Contractor terms

Version 2.8, 21 October 2026. Emmerdale Agriculture Online Ltd · Company No. 17435453

These terms cover work you take on through Emmerdale Agriculture. They are written in plain English on purpose. If anything is unclear, ask us before you price a job. They sit alongside our customer terms and service charter, which set out what we promise the customer on every job you take on.

1. How this works now

The customer’s contract is with us, not with you. We take the job, set the price the customer pays, take their money and hold it, and we are responsible to them for the work being done properly. You carry out the work for us as an independent contractor.

You are not employed by us. You use your own machinery, decide how the work is done, and are responsible for your own tax and National Insurance.

2. Approval, cover and competence

Registration is free and subject to approval. We check who you are and that you are a working contracting business, and we speak to you before any job reaches you.

Work you carry out for us is covered by our own public liability insurance, so you are not required to hold cover of your own in order to take jobs through us. That cover applies only to work booked through us (see clause 8 on working off-platform).

We do not ask to see spraying, chainsaw or machinery certificates. What you are qualified and ticketed to operate is your responsibility as an independent business, and you must not take on work you are not competent and lawfully entitled to carry out. Where the law requires a certificate for the work (spraying in particular), holding it remains your obligation, not ours to verify.

We may suspend or remove an account where work falls short or where conduct towards a customer is unacceptable.

3. Being invited, and pricing

Jobs are sent to approved contractors covering the county. Each invitation includes what the customer told us: the work, the acreage (often measured from a boundary they drew on a map), the postcode district, access notes, gate width and photographs. The full address and contact details come only if the job becomes yours.

You price it or you pass. There is no obligation to quote and no cost to quote. A price you give is your price for the job as described, and it is valid for the period shown, usually 7 days.

Messages. You can message the customer from the job page, before and after you price. Until the job is yours the customer knows you only by a letter (“Contractor B”), so a message must not contain a phone number, email address or website. The page will not send one that does. Once the job is yours you can share contact details to arrange the work. Never put your price, or any charge, in a message, before or after the job is yours: the customer’s price includes our margin, and a change of price or extra work goes through us (clause 5). Messages are kept with the job, and we can read them, to help if something goes wrong, and to make sure these terms are kept.

4. What you are paid

You keep the price you quote. Our margin is added on top and is paid by the customer. It is not deducted from you. The customer sees a single price that includes both.

The customer pays a deposit to book the job, and the balance falls due when the work is done and they confirm it, or automatically three working days after you mark it complete, if they neither confirm nor raise a problem. The balance is payable by them within seven days of that point.

You are paid your full quoted price once that balance has cleared and we have your invoice. If the customer’s balance fails and cannot be recovered, we will tell you and agree what happens next: we will not simply leave it outstanding.

You do not invoice the customer and must not ask them for payment.

5. Changes, extras and problems

Pricing subject to a site visit. If you cannot stand behind a price without seeing the site, tick “I’d need to see the site before confirming this price” when you price the job. The customer books it with the usual deposit and you receive their details to arrange the visit. Within 7 days of the booking, confirm your price or revise it, with your reason, from your won-jobs page; if you do neither, the price you quoted stands. A revised price cannot be below what the customer has already paid. If the customer declines a revised price the job is cancelled, their deposit is refunded in full, and the visit is not paid for. Contact details exchanged before a job is booked must not be used to arrange a visit or any work.

If the site is materially different from the description, stop and tell us. We will re-price it with the customer, and work continues once they have accepted the change; the difference is added to their balance. Do not agree extra work directly with the customer: it goes through us so it is recorded, insured and covered by these terms. If you see more worth doing, propose it from your won-jobs page with your price; the customer accepts it there, or not, and it is booked as a job of its own with its own deposit.

If a customer raises a problem within their three working days, we hold off collecting their balance while we deal with it. Where work is incomplete or not to a reasonable standard, we will ask you to return and put it right within 7 days at no cost to the customer. Where that is not possible, we may refund the customer an appropriate part of the price and reduce or withhold payment to you accordingly.

6. Cancellations

A customer can cancel before work starts. If you have already been booked and have incurred a call-out, tell us and we will agree what is owed to you out of the deposit we retain. If a customer fails to give access at the agreed time, tell us the same day.

If you cannot do a job you have taken, tell us as soon as you know so we can offer the customer a new date or reassign it. Repeatedly dropping accepted work is grounds for removal.

7. Customer information

When a job becomes yours we share only what you need to do it: the customer’s name, contact details, the site address and access details, the job description and their photographs.

You may use those details solely to carry out that job. Not for marketing, not passed to anyone else, and deleted once the job is finished and any query period has passed. You are an independent data controller for what you hold.

8. Working off the platform

Do not solicit a customer introduced through us for work outside the platform, and do not accept work from them off-platform for six months after a job. It is not about the fee: off-platform work has no insurance cover from us, no record, and no protection for either of you.

This clause does not apply to an Open member (clause 12) for a job they were invited to while a member: Open exists so that you can deal with the customer directly. Clause 7 still does, and so does the last sentence above: work you agree directly is between you and the customer, and nothing in clauses 4 to 6 applies to it.

9. Ratings

Customers may rate and review work. Reviews are theirs, and we publish them with a first name and county. We will not remove a review for being unfavourable, but tell us if you believe one is untrue or not about your work.

10. No guarantee of work

We do not guarantee any volume of jobs, or that you will win any particular job. Customers choose from the prices they are shown.

11. General

Either of us can end this arrangement at any time. Jobs already accepted are seen through. We may update these terms; the version in force when you priced a job applies to that job. They are governed by the law of England and Wales.

Questions: tom@emmerdaleagriculture.com.

12. Premium and Open membership

Membership is optional. Premium costs £20 a month or £199 a year; Open costs £49 a month or £399 a year, paid by card through Stripe. It renews automatically until you cancel. You can cancel at any time from your dashboard; membership then runs to the end of the period you have paid for, and we do not refund part-periods. You can join when you apply: membership then starts working once we approve you, and if we do not approve your application we cancel the membership and refund what you paid in full. You can move between Premium and Open from your dashboard; the difference is worked out from the day you move.

First refusal. A new job in a county you cover, and within reach of your base, goes to premium members before anyone else. It is held for up to 7 days, or until every premium member it was sent to has priced or passed, whichever comes first; then it goes to other contractors as usual. Where we text you the job and the text is delivered, not opening it within 2 hours counts as passing for the purpose of the hold (you can still price it). If no premium member has priced it or messaged the customer within 24 hours, it goes to other contractors then. Within the hold, where both Open and Premium members are in range, Open members are sent the job first and Premium members follow up to 2 hours later, or sooner if every Open member has priced or passed; the 24 hours above still run from the start of the hold. Where another contractor already has first refusal in an area by separate agreement, that comes first and premium follows it. Repeat jobs a customer has asked a named contractor for are not included. The customer can accept any price at any time, including during the window.

Lower margin. While you are a member, the margin we add to each price you give is 5% instead of our standard rate (currently 15%). You still keep the price you quote (clause 4); the customer simply sees a lower total. The rate is fixed when you send the price.

Open: the customer’s details. Open includes everything in Premium. In addition, every job you are invited to while an Open member shows you the customer’s name, phone number, email address and postcode as soon as you open it, before any price is sent. You may contact the customer and agree the work and its price with them directly; clause 8 does not apply to that job, and we add nothing to what you agree. Work agreed directly is a contract between you and the customer alone: we are not party to it, take no deposit or payment for it, and our insurance cover, guarantee and payment protection do not apply. You may instead send a price through us as usual, at the Premium rate. Clause 7 applies to every detail you are shown: use them only for that job, do not pass them on, and delete them when it is done. We record which jobs’ details each member has seen, and may end an Open membership, without refund of the current period, if the details are misused. The details stop showing once the customer has accepted another price or you have passed on the job. While you are an Open member we also list your business name, the services you offer and, if you give one, your website on our public pages for the counties you cover, with a form customers use to write to you alone; you can turn the listing off from your dashboard. What a customer sends through it is between you and them in the same way.

Membership does not guarantee any volume of work (clause 10). If your payment fails, Stripe will retry; membership lapses if it cannot be collected. We may change the price or what membership includes with 30 days’ notice, and you can cancel before the change takes effect.

The previous job board

Until now, jobs were posted to a board, every covering contractor could open the customer’s details, and you agreed a price and invoiced the customer directly. That board is being withdrawn. Any job you took through it is settled with the customer as before. These terms apply to work invited and priced through the new route. If you are mid-job and unsure which applies, ask us.