1. About these Terms
These Terms of Service govern your access to and use of the Lodgd website and the Lodgd platform (together, the Service). The Service is operated by Chalas Ventures Pty Ltd (ABN 63 703 582 254) trading as Lodgd Australia, and we, us and our in these Terms mean that company. By accessing or using the Service, or by subscribing to it, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree to them, you must not use the Service.
These Terms apply whether or not you hold an account. Parts of the Service are available without signing in, and reading one of those pages means these Terms apply to you.
If you subscribe on behalf of a business, you confirm that you are authorised to accept these Terms for it, and you includes that business.
2. The Service
Lodgd collects information published by New South Wales about planning and development — including development applications, complying development certificates, construction and occupation certificates, and planning proposals — and presents it as pages, figures, maps and written summaries covering all 128 New South Wales councils. We may add to, change or withdraw any part of the Service. If a change removes a significant part of what you subscribe for, you may end your subscription by emailing us, and we will refund the unused part of the period you have paid for.
3. Your account
You must provide accurate information when you register and keep it up to date. You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details secure and for all activity carried out under your account. An account is for the use of one individual and must not be shared. Please notify us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your authority.
4. Subscriptions and payment
Full access to the Service is by paid subscription, unless we have invited you to use it free of charge. Our plans and their prices are shown on our pricing page, and at checkout before you pay.
Prices are in Australian dollars. We are not registered for GST, so no GST is included in or added to our prices. If that changes, we will treat it as a change of price under this section.
You pay in advance. A subscription starts when your first payment is made and renews automatically at the end of each month or year, until you cancel it. You authorise us to charge each renewal to the payment method you gave at checkout, or to the one you have set since. Payments are processed by our payment provider: your card details are entered on its secure page, and we do not see or hold them in full.
We email you a receipt for each payment, and your invoices are in Settings, under Manage billing. Before a yearly subscription renews, we email you a reminder.
If a payment does not go through, we will email you and try again over the following days. If it still has not been paid, your subscription ends, and your access with it.
You can switch between monthly and yearly in Settings, under Manage billing. A switch from monthly to yearly takes effect straight away: that day you pay the yearly price for the time up to the next anniversary of your subscription, less the unused part of your month. A switch from yearly to monthly takes effect when the year you have paid for ends.
We may change our prices. A new price applies to you only from a renewal at least 30 days after we have emailed you about it, so that you can cancel before it applies.
We may offer new subscribers an introductory price, such as a lower price for the first month of the monthly plan. The introductory price and the usual price that follows it are shown on our pricing page and at checkout, before you pay. An introductory offer is only for an email address that has not had a Lodgd subscription before. After the introductory period, your subscription renews at the plan’s usual price. We may stop an introductory offer at any time; that does not change a payment you have already made.
5. Cancelling
You may cancel at any time in Settings, under Manage billing. Cancelling stops the next renewal: no further payment is taken, and you keep access until the end of the period you have paid for.
Deleting your account (section 15) also ends your subscription, but straight away, and the rest of the period you have paid for is lost. To keep access until then, cancel first, and delete the account after the period ends.
6. Refunds
We do not refund a payment because you have changed your mind, or the unused part of a month or year when you cancel or stop using the Service.
If we end your subscription for a reason other than your breach of these Terms — for example, because we stop offering the Service — we will refund the unused part of the period you have paid for.
Nothing in this section limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law (see section 13).
7. Acceptable use
You must not:
- use the Service in breach of any law, or for any unlawful or fraudulent purpose;
- scrape, index or bulk-download the Service by automated means, or use it in any way that interferes with its operation or with its use by others;
- resell or redistribute the Service, or make it available to any person who is not an authorised user of your account;
- attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, or to any system or network connected to it; or
- remove, obscure or alter any notice of ownership or attribution appearing on the Service.
8. Information only
Everything on Lodgd is provided for information only. This applies to every page, figure, count, median, rate, map, ranking and export, to every written summary, and to anything produced by automated means.
Nothing on Lodgd is legal, planning, financial or investment advice, and nothing on it takes account of your objectives, circumstances or needs. You should not make a development, purchase, financing or legal decision in reliance on it. Before acting, verify the position with the relevant council and with the NSW Planning Portal, and obtain professional advice.
9. Accuracy and errors
Information on Lodgd is drawn from New South Wales government registers and is provided on an “as is” basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law we make no representation and give no warranty that it is accurate, complete, current or fit for any purpose. New South Wales is the authoritative source, and where Lodgd and New South Wales differ, New South Wales prevails.
Much of Lodgd’s work is done by automated means, and automated steps can be wrong: an application, certificate or proposal can be matched to the wrong land, placed under the wrong heading, counted twice or missed. The status shown is the one New South Wales gives it. “Determined”, for example, means that a decision has been made — which may be a refusal — not that the application was approved.
Where Lodgd counts or categorises something differently from a government source, we say so on the relevant page rather than adjusting our figures to match.
If you think something on Lodgd is wrong, please email us at hello@lodgdau.com. Where the error is ours, we will correct it. Where it is in the source, it must be corrected with the council or with New South Wales, and Lodgd will follow.
Lodgd contains material © State of New South Wales and Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
10. Intellectual property
The underlying planning data is published by New South Wales under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, and any reuse of it must carry the attribution above.
All other rights in the Service — including the website and platform, their design, code and content, our written guides and summaries, and the methods by which we match, categorise and count — are owned by us or by our licensors. You may not copy, adapt or commercialise them without our written consent, except as section 11 allows.
11. Using what you find on Lodgd
You may use what you see and download on Lodgd in your own work, including in reports and advice to your clients. You may not resell our figures, summaries, maps or downloads, publish them in bulk, or use them to build a product or service that competes with Lodgd.
New South Wales’ own data remains under its Creative Commons licence, and nothing in these Terms limits what that licence allows you to do with it.
12. Availability
We do not warrant that the Service will be available without interruption or free of error. We may suspend access to all or part of it for maintenance or for any other reason.
13. Liability
Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy conferred on you by the Australian Consumer Law, or by any other law, which cannot lawfully be excluded, restricted or modified.
Subject to the paragraph above, and to the maximum extent permitted by law: the Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis; all warranties, whether express or implied, are excluded; and we are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of opportunity or loss of data, arising out of or in connection with your use of, or reliance on, the Service.
Subject to the same paragraph, our total liability to you for all claims arising out of or in connection with the Service or these Terms is limited to the amount you have paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the claim arose.
Where our liability cannot be excluded but may be limited, it is limited, at our option, to supplying the Service again or to paying the cost of having it supplied again.
14. Indemnity
You indemnify us against any claim, loss, damage or expense we suffer or incur arising out of your breach of these Terms or your unlawful use of the Service.
15. Suspension and termination
You may close your account at any time from within the platform, or by contacting us at the address in section 19; section 5 explains what that means for a subscription. We may suspend or terminate your access where you breach these Terms, where your use of the Service is unlawful, or where it damages the Service for other users. We may also close your account for any other reason by giving you at least 30 days’ notice by email; if we do, we will refund the unused part of the period you have paid for.
16. Privacy
Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms.
17. Changes to these Terms
We may amend these Terms. The current version is the one published on this page and applies from the date shown at the top. If an amendment is to your disadvantage, we will email you at least 30 days before it applies to you. If you do not accept it, you may end your subscription by emailing us before then, and we will refund the unused part of the period you have paid for.
18. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and you submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of that State. If any part of these Terms is invalid or cannot be enforced, the rest of them continues to apply.
19. Contact
Lodgd Australia — Chalas Ventures Pty Ltd (ABN 63 703 582 254), Sydney, New South Wales — hello@lodgdau.com. We send notices about your account and your subscription to the email address on your account.