Terms and Conditions

1. About us and these terms

1.1 This website, ifdcollege.org, and the student Portal at portal.ifdcollege.org are operated by Independent Funeral Directors’ College Limited (“IFD College”, “the College”, “we”, “us”, “our”), a private company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales under company number 03133906. Our registered office is 3 Bullfields, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, CM21 9DB.

1.2 You can contact us by phone on 0330 441 7381 or by email at sharon.welford@ifdcollege.org.

1.3 These terms apply to everyone who visits or uses the website or the Portal. By using either, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use them.

1.4 These terms should be read alongside our  Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, which explain how we handle personal information and cookies.

1.5 Last updated: 14th October 2026

2. Definitions and scope

2.1 In these terms:

• Website means ifdcollege.org and its pages, including course listings, upcoming course dates, news and contact forms.
• Portal means portal.ifdcollege.org, where students register, book and pay for courses, submit portfolio evidence and receive assessment feedback.
• Student means a person registered on a course.
• Manager means an employer or line manager who books courses for staff, pays on their behalf, or supports and confirms a student’s workplace evidence.
• Witness means a person asked to confirm a student’s workplace performance. Witnesses do not hold a Portal account.
• Course means any unit, module, bundle or diploma programme we offer, delivered face to face, at a workplace, or live online.

2.2 The Website gives general information about our courses. Course details, prices and dates shown on the Website are drawn from the Portal and may take up to 10 minutes to update. If the Website and Portal ever differ, the Portal is correct at the time of booking.

2.3 Bookings, payments and all course study take place in the Portal and are also governed by our Learning Agreement and the College Policies at ifdcollege.org/policies. If those documents conflict with these terms on a course matter, they take priority.

3. Using the Website and Portal

3.1 You may use the Website for your own information and for making enquiries about training. You must not:

• use it in any unlawful or fraudulent way, or to send spam or unsolicited marketing;
• try to gain unauthorised access to the Website, the Portal, their servers or any connected database;
• upload or transmit viruses, malware or any harmful code;
• attack the Website or Portal through denial-of-service or similar attacks;
• scrape, copy or harvest content or data by automated means without our written permission;
• impersonate IFD College, our staff or anyone else, or create websites, emails or social accounts that falsely claim to be us.

3.2 Breaching clause 3.1 may be a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. We will report such breaches to the relevant authorities and cooperate with them, including by sharing your identity.

Portal accounts

3.3 To book or study you must create a Portal account, or accept an invitation from us or your Manager. You must give accurate, up-to-date details and verify your email address.

3.4 You are responsible for keeping your login details secure. Do not share your password or let anyone else use your account. Tell us straight away at sharon.welford@ifdcollege.org if you think someone else has accessed it.

3.5 Work you submit through your account is treated as your own. Managers, Trainers, Assessors and Internal Quality Assurers can see only the information they need for their role.

3.6 We may suspend or close an account if we reasonably believe it has been misused, compromised, or used in breach of these terms. Where possible we will tell you first and explain why.

The Portal as an online learning platform

3.7 The Portal is where your course takes place online. Through it you can view course materials, join live sessions, upload portfolio evidence, track your progress, and see assessment decisions and feedback. Your course records are stored in the Portal and you can view them whenever you log in.

3.8 Who can see your information in the Portal. Access depends on each person’s role:

3.9 Live online sessions. Sessions are delivered on Zoom, with joining links provided in the Portal. Links are for booked students only; do not share or post them. You will be asked to show your camera for attendance. Sessions are not recorded unless we tell you beforehand. You must not record, photograph or screen-capture a session or other participants without the permission of the trainer and everyone present.

3.10 Uploading work. You are responsible for the files you upload. Only upload files that are relevant to your course, free from viruses, and in the formats the Portal accepts. Do not upload other people’s personal information unless your assessment needs it and you have their permission; anonymise it wherever you can (see 5.6).

3.11 Course materials in the Portal are for your personal study only (see section 6). Access to a course’s materials may end 6 months after you complete or leave the course, but your results and certificate records are kept as set out in our Privacy Policy.

3.12 We may monitor Portal activity, such as logins, submission times and file access, to keep the Portal secure, confirm attendance and investigate suspected malpractice.

4. Courses, bookings and fees

4.1 We take care to keep course descriptions, dates and prices accurate. Course content may be updated to reflect changes in law, industry practice or awarding requirements, and this will not reduce the overall standard of a course.

4.2 A booking is confirmed only when we send confirmation by email through the Portal. We may decline a booking, for example if a course is full or the student does not meet entry requirements. Some courses run only when enough students have booked; if we cancel a course we will offer another date or a full refund.

4.3 Prices are shown in pounds sterling and include VAT where applicable. You can pay by card through Stripe at the time of booking, or by BACS bank transfer against our invoice at least 7 days prior to the course date. Card payments are processed securely by Stripe Payments UK Ltd; we do not see or store your full card details. BACS payments must quote the invoice number so we can match your payment.

4.4 Employer bookings. Where a Manager or employer books and pays, the contract for fees is with that business, and consumer cancellation rights in clause 4.5 do not apply to it. The employer is responsible for fees even if the student leaves their employment, unless we agree otherwise in writing.

4.5 Individuals booking for themselves. If you book as a consumer, you have 14 days from the date of booking to cancel for a full refund under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. If you ask us to start a course within those 14 days and then cancel, we may deduct a fair amount for the training already provided.

4.6 Nothing in these terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

5. Assessment, certification and conduct

5.1 Our courses are assessed through work-based portfolios, not exams. Submitted work passes through marking by Assessor and Internal Quality Assurance, before external quality assurance by our awarding body.

5.2 Certificates are issued by our awarding body, Gateway Qualifications, and by IFD College, not by the Portal. Issue depends on successful completion, internal and external quality assurance, and payment of all fees. Timescales are set by the awarding body.   

5.3 Workplace evidence may include confirmation from Managers or Witnesses. By naming a Manager or Witness, you confirm they have agreed to be contacted by us for this purpose.

5.4 All work you submit must be your own. Plagiarism, collusion, false witness statements or misuse of AI tools to produce assessed work may lead to work being rejected, withdrawal from a course, and reporting to the awarding body, in line with our Plagiarism Policy, Learning Agreement and the student declaration.

5.5 Students and Managers must treat our staff, trainers and other students with respect. We may remove anyone from a session, face to face or online, whose behaviour is abusive or disruptive.

5.6 Workplace evidence can involve sensitive matters relating to the deceased and bereaved families. You must not include information that identifies a deceased person or their family unless your course specifically requires it, and you have the proper consent. Anonymise wherever possible.

6. Intellectual property, links and third-party services

6.1 IFD College owns, or is licensed to use, all content on the Website and Portal, including text, course materials, workbooks, the prospectus, logos, photographs and design. The “IFD College” name and logo may not be used without our written permission.

6.2 You may view, download and print content for your own study. You must not copy, sell, republish or share course materials outside your organisation, or use them to run training of your own.

6.3 You keep ownership of the work you submit. You give us a licence to store, copy and share it as needed to assess, quality-assure and certify your course, including with our awarding body. We will not publish your work without your permission.

6.4 Testimonials published on the Website are shared with the permission of the people and businesses named.

6.5 The Website links to third-party sites and services, including our online prospectus, Zoom for live online sessions, and our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages. We are not responsible for their content or privacy practices, and a link does not mean we endorse them.

6.6 You may link to our homepage in a fair and lawful way that does not suggest any association or endorsement that does not exist. You must not frame the Website on another site.

7. Security, availability and liability

Security and data breaches

7.1 We use appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the Website, the Portal and the information held in them. These include encrypted (SSL/TLS) connections, firewall and malware protection, access controls based on user roles, email verification, regular software updates, and secure off-site backups.

7.2 No system connected to the internet can be guaranteed completely secure. If a personal data breach happens, we will act in line with our Privacy Policy and UK GDPR: we will contain it, assess the risk, report it to the Information Commissioner’s Office within 72 hours where required, and tell affected people without undue delay where there is a high risk to them.

7.3 You can help keep your data safe by using a strong, unique password, logging out on shared devices, and reporting any suspicious emails claiming to come from us. We will never ask for your password by email or phone.

7.4 If you discover a security weakness or suspect a breach, please tell us at sharon.welford@ifdcollege.org and do not test or exploit it further.

Availability

7.5 We aim to keep the Website and Portal available at all times, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access. We may suspend access for maintenance, updates, security reasons or events beyond our control. We will try to give notice of planned downtime near assessment deadlines.

7.6  Where a Portal outage stops you meeting a deadline, contact us and we will extend it fairly.

Our liability

7.7 Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or any liability that cannot be limited by law.

7.8 Content on the Website is general information about our training. It is not professional, legal or regulatory advice for your business.

7.9 We are not responsible for loss or damage caused by a virus, denial-of-service attack or other harmful material that reaches your device through your use of the Website, where we have taken reasonable care to prevent it.

7.10 For business users (including employers booking courses), we are not liable for loss of profits, sales, business, goodwill or indirect or consequential loss. Our total liability to a business in connection with a course is limited to the fees paid for that course.

7.11 For consumers, we are responsible 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 responsible for loss that was not foreseeable, or for business losses.

Indemnity

7.12 If you breach these terms, deliberately misuse the Website or Portal, or submit content that infringes someone else’s rights, you agree to cover reasonable losses and costs we incur as a result.

8. General

8.1 Privacy and cookies. How we use personal information, and the cookies used on the Website, are explained in our Privacy Policy. Non-essential cookies are only set with your consent, which you can change at any time through the Cookie Preferences link.

8.2 Complaints and appeals. If you are unhappy with our service, contact us first so we can try to put it right. Assessment decisions can be appealed under our Academic Appeals Policy and complaints are handled under our Complaints and Whistleblowing Policy, both on the Policies page. You may also be able to refer a matter to our awarding body once our process is complete.

8.3 Events outside our control. We are not responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control, such as severe weather, illness of a trainer, power or internet failures, or cyber attacks on third-party providers. We will rearrange affected sessions as soon as we reasonably can.

8.4 Changes to these terms. We may update these terms from time to time. The version on the Website when you use it applies. Changes will not affect a course already booked unless required by law or the awarding body.

8.5 Other terms. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. If we delay enforcing these terms, we can still enforce them later. Nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.

8.6 Law and courts. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and disputes will be dealt with by the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts.

8.7 Contact us. Independent Funeral Directors’ College Limited, 3 Bullfields, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, CM21 9DB. Telephone 0330 441 7381. Email sharon.welford@ifdcollege.org.