Corrections Policy

Editorial review reduces mistakes. It does not remove them. This policy explains what happens when something we published turns out to be wrong, how to tell us about it, and how the correction appears on the article afterwards.

It sits alongside the editorial policy, which covers how articles are made, and the fact-checking policy, which covers how a claim is verified before it runs.

What we correct

Anything factually wrong, including:

• an incorrect figure, date or deadline
• a wrong statement about who qualifies for something
• a process step described in the wrong order, or left out
• a link that points to the wrong official service
• a quotation that misstates what someone said, or attributes it to the wrong person
• information that was right when published and has since stopped being right
• a headline or summary that misleads even where the article underneath is accurate

How to report an error

Tell us three things: which article, which specific claim you are disputing, and where the correct information can be checked.

Use the contact page and choose “Report a correction”. You do not need an account, and you do not have to give a reason for asking.

Please do not send us your ID number, bank details or any other personal information. We do not need it to check a fact, and we do not accept it.

What happens after you report it

1. We acknowledge that the report arrived.
2. We check the disputed claim against the source it came from.
3. We decide whether to correct the article, clarify it, or leave it as it is.
4. We tell you what we decided and why.
5. Where we were wrong, we fix the article and mark the correction on it.

A report that turns out to be right about a fact but wrong about our article still gets an answer. So does one we disagree with.

How long this takes

We aim to respond to a correction report within five working days.

An error a reader could act on is not queued. A wrong deadline, a wrong qualifying rule or a link sending people to something other than the official service is fixed as soon as it is confirmed, and the response follows afterwards.

How a correction appears on the article

A substantive correction is written on the article itself: what was wrong, what it says now, and the date it changed. That note stays on the page.

We do not quietly swap a wrong number for a right one and carry on as though nothing happened. A reader who acted on the old version deserves to see that it changed.

Fixes we make without a note

Spelling, punctuation, grammar, formatting, and a broken link repaired to the destination it was always meant to reach. None of these change what the article says.

The test we apply: would a reader who acted on the old version have done something different? If yes, it is a correction and gets a note. If no, it is a fix and does not.

Serious errors

Where an article was wrong in a way that undermines the whole piece, correcting a line is not enough. In that case we may take the article down while it is rewritten, and the page will say that is what happened rather than returning a bare error.

Requests to remove an article

We do not unpublish an accurate article because someone would prefer it were not there.

Where an article is inaccurate, correcting it is the remedy we offer. Where a page raises a genuine legal or privacy issue, write to us and set out what the issue is, and we will consider it properly.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome

Reply and say so. Tell us which part of the answer you disagree with and, if the dispute is about a fact, which source you are relying on.

A disagreement about a factual claim is settled by going back to the sources, not by whoever writes last.

Corrections we find ourselves

Most corrections do not come from readers. Rules change, official pages move, and a figure that was current last year is not current now.

When a rule we have described changes, we go back to the articles describing it. Those updates follow this same policy: a change of meaning gets a note and a date.

Changes to this policy

We review this policy from time to time and update it when our practice changes. The date at the top of this page is when it last changed.