Planther Acceptable Use Policy

Last updated: 22 October 2026

This policy sets out how Planther may and may not be used. It is written to be read by the people who use Planther and by the firms that pay for it.

Planther is provided by Planther Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17249378) with its registered office at 1 Stocks Bridge Way, St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England, PE27 5JL ("Planther", "we", "us" or "our").

1. About this policy

1.1. This policy forms part of the agreement under which your firm uses Planther. That is either a signed subscription agreement with us, or our Terms of Service. In this policy, "your firm" means the business that holds the agreement, and "you" means your firm and each person who uses Planther under it. Where your firm has a signed agreement, "your firm" is the Customer, the people it lets use Planther are its Authorised Users, and "the AI's output" is AI Customer Output, as those words are defined there.

1.2. Your firm must make sure that everyone it lets use Planther follows this policy. Your firm is responsible for all use made through its accounts.

1.3. If this policy and your firm's agreement say different things, the agreement wins.

1.4. We may update this policy from time to time, for example when we add features or change our limits. The version on this page is the one that applies. If we make a change that materially affects how your firm uses Planther, we will tell your firm's main contact. Where your firm has a signed agreement, that agreement also says how changes to this policy take effect.

2. Fair use and usage limits

2.1. There are two different kinds of limit in Planther, and this policy is about only one of them.

(a) Your plan's usage limits. If you pay for a plan through our website, your plan comes with its own usage limits, such as a limit over a few hours and a weekly limit. These are the everyday limits on how much you use Planther. They are part of the plan you pay for, they are shown to you in the app, and they are set out with the plan, not in this policy. If your firm has an agreement with us and pays for its AI use as it goes, it does not have these plan limits unless we have agreed them with your firm.

(b) The safeguards in this policy. Whichever way you pay, we also keep a set of background safeguards. They are there to stop misuse, abuse and runaway costs, and to keep Planther fast and reliable for everyone. They are not meant to limit normal day-to-day work, and most people will never meet them.

2.2. The safeguards include:

(a) Message limits: a daily ceiling on how many messages each person can send to the AI.

(b) Rate limits: how many requests can be made in a short period, by one person or from one internet address.

(c) Limits on each task: how much work the AI can do in answer to a single request, such as how many steps it takes or how many tools it uses before it stops and reports back.

(d) Cost safeguards: checks that stop a single task, person or firm running up an unusually large AI cost, for example a task that gets stuck repeating itself.

(e) Monthly AI allowance: for firms that pay for AI use as they go, a monthly limit on the firm's total AI use. Your firm can ask us to set, raise or lower one, and we may set one ourselves, telling your firm why.

(f) Limits on connected features: for example how many emails can be sent or calendar entries changed through a connected mailbox each day, and how much our MCP server (see section 5) can be used each day.

2.3. We do not publish exact figures for the safeguards, because they change as the product and our costs change. We may change them at any time without notice. We set them well above what normal professional use by a planning consultant needs. If one gets in the way of your work, contact us and we will look at it.

2.4. When you reach a limit of either kind, the feature it covers pauses until the limit resets or is raised. Planther will normally tell you when this happens.

2.5. You must not try to get round a limit of either kind, for example by using several accounts, sharing an account, or using scripts or other automated tools.

2.6. Where your firm pays for AI use as it goes, the safeguards help protect it from unexpectedly large charges, but they are not a promise that charges will stay below any particular level. Your firm remains responsible for the AI usage charges run up through its accounts, as its agreement sets out.

3. Accounts and access

3.1. Each seat is for one named person. You must not share your login with anyone else, or let more than one person use the same account. If someone leaves the firm, their seat can be passed to someone else, but the person leaving must stop using it.

3.2. Only people your firm has authorised may use Planther. Your firm's own clients must not be given access to Planther itself, although you may give them the work you produce with it (see section 4).

3.3. Keep your password private. Keep your firm's Planther sign-up code private and do not share it with anyone outside your firm.

3.4. Tell us straight away at support@planther.co.uk if you think a login or your firm's sign-up code has been lost, stolen or used by someone who should not have it.

4. Using our data and the AI's output

4.1. You may use what Planther produces in your professional planning work. This includes using it in advice, appraisals, statements, applications, representations and appeals, giving it to your clients, to local planning authorities and councils, to the Planning Inspectorate and to others involved, and charging for that work.

4.2. You must not:

(a) scrape, bulk download or systematically copy the data in Planther, or try to rebuild any of our datasets, whether by hand, with scripts, or by asking the AI to do it for you;

(b) sell, supply or share our data, or the AI's output, as a dataset, data feed or data product in its own right;

(c) use Planther, its data or its output to build, train, test or benchmark a product, dataset or AI model that competes with Planther, or to copy how Planther works.

5. Automated access and connections

5.1. You may only use Planther through the ways we provide: the Planther website and app, our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, and any connections we offer inside Planther, such as connecting your mailbox.

5.2. You must not use bots, scripts, crawlers, browser automation or other automated tools to use the Planther website or app, and you must not call our systems directly in any way we have not provided for you.

5.3. Our MCP server lets an AI assistant you use (such as Claude or ChatGPT) use Planther's planning tools on your behalf. Using it for your own work, signed in as yourself, is allowed. The same limits and rules apply as in the Planther app, and you must not use it to scrape or bulk download our data.

5.4. If you connect Planther to another service, such as your mailbox, an AI assistant, another MCP server or another tool, that is your choice. You must be entitled to make the connection and to share what passes through it, and you must follow that service's own terms. Those terms govern what it does with your information. We may switch off or block a connection if we need to for security, to protect Planther or other customers, or because a supplier or the law requires it.

5.5. Where you let the AI take actions in a connected service, such as drafting or sending emails, those actions are taken on your behalf and your firm is responsible for them. Check your settings, and we recommend asking the AI to wait for your approval before it sends anything to other people or deletes anything.

6. Protecting Planther and its systems

6.1. You must not:

(a) reverse engineer, decompile or take apart Planther's software, or try to work out its source code or how it is built, except where the law allows this and it cannot be excluded;

(b) try to find out, copy or reveal Planther's system prompts, tool definitions, model settings or the instructions we give our AI, including by asking the AI to reveal them or by trying to trick it into ignoring its instructions;

(c) test, probe or scan Planther for security weaknesses, or try to get past any login, security feature or limit, without our written permission;

(d) upload or send anything containing a virus or other harmful code;

(e) put an unreasonable load on Planther, or do anything that interferes with its use by others.

6.2. If you find what you think is a security weakness, please tell us at support@planther.co.uk and do not use it or share it with anyone else.

7. What you put into Planther

7.1. Only upload, connect or enter material that you are entitled to use in this way. Where it includes personal information about other people, your firm must have a lawful basis for using it and must have given any notices the law requires. Keep it to what your work needs.

7.2. Take particular care with special category personal data (such as information about someone's health, ethnicity, religion or sex life) and information about criminal convictions or offences, including anything that reaches Planther through a connected mailbox. Your firm must have a lawful basis, and any extra condition the law requires, before such data goes into Planther, and it goes in at your firm's own risk.

7.3. You must not use Planther to store, create or send material that:

(a) is unlawful, harmful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, harassing, or racially or ethnically offensive;

(b) helps anyone carry out illegal activity;

(d) promotes unlawful violence;

(e) discriminates against anyone because of race, sex, colour, religious belief, sexual orientation or disability;

(f) infringes anyone else's rights, such as copyright; or

(g) is designed to mislead, for example by pretending to come from a council, the Planning Inspectorate or another real person or organisation.

7.4. You must also not use Planther in a way that would break the usage rules our AI providers set for us. These cover much the same ground as this policy, and we can send you them on request.

8. Third-party data

8.1. Much of the data in Planther comes from public bodies and other publishers, such as government departments and agencies, councils and the Ordnance Survey. Most of it is published under the Open Government Licence or similar licences, and some licences come with conditions, such as giving a credit line.

8.2. Planther shows where its data comes from, and the licence for each source, under "Data credits" in the app. Where we tell you that a source's licence terms apply, you must follow them, including any credit line it asks for when you use that data in your own work.

8.3. You must not remove or hide any copyright, licence or credit notice shown with Planther's data or output.

9. Checking the AI's output

9.1. Planther uses AI, and AI can be wrong. It can miss things, misread a source, rely on information that is out of date, or make things up.

9.2. You must check the AI's output against the original sources before you rely on it, act on it or pass it to anyone else, and adapt it to the job it is needed for. Planther is a tool to help a planning professional; it does not replace their judgement. Your firm remains responsible for the work it produces with Planther.

10. If this policy is broken

10.1. We may look into any use of Planther that we think may break this policy. To do this, authorised Planther staff may review how the service is being used, as our Privacy Policy explains.

10.2. Where we think this policy has been broken, we may do any of the following, depending on how serious it is:

(a) contact your firm and ask for it to stop;

(b) apply a tighter limit to a person, a feature or your firm;

10.3. We may act straight away, telling your firm at the time, where we need to, for example where there is a security risk, scraping, abusive use, use that is running up unusual costs, or where the law or one of our suppliers requires it. Otherwise we will normally tell your firm first and give it a chance to put things right.

10.4. We will tell your firm why we have acted, unless the law or a security concern stops us, and we will restore access once the problem is resolved. Your firm's agreement says what happens to fees during a suspension, and when a serious or repeated breach allows us to end the agreement.

11. Contact

11.1. Questions about this policy, or reports of misuse or a security issue: support@planther.co.uk.

11.2. Formal legal notices under your firm's agreement: legal@planther.co.uk.