Public website and review terms

1. Who may use the public information

These website/review terms are published for visitors and reviewers as well as members. HousingAssured is operated by HOUSING ASSURED LIMITED at the details in this pack. Public guidance, provider score reasons and published reviews do not require a paid membership. The information website is publicly accessible. Live review submissions are closed during this preview; administrator trials use fictional reviews. When live submissions open, free sign-in will be required to submit a review and paid membership will not be required.

This pilot accepts fictional reviews only and labels its example profiles. No real certification or placement is promised. Live review operations require trained moderation and the checking arrangements below before they open.

2. Your experience and publication permission

For a future live submission, describe your own relevant experience honestly, distinguish fact from opinion and have the authority/rights to share the content. Do not name residents or disclose case, health, criminal-offence, safeguarding, private-location or other unnecessary identifying information. Do not threaten, discriminate, impersonate others or present unsupported allegations as established findings.

You retain ownership of your words and grant a non-exclusive permission to store, reproduce and display them as necessary to run the review service, moderate, investigate and provide a fair challenge process under the privacy notice. Confidential supporting evidence is not licensed for advertising. We may request a privacy-safe redaction or hide unlawful material; we must not edit a review to reverse its meaning or make a different endorsement.

A provider receives a reasonable opportunity to respond or challenge accuracy, through the contact route; it has no paid veto. A response is also checked for relevance, confidentiality and fairness. Use info@housingassured.co.uk, subject Review response or Review challenge, with the reference and brief reasons. No separate live provider-response publishing tool is promised by this pilot.

3. Fake, connected and incentivised reviews

Fake, fabricated, duplicated, commissioned positive/negative and misleading reviews are prohibited. Do not post as an independent service user if you are the provider, its staff/owner, a competitor or another connected party. Disclose a relevant connection privately to the moderation team so it can decide whether the content belongs in a clearly labelled response rather than an independent rating.

Our proposed policy is not to publish incentivised consumer ratings: no payment, gift, discount, reward or conditional benefit for a review, and no reward for removing or improving one. Providers must not selectively solicit only praise or pressure residents to post. Report suspected manipulation to info@housingassured.co.uk, subject Review concern. Paid membership and advertising never buy moderation outcomes.

4. Checking before publication and investigating concerns

Technical controls currently require sign-in, validate the rating/text and confirmation, limit submissions to ten per account per 24 hours, hold every new review pending and restrict publication/hiding to an authorised reviewer with recorded reasons. A sign-in or moderation checkbox is not proof of genuine experience.

The live moderation procedure must record a risk assessment and check relevance, first-hand basis, conflicts/incentives, duplication or coordinated patterns, privacy and evidence proportionate to a disputed claim. Request minimum non-sensitive context or a suitably redacted record when needed, never an open resident case pack. Record the checks, provider/reviewer responses and reasons. The pilot does not claim automated fraud detection or completed live checks.

Investigate credible challenges, use proportionate temporary hiding where justified, communicate the outcome and correct/remove content that is fake, prohibited or materially misleading. Apply the same standards to favourable and critical reviews; do not remove a legitimate negative review merely because a provider objects or ends membership. Repeated abuse can lead to submission restrictions. Log decisions and reconsider them through a separate unconflicted reviewer where appropriate.

Review the fake-review risk assessment and effectiveness of controls regularly and after material changes or manipulation incidents. Named moderation owners, evidence standards, response targets and record-retention rules remain launch-completion items.

5. Ratings, challenges and appropriate reliance

Published review stars are separate from the evidence-based standards score and its two-point transparency credit. The current review summary uses a simple arithmetic mean of published ratings; hidden/pending reviews do not count. Published examples are labelled and must not be passed off as real customer feedback.

Read dates, source, sample scope, review count and limitations. A review is a person's account, not a statutory finding. A reported concern alone does not prove failure. Send a correction or challenge to info@housingassured.co.uk without confidential case attachments. Urgent safeguarding or danger must also reach the appropriate statutory/emergency services; this website is not an emergency service.

6. Website use and responsibility

Use the site lawfully, respect access controls and intellectual-property rights and do not scrape confidential records, misuse another person's access code or interfere with the service. Links and searches do not guarantee a placement or suitability. Keep independent checks and appropriate professional advice where needed.

We remain responsible for our own acts and omissions and applicable duties. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be limited, death/personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or mandatory consumer/data-protection rights. The proposed business-membership cap is not automatically imposed on a non-member reviewer merely for reading the website. Material website-policy changes will be dated and explained.