Corrections Policy

Accuracy is the foundation of a useful legal reference. When we get something wrong, we want to know about it and fix it promptly. This page explains how to report an error, what happens when you do, and how we handle corrections once made.

How to Report an Error

If you have found a factual error, an outdated statement of the law, a broken citation, or any other inaccuracy on UK Law Reference, please contact us at:

To help us investigate efficiently, please include:

• The URL of the page containing the error

• The specific text or statement you believe to be incorrect

• The correction you believe to be accurate

• A primary source supporting the correction — legislation.gov.uk, BAILII, GOV.UK, or another authoritative reference

You do not need to provide a source if the error is obvious — for example, a typographical error in a case name or a clearly wrong date. But for substantive legal corrections, a source helps us verify quickly and accurately.

Correction Process

Every correction report is taken seriously, regardless of the source. We follow a standard process:

1. 1

   Receipt and logging

   We log every correction report on receipt, assigning it an internal reference. We do not discard reports without review.

2. 2

   Independent verification

   A member of the editorial team checks the report against the primary sources cited. We verify the correction ourselves rather than taking it on trust. This means we may reach a different conclusion than the person who reported the error — we will explain why if so.

3. 3

   Correction or rejection

   If the report is substantiated, we correct the content. If it is not substantiated — or if it reflects a reasonable but arguable interpretation — we may update the content to acknowledge the alternative view without treating the original as simply wrong.

4. 4

   Notification

   We notify the reporter of the outcome by email if a contact address was provided.

5. 5

   Publication update

   Corrected pages are updated and the last-reviewed date is refreshed. For significant corrections, a note is added to the page or a correction archive entry is created.

Acknowledgement Timeline

We aim to acknowledge all correction reports within five working days of receipt. Acknowledgement means we have logged the report and begun reviewing it — it does not mean the correction has been made.

For straightforward factual corrections — wrong date, wrong case citation, obvious statutory misquotation — we aim to complete the review and update the page within five working days of receipt.

For more complex corrections that require careful legal analysis — for example, a challenge to our characterisation of a leading case, or a claim that our description of a statutory scheme is misleading — we may take longer. We will inform the reporter if a correction is likely to take more than ten working days.

Significant Correction Archive

Not all corrections are equal. A formatting fix or a broken link requires no transparency record. But where we have published a materially incorrect statement of the law — one that could have caused a reader to misunderstand their legal position — we believe transparency requires more than a quiet edit.

Our policy is that significant corrections are archived and noted. A correction is "significant" if it:

• Misstated the legal effect of a provision (not merely an inaccurate explanation of how it works)
• Described a legal rule as applying when it does not, or vice versa
• Misstated a statutory threshold, time limit, or procedural requirement
• Attributed a legal proposition to the wrong case or statute
• Described the current law in a way that had been superseded and the outdated description was materially different

Significant corrections are noted at the bottom of the affected page with the nature of the error and the date it was corrected, and maintained in an archive accessible from this page. Minor corrections — grammar, formatting, link updates, typographical errors that do not affect legal accuracy — are applied without an archive entry.

Corrections Archive