Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a legal agreement between you and Coverin Ltd ("Coverin", "we", "us", "our") and govern your access to and use of coverin.app, the Coverin mobile applications, and all associated services (together, the "Service").

By creating an account, accepting an invitation, or otherwise using the Service you confirm that you have read and agree to these Terms. If you are accepting these Terms on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you have authority to bind that organisation. If you don't agree, don't use the Service.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data and forms part of your agreement with us.

2. Who we are

3. The Service

Coverin provides a software platform that allows UK teaching agencies to:

• invite supply teachers onto the agency's own roster via join code or email invitation;
• post daily cover jobs at schools;
• dispatch those jobs by notification to eligible teachers on the agency's roster;
• record teacher acceptances, confirmations, completions, cancellations and no-shows;
• rate teachers after completed jobs and track strikes against a teacher's record within the agency;
• exchange messages with their teachers about jobs; and
• pay Coverin a subscription fee via Stripe.

What Coverin is not

The Service is software only. Coverin is not:

• an employment agency, employment business, or recruitment agency under the Employment Agencies Act 1973;
• an employer, engager, or supervisor of any teacher;
• a party to any engagement, placement, contract for services, or contract of employment between a teacher, an agency, and a school;
• the holder or processor of teacher pay. Agencies pay teachers directly, outside the Service; and
• responsible for verifying any teacher's identity, qualifications, right to work, DBS status, or safeguarding suitability (see Section 9).

Roster isolation

Each agency's teacher roster, ratings, strikes and job history are visible only to that agency and its staff, and to the teachers on the agency's roster (for their own records). No agency can see any other agency's roster, ratings, strikes or jobs. This is a deliberate design choice. It is not a marketplace where agencies discover teachers they don't already work with.

4. Eligibility and accounts

To use the Service you must have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract under the law of your jurisdiction. If you do not, a parent, guardian, or authorised representative must accept these Terms on your behalf, and you must not use the Service otherwise.

If you register as agency staff you confirm you are authorised to enter into these Terms on behalf of the agency and to incur fees under Section 6.

Account security

• You are responsible for all activity under your account.
• Keep your password confidential. Don't share credentials. Don't let anyone else use your account.
• If multi-factor authentication (MFA) is available and you enable it, you must not disable, bypass, or share it. Whether your agency requires MFA is set per-agency and may change.
• Tell us immediately at security@coverin.app if you suspect unauthorised access.
• We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these Terms, create risk to other users, or indicate fraud.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the Service for any unlawful, fraudulent, or harmful purpose, or in any way that breaches UK employment, safeguarding, data-protection, or right-to-work law;
• upload content that is defamatory, obscene, harassing, discriminatory, infringing, or that violates any person's privacy;
• provide false information on your profile, including but not limited to qualifications, identity, experience, right to work, or subjects taught;
• attempt to access, probe, or scan the Service, or bypass or interfere with its security, rate-limits, or access controls;
• reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, or create derivative works from the Service, except to the extent permitted by law;
• use automated means (scrapers, bots, headless browsers) to extract or index data from the Service;
• circumvent the agency-isolation boundaries that protect other agencies' rosters, ratings, strikes, or job data, or attempt to acquire or solicit data about teachers or agencies you have no relationship with;
• use the Service to send spam, unsolicited marketing communications, or chain communications, including contrary to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR);
• use the Service while subject to any statutory prohibition, direction, or disqualification that prevents you working in education, including a prohibition by the Teaching Regulation Agency or equivalent body; or
• use the Service in any way that could damage, disable, or overload our infrastructure or the experience of other users.

6. Fees and billing (agencies)

Coverin is a subscription service for agencies. Each agency pays a single recurring subscription fee, billed via Stripe. There is one plan and it includes every feature. Teachers pay nothing to use the Service.

The price, the billing cycle, the renewal date, and the next-bill amount are shown before you are charged and afterwards via the Stripe customer portal. The plan includes capacity limits (staff seats and number of schools), which are shown in the Service.

3 month free trial

The subscription starts with a 3 month free trial. No payment card is required to start the trial. You have full access to the platform during the trial and nothing is charged.

• To continue beyond the trial, you add a card via the Stripe customer portal before the trial ends. Stripe will then begin charging on the standard billing cycle from the day the trial ends.
• If no card has been added by the end of the trial, the subscription is automatically cancelled and you are not charged. You can sign back up later by adding a card.
• You can cancel during the trial at any time (via the Stripe customer portal) and you are not charged.
• The trial is offered once per agency. Cancelling and re-subscribing does not restart it.

Price and billing cycle

• There is a single plan with every feature included. The price and the available billing cycle(s) are shown clearly at checkout before you are charged, and again in the Stripe customer portal.
• Stripe charges your saved card automatically on each renewal date for the period then beginning.
• All fees are exclusive of VAT. Coverin Ltd is not currently VAT-registered; if it becomes VAT-registered in future, VAT will be added where legally required and we'll give you reasonable notice.
• Coverin does not hold, route, or take any share of the pay owed by the agency to the teacher. Teacher pay is a matter between the agency and the teacher and flows outside the Service.

Plan changes

• There is one plan with the full feature set, so there are no tier upgrades or downgrades to make.
• If more than one billing cycle is offered, switching between cycles takes effect on the next renewal.

Payment failure and suspension

If Stripe is unable to collect a payment at renewal, your account billing state moves to past_due. While past-due, agency staff cannot post new jobs through the Service, and teachers cannot accept newly-posted jobs from your agency, until the payment is brought current. After repeated retry failures Stripe escalates the account, at which point it is treated as suspended in the Service. The agency owner can fix the card and reactivate via the Stripe customer portal at any time. We consider a firm, automated payment state to be a feature: it tells you immediately when your payment method needs attention, rather than silently accruing debt.

Cancellation and refunds

You can cancel at any time via the Stripe customer portal linked from your agency dashboard, or by emailing support@coverin.app. Cancellation stops the next renewal; you keep access until the end of the period you've already paid for. Subscription fees for periods already billed are non-refundable.

The 3 month free trial exists so an agency can evaluate Coverin in full before paying anything, in place of a post-payment refund window. Nothing in this section overrides your statutory rights as a consumer where they apply, but Coverin's paid plans are charged to agencies (organisations, not consumers), so the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 do not apply to the agency subscription fee.

7. Your content

You keep ownership of the content you upload or generate through the Service. Your profile, photos, job postings, messages, ratings, comments, school data, and anything else.

By uploading or submitting content you grant Coverin a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, transmit, display, and make technical copies of that content for the sole purpose of operating, protecting, and improving the Service, providing it to you and the other authorised users of the agency you belong to, and complying with our legal obligations. The licence survives termination of your account only to the extent required to retain records we're legally obliged to keep (see Privacy Policy, Section 7) or to defend a legal claim.

You represent and warrant that you have the rights to upload every piece of content you submit, and that doing so does not infringe anyone else's rights (including intellectual-property rights, privacy rights, or confidentiality obligations). Agencies are responsible for ensuring they have a lawful basis and an agency-side privacy notice covering any personal data about their teachers or schools that they upload.

8. Ratings, strikes and disputes

Ratings are one-way

Agencies may rate teachers after a job is completed. Teachers do not rate agencies. Ratings are used by the Service in future job eligibility within the same agency. For example, to filter a job's pool by a minimum rating. And are visible to the teacher and to the agency's staff. Ratings are not visible to any other agency.

Strikes are issued by agencies

A strike is a record kept by an agency against a specific teacher on its roster. Strikes are issued manually by agency staff using the Service. Coverin itself does not issue strikes, does not audit the reasons for which strikes are issued, and does not decide whether a strike was fair. Typical reasons an agency may record:

• Late cancellation: a teacher cancelling an accepted job close to the job's start time.
• No-show: a teacher failing to attend an accepted job.
• Conduct: any other conduct issue the agency records against the teacher.

Strikes are scoped to a single agency; they do not follow a teacher to any other agency's roster. Strikes do not, by themselves, automatically block a teacher from accepting further jobs at an agency. The agency decides what (if anything) to do in response to an accumulated record. An agency may remove a strike from a teacher's record at any time.

Disputing a strike or rating you think is wrong

If you think a strike or rating is wrong, contact the agency that issued it directly. For example, through the agency's usual channels or via the Service's messaging feature. The agency has the tools inside the Service to review and remove a strike it issued. Because strikes and ratings are an internal accountability record between a specific agency and a specific teacher, Coverin does not arbitrate, mediate, override, or reverse them on any party's behalf.

Disputes between agencies and teachers

Coverin is not a party to any dispute between an agency and a teacher, including disputes about hours worked, pay, conduct on site, safeguarding, tax or IR35, employment status, or the termination of an engagement. Those disputes must be resolved between the agency, the teacher, and (where relevant) the school directly, using the agency's own contractual and complaints mechanisms.

You may contact support@coverin.app with platform-related concerns, and Coverin may in its discretion provide records from the Service (such as audit logs of job acceptance, cancellation, or messaging) where this is lawful and appropriate. Coverin does not arbitrate, mediate, or take sides in any such dispute.

9. Safeguarding, qualifications and compliance checks

This section is important. Please read it.

What Coverin does not verify

Coverin does not verify any of the following:

• your identity, age, or right to work in the United Kingdom;
• your Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) status, enhanced DBS certificate, or Update Service subscription;
• your Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) status, Teaching Assistant qualifications, or any other teaching qualification;
• your subject specialism, key-stage expertise, or experience;
• your references, employment history, or prior conduct;
• whether you are subject to a prohibition order, interim prohibition order, direction under Section 128 of the Education and Skills Act 2008, or any other statutory sanction preventing you working in education;
• your safeguarding or child-protection training (including anything required by the statutory guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education);
• any health, fitness-to-work, or disclosure declaration; or
• any other check, certificate, or status required by UK education, safeguarding, or immigration law.

The "qualification tier" and "experience level" fields on the Service are self-reported by teachers and may be adjusted by the agency. They are not verified by Coverin in any way. No agency or school should rely on a figure shown in Coverin as evidence that any check has been carried out.

The agency is responsible

Under UK law, the agency (as the engager or supplier of the teacher). And, where applicable, the school. Is solely responsible for all safeguarding, suitability, and right-to-work checks required by law and regulator guidance, including but not limited to:

• the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006;
• the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014 and the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2009 where applicable;
• Keeping Children Safe in Education (statutory guidance for schools and colleges), including enhanced DBS, barred-list, right-to-work, overseas checks, and prohibition checks;
• the Childcare (Disqualification) and Childcare (Early Years Provision Free of Charge) (Extended Entitlement) Regulations;
• the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 and Home Office right-to-work guidance;
• Teaching Regulation Agency prohibition checks; and
• any agency- or school-specific safer-recruitment policy.

Agencies must only invite teachers onto their Coverin roster whom they have already onboarded to their own satisfaction under these requirements. By using the Service, an agency confirms that it does so.

Teacher representation

By accepting a job through the Service, a teacher represents to their agency (not to Coverin) that they currently hold all qualifications, clearances, right-to-work documentation, and safeguarding checks that their agency and the receiving school require for that job, and that no prohibition or disqualification prevents them from undertaking it.

10. Teachers. Additional terms

If you use the Service as a supply teacher and you are not using it in the course of a trade, business, craft, or profession of your own, you are a consumer under UK consumer-protection law. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any right you have under:

• the Consumer Rights Act 2015;
• the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013;
• the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008;
• the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024; or
• any other statute or rule of law that cannot be excluded by agreement.

Specifically:

• The Service is free to teachers. Because you don't pay us, we have nothing to refund you; no cooling-off period applies to the Service itself. If we ever offer you a paid feature, we'll give you the required pre-contract information and cooling-off right at that point.
• We must provide the Service with reasonable care and skill. If we don't, your statutory remedies under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 apply in full.
• You can close your account at any time through the in-app account-deletion flow, or by emailing privacy@coverin.app. See our Privacy Policy for what happens to your data.
• Relationships with your agency and with any school you cover at are between you, the agency, and the school. Coverin does not employ, engage, supervise, or pay you.

11. Schools. Additional terms

Coverin offers a school portal that lets the office staff of a school (typically the headteacher, business manager, or office administrator) submit cover requests for their school, see the booking history for that school, favourite teachers they would like the agency to send back, and rate teachers who covered there. This section sets out how that works.

How a school joins

• The school portal is free for schools. There is no fee to a school, ever.
• A school can create its own Coverin account directly in the app or on the website. Creating an account on its own does not connect the school to any agency and does not give the school access to any agency's teachers.
• To work with an agency, the school enters that agency's school join code and selects its school. This sends a request the agency reviews. The agency approves or declines it, and access begins only if the agency approves. An agency may also invite a school by email instead. Either way, the agency decides which schools it works with; Coverin does not connect a school to an agency automatically.
• The school portal is available to any agency with an active subscription. If the agency's subscription is later cancelled or paused, the school's existing account and history remain visible, but the agency may not be able to act on new requests until billing is restored.

Cover requests go through the agency

• A cover request submitted through the school portal is a request to the agency, not a job offered to teachers. The agency reviews the request, decides whether to accept it, and posts the cover job to its own roster of teachers if it accepts.
• Coverin does not allow a school to post a job directly to a teacher, dispatch notifications to teachers, or contact teachers on a roster. Those actions are reserved to the agency that supplies the cover.
• Coverin does not warrant that any request will be accepted by the agency, that a teacher will be found, that any teacher will accept the job, or that any teacher will attend. The agency is responsible for staffing the cover. The school is responsible for the school-side arrangements with the teacher who attends.

Cancellation

If a school needs to cancel a request that has already been submitted, the school must contact the agency directly by phone or the agency's usual channels. Coverin does not provide an in-app cancellation control for schools by design. The agency owns the operational relationship with its teachers and is the only party who should communicate a cancellation to them.

Ratings submitted by schools

After a teacher has completed a job at a school, a school portal user may rate that teacher. Ratings submitted by a school are visible to the school user who submitted them, to the agency that supplied the teacher, and to the teacher who was rated. School ratings are recorded separately from agency ratings and do not, by themselves, change a teacher's eligibility to be offered future work by the agency. The agency decides what to do with the feedback. A school does not have any tool to block or remove a teacher from the agency's roster. That decision remains with the agency.

No contractual relationship with teachers

The school portal does not create a contractual relationship between the school and any teacher who covers at the school. The teacher is supplied by the agency under the agency's own engagement terms, and the school's contractual relationship for cover supply is with the agency, not with Coverin and not with the teacher. Coverin remains software only as described in Section 3.

Removal by the agency

An agency may remove a school portal user's access at any time (for example, if a member of office staff leaves the school). On removal, the school user keeps read-only access to their own historical requests and ratings but can no longer submit new requests for that school. Coverin does not arbitrate any dispute between the school and the agency about access removal.

What the school portal does not do

The portal is deliberately narrow. It does not generate Single Central Record entries, attendance sheets, timesheets, clock-in or clock-out records, Agency Workers Regulations 2010 service counters, multi-academy trust groupings, or messaging directly between schools and teachers. These are the agency's or the school's responsibility to handle outside Coverin.

12. Intellectual property

The Service. Including its source code, mobile applications, web pages, database schema, user interface, documentation, graphics, logos, and branding. Is owned by Coverin Ltd or licensed to us. It is protected by UK and international copyright, trademark, database-right, and other intellectual-property laws.

We grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to access and use the Service for its intended purpose, in accordance with these Terms. You may not:

• copy, modify, adapt, translate, sublicense, sell, rent, lease, loan, or create derivative works of the Service, except as expressly permitted by these Terms or mandatory law;
• remove, alter, or obscure any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notice; or
• use any Coverin trademark, logo, or trade dress without our written permission, except for the limited purpose of referring to the Service accurately.

"Coverin", the Coverin logo, and related marks are trademarks of Coverin Ltd whether registered or unregistered.

13. Warranties and disclaimers

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law we make no warranties or representations about the Service, express or implied, including any implied warranties or conditions of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy, or uninterrupted or error-free operation.

Without limiting the above, Coverin does not warrant that:

• any cover job will be filled, or that any teacher will accept or attend any job;
• any notification, email, or push alert will be delivered, delivered on time, or delivered at all. Push delivery depends on third-party services (Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service) outside our control;
• profile data, qualification tiers, school data, GIAS reference data, or ratings shown in the Service are accurate, up-to-date, or complete;
• the Service will be available at all times or on any particular device, operating system version, or browser; or
• the Service is free of viruses, bugs, or security vulnerabilities. Though we take reasonable steps to minimise these.

Teachers using the Service as consumers. Nothing in this Section 13 excludes or limits the statutory rights you have under Part 1 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. In particular, that services are provided with reasonable care and skill, that digital content is of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose, and that information we give you is binding on us.

14. Limitation of liability

This section limits what we can be held liable for. Please read it carefully.

Liability cap

Subject to the non-excludable items below, Coverin's total aggregate liability to you. Whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise. For all claims arising out of or in connection with these Terms or your use of the Service in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of:

• (a) the fees actually paid by you to Coverin in the three (3) months immediately before the event giving rise to the claim; and
• (b) £100.

Because teachers do not pay Coverin anything, the £100 floor is the effective cap for teacher claims.

Losses we never pay for

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Coverin is not liable to you for any of the following, whether direct or indirect and however arising:

• loss of profits, revenue, or anticipated savings;
• loss of business, business opportunities, or contracts;
• loss of goodwill or reputation;
• loss of or corruption to data (except to the extent we are required to repair it);
• wasted management time;
• any indirect, consequential, special, incidental, or punitive loss; or
• any loss arising from the conduct, acts, or omissions of an agency, teacher, school, or other user of the Service.

Things we never exclude

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded under English law; and
• for teachers using the Service as consumers, any statutory right you have under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, or any other consumer-protection law. Your rights under those statutes are preserved in full and override anything in this section.

Proportionate liability

Where loss is caused partly by Coverin and partly by another party. For example, an agency, a teacher, a school, or a third-party service provider. Our liability is limited to the portion fairly attributable to us.

15. Suspension and termination

By you

You can close your account at any time through the in-app account-deletion flow. Deletion triggers the data-handling steps described in our Privacy Policy. An agency's primary owner account can also request agency-level closure by emailing support@coverin.app.

By Coverin

We may suspend or terminate your account or the Service (or any part of it), with or without notice, if we reasonably consider that:

• you are in material breach of these Terms;
• an agency has failed to pay fees when due and has not cured the failure within a reasonable time;
• your conduct (or a user on your account) creates risk to other users, to schools, to children, or to the integrity of the Service;
• we are required to do so by law, regulation, court order, or law-enforcement request;
• we reasonably suspect fraud or abuse; or
• we discontinue the Service or a material part of it.

Where we terminate or suspend without cause. For example, because we are discontinuing the Service. We will give you at least 30 days notice and, where possible, a reasonable period to export your data. Where we terminate or suspend for cause, termination or suspension may take effect immediately.

What happens on termination

• Your right to access the Service ends.
• Any outstanding subscription fees due before termination remain payable. Subscription fees for periods already billed are non-refundable.
• Cover jobs that were already accepted before termination remain a matter between the teacher, the agency, and the school. Coverin may provide audit records on lawful request.
• Personal data is retained or deleted per the schedule in our Privacy Policy. Records we're legally required to keep (billing, tax, audit logs) will be kept for the retention periods set there.
• The following sections survive termination: 6 (to the extent fees remain due), 7 (for retained records), 11 (for the school portal user's read-only access to their own history), 12, 13, 14, 16, and any other provision that by its nature is intended to survive.

16. General

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. When we make a change, we will update the version number and "Last updated" date at the top. For material changes. Including changes to fees, liability, safeguarding disclaimers, or the scope of the Service. We will notify active users by email and in-app at least 30 days before the change takes effect, and will require you to re-accept the updated Terms before you can continue to use the Service. For minor edits (typos, clarifications, link fixes) we may make the change without notification. If you don't want to accept a change, you can close your account under Section 15.

Notices

Notices to Coverin should be sent to support@coverin.app (general), privacy@coverin.app (data protection), security@coverin.app (security reports), or by post to the registered office above. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your account or surfaced in-app.

Entire agreement; severability; no waiver

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and any additional terms we present to you in-app for specific features, are the entire agreement between you and Coverin regarding the Service. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force. Our failure to enforce any right is not a waiver of that right.

Assignment

You may not assign or transfer your rights under these Terms without our written consent. Coverin may assign its rights and obligations to a successor (for example, as part of a corporate reorganisation, merger, or sale of business), provided the successor agrees to be bound by these Terms.

Third-party rights

A person who is not a party to these Terms has no rights under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 to enforce any of its provisions.

Events beyond our control

Coverin is not liable for any failure or delay in performing these Terms caused by an event beyond our reasonable control, including failures of third-party service providers (Supabase, Stripe, Brevo, Firebase, Cloudflare, Google Maps), internet or power outages, natural disasters, strikes, pandemics, or government action.

Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them (including non-contractual disputes or claims) are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any such dispute, except that if you use the Service as a consumer, you may also bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the United Kingdom in which you are resident, as your statutory consumer rights allow.

Contact

• General and support: support@coverin.app
• Privacy and data protection: privacy@coverin.app
• Security reports: security@coverin.app