checking whether their elderly parent can get to a GP? If it makes it less likely, we do not make the sale.

Uses explicitly compatible with our mission

Use case	Why it is compatible
NHS commissioning and planning	Directs resources toward genuine access gaps; serves the population at risk
Local authority social care and transport planning	Public benefit; targets investment at need
Housing association tenant need assessment	Supports access to services for residents
Academic and policy research	Generates public knowledge; improves the evidence base
Individuals making housing decisions	Core product purpose — providing honest information
Estate agents and mortgage lenders (transparency use)	Gives buyers information they currently lack; increases market transparency
HR teams benchmarking office locations	Supports sustainable commuting; no harm risk
Retail and healthcare operators choosing locations	Increases service availability in accessible areas

Uses requiring review before we grant a licence

We will not decline these by default, but we require a conversation before contracting. The review question is whether the specific use targets transport poverty data against the people experiencing it.

Use case	Risk	Review question
Mortgage lenders restricting lending in low-connectivity areas	Could deepen geographic inequality by making disadvantaged areas harder to finance	Is connectivity one factor among many, or a basis for systematic exclusion that produces disparate outcomes for protected characteristics?
Insurers using healthcare vulnerability index for premium-setting	Could increase costs for the people the tool is designed to help	Is the data used to price risk transparently, or to systematically price out vulnerable populations?
Developers using forward connectivity index for pre-announcement land acquisition	Could drive land speculation ahead of community awareness	Is this consistent with the public-good framing of the underlying government data?

Uses we will not licence

Any use that denies services, increases costs, or reduces access for individuals specifically because their area has low connectivity — where the data is used as an instrument of exclusion rather than transparency
Any republication of derived data without the methodology limitations, provenance disclosures, and limitation caveats intact — the data must always travel with its context

Enforcement

Commercial API licences include a contract termination clause for uses found to be incompatible with this policy. We reserve the right to revoke API access without refund if a buyer is found to be using data against its stated purpose.

We conduct an annual review of active commercial contracts against this policy. If you believe a Sweetstep licensee is misusing the data, please contact us.

Applying for licensed API access

Bulk or commercial API access is available once the platform has reached a sufficient user base (10,000 unique postcode lookups sustained over four or more consecutive weeks). Access is not currently open to new commercial licensees.

To register interest or ask about a specific use case, use the contact form. Please describe your organisation, your intended use, and the data you need. We will respond within five working days.