FAQs

The scheme is 100% voluntary for the member businesses who choose to be involved, and those businesses have access to many benefits as members. Your subscription helps:

• By encouraging and nurturing a ‘shop local’ attitude
• By increasing customer loyalty
• By enabling independent businesses to work together
• By providing a support network for independent businesses to tap into
• By enabling Independent Worthing to continue supporting and promoting our local independent businesses
• By keeping more money within the local economy: when independent businesses succeed, they can invest, grow, and employ
• By keeping Worthing independent and vibrant

Yes — we have new businesses joining all the time, and they may review their offers periodically. Do check the directory regularly for up-to-date information.

The money from your subscription helps us continue our work — showcasing, supporting and networking with and for local independents — as well as covering the costs of the infrastructure behind the scheme: the website, the app, various associated charges, printing, promotion and the subsidised voucher scheme.

It also supports the work you don’t see: exploring new benefits for business members, and supporting local charitable initiatives through donations and raffle support.

You can read the full terms and conditions at any time — the link is in the footer of every page — along with our privacy policy.

Yes. Go to your dashboard and choose Manage subscription. That opens our payment provider’s secure billing portal, where you can switch plan.

Changes take effect from your next billing date, and any difference is handled automatically.

Go to your dashboard and choose Manage subscription (or Update payment method, if a payment has failed). Card details are handled entirely by our payment provider — we never see or store them.

Yes. Open Manage subscription from your dashboard; your full billing history is listed there and every invoice can be downloaded as a PDF.

Go to your dashboard, choose Manage subscription, and cancel from there.

Please cancel at least 48 hours before your next payment date. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for — you keep your benefits until then — and we don’t issue refunds for part-used periods.

Email subscriptions@independentworthing.co.uk with the details and we’ll pick it up. Including the email address on your account helps us find you quickly.

Please contact the member business directly to discuss any issues. Independent Worthing isn’t responsible for the relationship between a subscriber and a business.

That said, if something has gone badly wrong we would still like to know — use the contact form in the footer of any page.

Absolutely. Go to your dashboard and choose Delete my account at the bottom of the page.

This permanently removes your account and everything attached to it — including any business listing, creative profile and events you have added. It cannot be undone, and it is not a way to get a refund on the current period. If you only want to stop being billed, cancel your subscription instead.

No. Browsing what’s on, the directory, venues and news is free and open to everyone, with no account needed.

An account lets you save favourites, collect loyalty stamps and manage a subscription. A paid membership is what unlocks member offers.

Yes — there’s a free app for iOS and Android. See the download page for the links.

You can also add the website to your home screen from your phone’s browser, which behaves much the same way.

Notification settings live on your dashboard. You can switch each kind on or off independently — new events, member offers, local updates, Creative News, new businesses, the weekly digest and the what’s-on-this-weekend round-up.

Turning them all off is fine and won’t affect anything else. You can also turn notifications off entirely in your phone’s own settings.

Member offers appear on each business’s page in the directory. Show your membership on your phone at the counter — there’s nothing to print.

Offers are set by the businesses themselves and can change, so it’s worth checking the listing before you go.

Some member businesses run a digital stamp card: you collect a stamp per visit by scanning their QR code, and a full card earns a reward set by that business. You can see which businesses take part, and your progress, under loyalty.

Members can add an event directly from submit an event. Events are checked before they go live, so there may be a short delay.

Independent businesses in the Worthing area can join as members — see membership plans for what’s included, or use the contact form in the footer if you’d like to talk it through first.

Alongside events added by members, we gather listings automatically from venues’ own websites so the what’s-on is as complete as possible. That means the details you see are whatever the venue has published — and if they update their site late, or change a time without updating it, we can be behind or wrong.

Always check with the venue before setting out, especially for times and ticket availability. If you spot something wrong, tell us via the contact form in the footer and we’ll fix it.

Where a venue or a performance tells us, yes. Individual showings can be marked as relaxed, captioned, audio described, BSL interpreted, autism friendly or dementia friendly, and these appear against the specific showing on the event page — not the whole run, since venues usually schedule just one or two.

We only list what a venue has actually stated. If something isn’t mentioned, that means we haven’t been told — not that it isn’t available. Please check directly with the venue if your visit depends on it.