Terms and conditions

Who operates Local Past

Local Past is operated by Local Past Ltd, a limited company registered in England and Wales.

These terms are between you and Local Past Ltd.

Company number 17445372.

Registered office: 8 Overton Lane, Northampton, NN5 7FL.

What Local Past is for

Local Past is being built as a place to browse, connect, and contribute stories, records, memories, photographs, transcriptions, and references linked to people and places.

You can browse public pages without an account. If you want to add something or join a discussion, we ask you to log in so your entry stays connected to you.

Using your account

• Use accurate account details and keep your log-in information safe.
• Do not use another person's account or try to access private areas of the service.
• If you think someone else has used your account, tell us through the contact page.

Contributing material

You are responsible for the material you upload or write. Please share only material you have the right to contribute, and take care with living people, sensitive family information, and uncertain facts.

Entries may be reviewed, hidden, edited for safety or clarity, or removed where needed to protect people, respect rights, or keep the service trustworthy.

No scraping or bulk reuse

Local Past content is shared for browsing, research, and community history. Please do not scrape, harvest, bulk export, re-publish, re-host, or commercially reuse Local Past content without permission.

This helps protect contributors, archives, families, and the communities whose history is being shared.

Closing your account

You can close your account yourself at any time from the account data page. Closing signs you out and takes your display name off everywhere you appear. We keep that name reserved for you rather than freeing it up for someone else, so if you sign in again we will offer to re-open the account and you can take the same name back.

Closing your account does not delete what you have contributed. Entries, comments, and the conversations they belong to stay on Local Past as the work of a former member, so that other people's research does not fall apart around them. If you want your contributions gone as well, delete them before you close, or ask us and we will do it.

We may hide or remove material that breaks these terms or the community guidelines, and in serious or repeated cases we may close an account. Where we can, we will tell you why.

What we can and cannot promise

Local Past is free to use and run by a very small operation. We cannot promise it will always be available or free of faults, and features will change as it develops.

Most of what is here is contributed by members or drawn from historical records. Records are incomplete, transcriptions contain mistakes, and family history involves real uncertainty. Please treat what you find as a starting point for your own research rather than settled fact.

Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that the law does not allow us to limit. Beyond that, and because Local Past is provided free of charge, we are not responsible for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable, or for material that other members contribute.

None of this affects your rights as a consumer.

Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, where Local Past Ltd is registered. If something goes wrong between us and we cannot sort it out directly, the courts of England and Wales can deal with it. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in your own local courts.

Changes to these terms

Local Past is still growing, and we will update these terms as it does. The version on this page is always the current one, and the date it was last changed is shown at the top.

If a change materially affects you, we will tell members directly rather than relying on you to re-read this page.