Terms of Service

Black Stacks

Version 1.2 · Issued 24 August 2026 · In force from 17 October 2026

1. Who we are

Black Stacks is operated by Black Stacks Directory Ltd, a private limited company registered in England and Wales.

In these terms, "we", "us" and "our" mean Black Stacks Directory Ltd. "you" and "your" mean the person or organisation using our services.

We are not currently registered for VAT. If that changes, we will say so wherever we quote a price.

2. What these terms cover

These terms apply to:

• the website at blackstacks.co.uk and any subdomain of it (the "Website");
• the Black Stacks mobile application for iOS and Android (the "App");
• the business directory made available through either of them (the "Directory"); and
• any listing of a business in the Directory, including paid listings.

We call all of this the "Service".

These terms apply to everyone who uses the Service. Sections 9 to 15 apply specifically to businesses that are listed, or apply to be listed, in the Directory, and they apply in addition to the rest of these terms.

By using the Service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree to them, please do not use the Service.

3. Other terms that apply

These terms should be read together with:

• our Privacy Policy at blackstacks.co.uk/privacy, which explains how we handle personal data; and
• any additional terms we tell you about at the point you use a particular feature.

If there is a conflict between these terms and additional terms shown at the point of use, the additional terms apply to that feature.

4. What Black Stacks is — and what it is not

Black Stacks is a directory. It helps people in the UK find businesses that their owners have told us are Black-owned or Black-majority-owned. That is all it does.

In particular, please understand that:

a. We are not a party to anything you do with a listed business. If you contact, visit, book, buy from, hire or pay a business you found through Black Stacks, that arrangement is entirely between you and that business. We are not the seller, the supplier, the agent, the broker or the guarantor. We do not take payment on behalf of listed businesses and we do not handle refunds, deliveries, complaints or disputes arising from your dealings with them.

b. We do not endorse or recommend any listed business. Inclusion in the Directory is not a statement by us about a business's quality, honesty, safety, competence, pricing, insurance, licensing, qualifications, or fitness for any purpose. It is not a recommendation. Please use your own judgement, and make the checks you would normally make before spending money with anyone.

c. "Verified" has a specific and limited meaning. Where we describe a listing as verified, we mean that we have taken reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that the business is real and trading — for example by checking a website, a live social media profile, a Companies House record, or by speaking to someone. Black ownership is declared by the business owner and is not independently verified by us. No one can independently verify it; ethnicity is not recorded on any public business register. We rely on the owner's declaration, and we say so plainly wherever we can.

d. Listing information can be wrong or out of date. Businesses move, change their hours, change their phone numbers and close. We take reasonable care, but we cannot guarantee that any detail in the Directory is accurate, complete or current at the moment you read it. Please check anything that matters to you — particularly opening hours, prices and addresses — directly with the business before you rely on it.

e. Locations are approximate, and some are deliberately imprecise. Many businesses in the Directory are mobile traders or sole traders who work from home. For their safety and privacy, we may show them at the approximate centre of a postcode district rather than at a precise address. A map pin is not an invitation to turn up somewhere.

5. Who can use the Service

You may browse the Website and the Directory without an account.

To create an account you must be at least 16 years old. By creating one you confirm that you are.

You may not use the Service if we have previously suspended or removed your account or a listing you control, unless we have agreed in writing that you may.

6. Your account

You are responsible for your account and for anything done through it. Please keep your sign-in details to yourself, and tell us promptly at admin@blackstacks.co.uk if you think someone else has access to your account.

We may suspend or close an account if we reasonably believe it has been used in breach of these terms, or to protect the Service, other users, or listed businesses. Where we can reasonably do so, we will tell you why and give you a chance to put things right first, unless telling you would be unlawful, would prejudice an investigation, or would create a security or safety risk.

You can close your account at any time by emailing us. Closing your account does not by itself remove a business listing — see section 15.

7. How you may and may not use the Service

You may use the Service to find businesses, save them to your own list, share individual listings with other people, and get in touch with businesses you are interested in.

You must not:

• use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or to do anything unlawful to anyone else;
• copy, extract, re-use or store a substantial part of the Directory, whether in one go or repeatedly in small parts — including by scraping, crawling, bulk downloading, automated querying, or systematically saving listings;
• use the Directory, or any contact details in it, to send marketing, spam, or bulk unsolicited messages of any kind to listed businesses;
• build, train, populate or improve another directory, dataset, mailing list, database or machine learning model using content taken from the Service;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to any part of the Service, our systems, or the accounts of others;
• introduce malicious code, or interfere with the operation, security or availability of the Service;
• submit listings, reports or messages that are false, misleading, abusive, harassing, threatening, obscene, discriminatory, defamatory, or that infringe someone else's rights;
• impersonate anyone, or claim to represent a business you do not own or are not authorised to act for;
• submit a report about a business in bad faith, or to harm a competitor;
• remove, obscure or alter any notice of ownership, attribution or copyright; or
• use the Service to target, harass or intimidate any business or person listed in it.

We take the last two points seriously. A directory that identifies businesses by the ethnicity of their owners can be misused, and we will act quickly and without warning against anyone who tries.

If you break these rules we may remove content, suspend or close your account, decline to deal with you in future, and — where the law requires it or the circumstances warrant it — report the matter to the police or another authority.

8. Reporting a problem with a listing

Every listing has a way to report a problem. You can also email us at admin@blackstacks.co.uk. Please tell us which listing you mean and what is wrong with it.

We review reports and decide what to do, which may include correcting the listing, contacting the business, suspending the listing while we look into it, or removing it. We aim to acknowledge reports within five working days, and to resolve most of them within twenty working days, though some take longer.

We may treat repeated bad-faith reports as a breach of section 7.

If a business has been listed and should not have been — for example because someone other than the owner submitted it, or because the business has closed, or because a listed owner no longer wishes to be listed — the owner or an authorised representative should email us at admin@blackstacks.co.uk. We will suspend the listing while we deal with it, and we will not require the owner to prove ownership before we do so.

Terms for listed businesses

Sections 9 to 15 apply if you submit a business to the Directory, control a listing, or pay us a listing fee. They apply in addition to sections 1 to 8. In these sections, "you" means the business and the person submitting on its behalf.

9. Applying for a listing

a. Who may apply. You may apply for a listing if the business is based in the UK or trades in the UK, and it is Black-owned or Black-majority-owned. You must be the owner of the business or a person authorised by the owner to act on its behalf.

b. The Directory is curated. Black Stacks exists to help people find and support Black-owned businesses in the UK, because those businesses face documented disadvantages in visibility, access to customers and access to finance. Selecting listings on that basis is the whole purpose of the Service, and it is a proportionate way of addressing that disadvantage.

The Service itself is open to everybody. Anyone may search the Directory, save businesses and use the App, whatever their race or background, free of charge. We do not ask users about their ethnicity and we never will. The eligibility rule in 9(a) applies only to which businesses we publish, not to who may use the Service.

We decide which businesses to list, and we may decline any application. Where we decline, we will tell you why, unless doing so would be unlawful or would create a safety risk.

c. The ownership declaration. When you apply, you will be asked to make a separate, explicit declaration that the business is Black-owned or Black-majority-owned, and to consent to us recording that and publishing the business in a public directory of Black-owned businesses in the UK. We record the exact wording you agreed to and the date you agreed to it. We will not publish a listing on that basis without that declaration.

d. What you promise us. By applying, you confirm that:

• the information you give us is accurate, complete and not misleading;
• the ownership declaration is true;
• you are authorised to submit the business and to agree to these terms on its behalf;
• the business holds any licence, registration, insurance or qualification it is legally required to hold for what it does;
• you own, or have permission to use, everything you send us — logos, photographs, descriptions, trade marks and anything else — and our publishing it will not infringe anyone's rights; and
• you will keep your listing up to date, and tell us promptly if the business closes, moves, changes hands, or ceases to meet the eligibility criteria in 9(a).

e. We check what we reasonably can. We may verify that the business is real and trading using public records, its website, its social media, or a phone call. We may ask you for further information. We may decline or remove a listing if we cannot satisfy ourselves that a business is genuine.

10. Your content and what you allow us to do with it

You keep ownership of everything you send us. Nothing here transfers your copyright or your trade marks.

You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for formatting, resizing and cropping only), publish, display and distribute the material you submit, for the purposes of:

• operating and displaying the Directory in the App and on the Website; and
• promoting Black Stacks and the businesses in it — for example in social media posts, press material and app store screenshots.

This licence lasts for as long as your listing is published, and for a reasonable period afterwards to the extent needed for backups, archived records and material already published elsewhere that we cannot practically recall (for example a press article or a printed flyer). It ends for all other purposes when your listing is removed.

You may tell us at any time that you do not want your material used in promotional material, and we will stop using it that way going forward.

We may edit a listing for accuracy, length, clarity, spelling, categorisation and house style. We will not change the substance of what you have told us without asking you.

11. Fees, payment and renewal

a. Founding members: your first year is free. If we receive your submission on or before 31 December 2026, your listing is free for its first year, running for twelve months from the day it is published. There is nothing to pay during that year.

We take the date we receive your submission, not the date the listing goes live, so that time your application spends in our review queue never costs you the free year.

b. What happens when the free year ends. We will email you at least 30 days before your free year ends, inviting you to subscribe at the price then current. We will not charge you automatically — we do not hold your card details during the free year, and you have to actively choose to subscribe. If you do not, your listing is unpublished when the free year ends. You can subscribe later: we will restore the listing if you do so within 90 days, and after that we may delete it.

c. Everyone else. For submissions we receive on or after 1 January 2027, a listing costs £20 per year, payable before the listing is published.

d. How you pay. Payments are taken by our payment provider, Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card details. Stripe's own terms apply to the payment transaction itself.

e. Renewal. Paid listings renew automatically each year at the then-current price unless you cancel before the renewal date. We will email you a reminder before we take a renewal payment.

f. Cancelling. You can cancel at any time, and you do not need our permission or our help to do it. Cancel from your account at blackstacks.co.uk/account, or email us at admin@blackstacks.co.uk if you would rather we did it for you.

Cancelling takes you out of the automatic renewal in 11(e) straight away. No further payment will be taken from you, and there is nothing else you need to do.

Your listing stays published until the end of the period you have already paid for. Cancelling does not take it down early — you keep what you bought. We do not refund the unused part of a period you chose to cancel. Up until that date you can change your mind and switch renewal back on from the same place, at the price that then applies under 11(h).

g. Failed payments. If a payment fails, your listing stays published for a 14-day grace period while you sort it out. We will contact you. If the payment is still outstanding at the end of that period, we may unpublish the listing. An unpublished listing is restored if payment is made within 90 days; after that we may delete it.

h. We may change the price. We may increase or decrease the listing fee at our discretion, and we may run promotional or discounted pricing for particular periods or groups of businesses.

• The price you paid is fixed for the period you paid for. We will never change the fee part way through a year you have already paid.
• An increase applies from your next renewal only, and we will tell you by email at least 30 days before that renewal. If you do not want to pay the new price, cancel under 11(f) and nothing further will be taken.
• A decrease may be applied whenever we choose, including immediately.
• Different businesses may be paying different amounts at the same time as a result of when they joined or which promotion they took. That is not a breach of these terms and does not entitle you to a refund of the difference.

i. Refunds.

• If we decline your application, you get all your money back. Where you have paid at signup and we do not publish your listing — because we reject the application, because it duplicates a listing we already hold, or because you withdraw it before we have reviewed it — we refund the full amount, with no deduction. We aim to do this within 14 days of telling you the outcome, and we will do it within 20 working days at the very latest. Your bank or card issuer may then take a few days more to show the money back in your account. This does not apply where the application was fraudulent or the ownership declaration was false, in which case no refund is due and we may keep the fee.
• If we remove or unpublish your listing for a reason that is not your fault — for example because we close the Service, drop a category, or change what we list — we will refund the unused part of your current period, calculated by whole months.
• If we remove your listing because you have broken these terms — including a false ownership declaration, fraud, impersonation, or abuse — no refund is due, and we may keep the fee already paid.
• Otherwise, fees are not refundable for a listing that has been published, including where you cancel part way through a period.

j. Consumer cancellation rights do not apply. A listing is bought for the purposes of a business, so the statutory 14-day cancellation right that applies to consumer contracts does not apply to it.

12. How listings are ranked and displayed

We want to be straightforward about this, so you know what you are buying.

Ranking is not for sale. Paying for a listing gets you into the Directory. It does not buy you a higher position, and we do not offer paid placement, sponsored results or promoted listings. If we ever introduce anything of that kind, it will be clearly labelled as such and we will update these terms first.

The main things that determine where a business appears in results are:

• how well it matches what the user searched for, based on the business name, description, category and the service tags chosen by the owner;
• how close it is to the user's location or the area they are looking at, where a location is available;
• how many users have saved it; and
• the business name, used to break ties so that results are stable.

Businesses that trade only online have no map location and appear in search results rather than on the map.

We may change how ranking works to make the Directory more useful. We are not obliged to disclose the exact weightings, algorithms or code, and we will not disclose anything that would let people game the results.

We do not treat our own interests, or any business we are connected to, more favourably than yours.

13. Claiming and managing your listing

Where a listing exists for your business and you want control of it, we can link it to your account. We may ask you to confirm your connection to the business first — for example by replying from an email address at the business's domain, by answering a call to the number we hold, or by another reasonable check.

Until owner self-service exists, changes are made by emailing us. We aim to make straightforward changes within five working days.

14. Listings we create ourselves

We may occasionally create a listing from information a business has already made public — for example its name, address, opening hours and public contact details — so the Directory is useful from the start.

Where we do this:

• we will not state or imply that a business is Black-owned unless its owner has made the declaration in section 9(c);
• we will publish only information the business has already put in the public domain;
• we will remove the listing on request from the owner, without argument and without asking for evidence; and
• the owner may claim the listing under section 13 at no cost, and if we created it on or before 31 December 2026 the free year in 11(a) runs from the date the owner claims it, not from the date we created it.

15. Suspending or removing a listing

We may suspend or remove a listing if:

• we reasonably believe the information in it is false or misleading;
• we reasonably believe the ownership declaration is untrue;
• the business no longer meets the eligibility criteria in 9(a);
• the business has closed, or we cannot make contact with it after reasonable attempts;
• the listing, or the conduct of the business, exposes us or our users to legal risk, harm or serious reputational damage;
• someone with a better right to it asks us to (for example the real owner of a business listed by someone else);
• a payment remains outstanding under 11(g), or a free year has ended without a subscription under 11(b); or
• we are required to by law, by a court, by a regulator, or by Apple or Google.

Before we suspend or remove a listing we will tell you why, and give you a reasonable opportunity to respond or put things right — unless the problem is urgent, or telling you first would be unlawful, would prejudice an investigation, or would create a risk to someone's safety. In those cases we will tell you as soon as we reasonably can afterwards.

You may withdraw your ownership declaration at any time. If you do, we will remove the business from the Directory, because publishing it is no longer something you have consented to. We will keep a record that a declaration was made and withdrawn, and when, because we need it to show we acted properly.

You may ask us to remove your listing at any time for any reason, by emailing admin@blackstacks.co.uk.

General terms

Sections 16 to 27 apply to everyone.

16. Our intellectual property

The Service, and everything in it other than material submitted by businesses and users, belongs to us or to our licensors. That includes the Black Stacks name and logo, the design of the Website and App, our category and tag taxonomy, our written copy, and the Directory itself as a compilation.

The Directory is a database in which we have invested substantially, and it is protected by copyright and by database right. You may not extract or re-use a substantial part of it, or repeatedly extract or re-use insubstantial parts of it, without our written permission. Sharing individual listings with people who might want to use those businesses is fine and encouraged; that is what the Service is for.

17. Third-party services and content

The Service relies on third-party components, including map data from OpenStreetMap and its contributors, map tiles from our tile provider, hosting and database services, and payment processing by Stripe. Their terms and attribution requirements apply to those components.

The Service also contains links and contact details for third-party websites, booking systems and social media profiles. We do not control them, we are not responsible for them, and a link is not an endorsement.

18. Availability and changes to the Service

We would like the Service to be available all the time, but we cannot promise it. We may suspend, withdraw or restrict all or part of it for maintenance, for security reasons, or for business reasons. We will give notice where we reasonably can.

We may change the Service, add features and remove features. If a change materially and adversely affects a paid listing, section 11(i) applies.

We may stop providing the Service altogether. If we do, we will give at least 60 days' notice to listed businesses where we have contact details for them, and refund the unused part of any listing fee under section 11(i).

19. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. The version in force is always the one published on the Website, with its version number and date at the top.

• For changes that affect listed businesses, we will give at least 30 days' notice by email before the change takes effect. If you do not accept the change, you may cancel your listing before it takes effect and we will refund the unused part of your current period under section 11(i).
• For everyone else, changes take effect when published. If you keep using the Service after that, you accept them.

We may make a change with immediate effect where it is needed to comply with the law, a court order or a regulator, or to address a security or fraud risk. We will tell you as soon as we can afterwards.

20. Privacy and data protection

How we collect and use personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy at blackstacks.co.uk/privacy.

Two points are important enough to repeat here:

• The ownership declaration is sensitive. Where a business is a sole trader or partnership, a statement that the business is Black-owned is information about the ethnic origin of an identifiable person, and is special category personal data under UK data protection law. We process it on the basis of the explicit consent recorded under section 9(c), and only to publish the listing and keep evidence that consent was given.
• You can withdraw that consent. Section 15 explains what happens when you do.

If you have a data protection concern, please contact us first at admin@blackstacks.co.uk. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

21. Disclaimers

We provide the Service with reasonable care and skill. Beyond that, and to the extent the law allows:

• the Service is provided as is, and we do not promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free of viruses;
• we do not promise that the Directory is complete, or that any particular business is or will remain in it;
• we do not promise that any listing is accurate, current, lawful, or that the business behind it is competent, solvent, insured, licensed or safe to deal with; and
• we do not promise that using the Service will produce any particular result, including any level of enquiries, customers or revenue for a listed business.

Nothing in this section limits your statutory rights. If you are a consumer, you have legal rights in relation to services that are not carried out with reasonable care and skill, and nothing in these terms affects them.

22. Our liability to you

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including your statutory rights as a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Subject to that:

a. We are not liable for your dealings with a listed business. We are not liable for any loss, damage, injury, cost or disappointment arising out of goods or services supplied by a business you found through the Service, or out of anything else that happens between you and that business. Your remedy in that situation is against that business.

b. If you are a consumer, we are liable to you for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not liable for loss that is not foreseeable, or for loss connected with your trade, business, craft or profession. Loss is foreseeable if it is obvious that it will happen, or if we both knew at the time you started using the Service that it might.

c. If you are a business, then to the extent the law allows:

• we are not liable for loss of profit, loss of revenue, loss of business, loss of anticipated savings, loss of goodwill or reputation, loss of opportunity, loss of contracts, wasted expenditure, or any indirect or consequential loss, however caused;
• we are not liable for loss or corruption of data, except where it results from our failure to take reasonable technical and organisational measures; and
• our total liability to you for all claims arising in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of £250 and the total listing fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

d. Time limit. Any claim under these terms must be brought within one year of the date you became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the circumstances giving rise to it. This does not apply to consumers.

23. Your liability to us

If you are a business, you agree to compensate us for any loss, damage, cost, claim or reasonable legal expense we suffer as a result of:

• your breach of these terms;
• an ownership declaration that turns out to be untrue;
• any claim that material you submitted infringes someone else's rights, is defamatory, or is otherwise unlawful; or
• your dealings with a customer who found you through the Service.

This section does not apply to consumers.

24. Complaints

If something has gone wrong, please email admin@blackstacks.co.uk with "Complaint" in the subject line and tell us what happened and what you would like us to do.

We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days and give you a substantive response within twenty working days, or explain why we need longer.

We are a small organisation and we would rather sort a problem out directly than have it escalate. If we cannot resolve it between us, nothing in this section prevents you from taking the matter further, and you keep whatever rights you have under the law.

25. Events outside our control

We are not responsible for failing to do something under these terms if it is caused by an event outside our reasonable control — for example a failure of hosting, network or payment infrastructure we rely on, a cyber attack, a power failure, industrial action, a pandemic, extreme weather, or an act of government. We will tell you if such an event occurs, and do what we reasonably can to limit its effect.

26. General

a. Whole agreement. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy and anything we tell you at the point you use a feature, are the whole agreement between us about the Service. If you are a business, you confirm that you are not relying on any statement, promise or representation that is not written in them. This does not limit any liability for fraud.

b. Severability. If any part of these terms is found to be unlawful or unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

c. No waiver. If we do not enforce a right straight away, or at all, that does not mean we have given it up.

d. Transfer. We may transfer our rights and obligations under these terms to another organisation, for example if the Service is taken over or restructured. We will tell listed businesses if we do, and if you do not want to continue you may cancel and receive a refund of the unused part of your current period. You may not transfer your rights or obligations to anyone else without our written permission, except that a listing may transfer with the business it describes if the new owner meets the eligibility criteria in 9(a) and makes the declaration in 9(c).

e. Third parties. Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, except as set out in section 27.

f. Notices. We will contact you by email at the address on your account or listing, or through the Service. You should contact us at admin@blackstacks.co.uk. Notices are treated as received on the working day after sending.

27. If you use the App

The App is downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play. Their terms apply to the download in addition to these terms, and if there is a conflict about the download itself, theirs prevail.

Where you obtained the App from the Apple App Store:

• these terms are between you and us only, not with Apple, and we alone are responsible for the App and its content;
• Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the App;
• if the App fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price, if any; beyond that, Apple has no other warranty obligation in respect of the App;
• Apple is not responsible for addressing any claim by you or a third party relating to the App, including product liability claims, claims that the App fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and claims under consumer protection or privacy law;
• Apple is not responsible for investigating, defending, settling or discharging any third-party claim that the App infringes intellectual property rights;
• you confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a "terrorist supporting" country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties; and
• Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and on your acceptance of them Apple will have the right to enforce them against you as a third-party beneficiary.

You must also comply with any applicable third-party terms of service when using the App, including your mobile network's terms.

28. Governing law and where disputes are heard

These terms and any dispute arising out of them are governed by the law of England and Wales.

Disputes will be dealt with by the courts of England and Wales. If you are a consumer living in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in the courts of the part of the UK where you live, and the law of that part will apply to your consumer rights.

Black Stacks Directory Ltd · Company number 17404226 · Registered in England and Wales · Registered office: 42 Plomer Avenue, Hoddesdon, England, EN11 9FR