Terms & use
Free to explore. Honest about its limits.
Wayback Walk is a free research and journalism aid. Using it means accepting the plain terms below. The short version: look, cite and link freely; don't republish Google's imagery; don't treat any single figure as the last word.
Last updated: 21 July 2026
The app is provided as-is
Wayback Walk is offered without warranty, as a tool for inspection — not a certified data product. We work to keep it accurate and available, but we can't guarantee it is error-free, complete, or uninterrupted, and it depends on third-party services that can change or go down. To the extent the law allows, we accept no liability for loss arising from your use of it. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.
Context data is third-party open data
The politics, business and retail strips are computed from public datasets — the Office for National Statistics and Nomis, Companies House, Open Council Data UK, OpenStreetMap, Wikimedia Commons, and the UK and Scottish Parliaments. Each carries its own caveats (survivorship, mapping gaps, revisions), set out on the method page. Treat the strips as context, not proof, and verify anything load-bearing against the original source before you publish it. Political control is shown for context, not causation.
Google Street View imagery — view, don't republish
The panoramas are © Google and are shown live through Google's Maps and Street View services under Google's terms and brand guidelines. Wayback Walk never stores, saves or composites that imagery.
You may view and compare imagery here and share links that reopen a spot. You may not screenshot, download, crop or republish the Street View frames — in print or online — without a licence from Google. If you need publishable imagery, licence it through Google or commission original photography. The facts we surface (dates, counts, who governed) are yours to cite.
Fair use of the site
- Use it for personal, editorial, research and educational purposes.
- Don't scrape, bulk-download, overload or attempt to break the site or the services behind it, and don't use it unlawfully.
- Don't present its output in a way that removes the method caveats or reframes the politics strip as blame — that's the one use the project exists to resist.
- The name "Wayback Walk", the wording and the design are ours; the underlying open data belongs to its sources under their licences.
Commissioned packs
Paid press commissions are a separate service under their own agreement, quoted per brief. These site terms cover the free app; they don't set the terms of any commissioned work, which we confirm with you directly.
Governing law
These terms, and any dispute arising from them, are governed by the law of Scotland and are subject to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts.
If you use the app as a consumer, nothing in these terms takes away the mandatory legal rights you have under the law of the country where you live, and you may also bring proceedings in your own local courts.
If this notice changes, the date at the top changes with it. This page is a plain-English summary, not legal advice.