Websites and the law

There are common legal stumbling blocks when designing and using websites. Elizabeth Davis and Karen Gibson provide advice on how to get it right

Websites are an important information and brand-building tool. Yet they can fall foul of a number of legal requirements such as accessibility, general content and liability and data protection.

It's easy to launch a school website: build one in-house using the expertise of your ICT staff or outsource the work to a web design company; there are many to choose from. As a result, most schools have a web presence in some shape or form. But managing your website to ensure legal compliance is quite another matter. Whether your school is in the private or public sector, charitable or not, your obligations are the same.

You may think it is unlikely that anyone would spend the time and expense to file a legal action against your school, but the reputational consequences of any complaint or criticism whether from a parent, the ISI, Ofsted, the Charity Commission or indeed anyone can be serious.

It is almost impossible to build and maintain a website that is comprehensively legally compliant, but here follows the key areas on which you should focus.

Outsourcing
This is a notorious area for dispute. If you have asked a third party to build a website for you, ensure that you have a written contract in place to provide for the design, build, maintenance, hosting etc of the site including registration and ownership of the domain name, ownership of copyright in the design and material included and adequate post-termination provisions.

Security and data protection
Don't post or let anyone else post anything on the public pages of your website that you are not happy for the whole world to see. Well designed websites have public pages and separate password protected pages for the use of teachers, parents and pupils.

Online noticeboards, blogs, pupil-managed pages etc are notoriously problematic. Ensure that you have policies in place on how these pages may be used and that all staff and pupils are aware of these policies. Someone should have clear responsibility to edit and monitor the content.

The Data Protection Act imposes obligations on any organisation collecting and using or displaying personal data. Ensure that any personal data, such as names, addresses, email addresses, is only used with consent.

It is a common misconception that we have privacy laws in the UK preventing the use of photographs without subject consent. In fact, ordinary people have no such rights. Copyright in a photograph is generally owned by the person taking the photograph – their permission is required before the photograph may be used but permission from the subject (or their parent if they are a minor) is not required unless it can be linked to their personal data.

Legally more problematic is the commercial use of photographs without subject consent and whether the use of photographs on a school website represents “commercial use”.

As most people believe subject consent is required for the use of photographs, a sensible culture of seeking permission has arisen and generally schools seek blanket permission from parents to use photographs of their children on a school website and in marketing materials.

Accessibility
The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and related legislation impose obligations to ensure that disabled people are not unfairly discriminated against when attempting to access online information. There is a balance in designing a website that is reasonably accessible and the costs involved in creating universal accessibility.

E-commerce
If you have a school shop operating from your website, then you are transacting with consumers and the website will need to comply with e-commerce regulations.

General content
• statements about the school and particularly its attainments should be accurate.
• remember that photographs and prose etc are generally someone's copyright and obtain permission before displaying such materials. Copyright in words and photographs created by staff in the course of their employment will generally belong to the school.
• manage and check any links to third party websites and seek permission, if required, before linking.
• include a broadly worded disclaimer so that your liability is limited if your pages include a mistake and users rely on the information provided.
• the public pages of your website are an online prospectus. A prospective parent or employee will form an opinion of your school within a few seconds of clicking through your pages.

Elizabeth Davis and Karen Gibson are part of Blake Lapthorn's Schools team. Elizabeth can be contacted on 023 8085 7011 or elizabeth.davis@bllaw.co.uk; Karen can be contacted on 01865 258 087 karen.gibson@bllaw.co.uk.

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