Misconduct in Public Office:Corrections policy

Last revised 25 May 2026. This policy sets out how corrections are handled on misconductinpublicoffice.org. Corrections are part of how the campaign demonstrates its editorial integrity. They are taken seriously, made promptly, and recorded permanently.

Summary

• If we have got something wrong, we will correct it.
• Corrections are made openly, with a note on the page showing what was

changed, when, and why.

• The original wording remains accessible through the page history.
• Material errors are corrected within 48 hours of acceptance; smaller

matters within 7 days.

• A public log of all corrections is maintained at Project:Corrections log.
• Anyone may request a correction by writing to the editor.

Why this matters

The campaign relies on the credibility of what it publishes. A site that quietly edits its own record without acknowledgement is harder to trust than one that shows its workings. A site that refuses to correct errors when shown is indefensible. The discipline of acknowledging error is the same discipline that makes the rest of the editorial work defensible.

This policy is also the operational counterpart to the [[Project:Complaints and takedown policy|complaints and takedown policy]]. A complaint of factual inaccuracy upheld under that policy results in a correction made under this one. The two policies work together.

Categories of correction

We distinguish four categories. The category determines how the correction appears on the page and how it is logged.

1. Correction

A correction is made where a factual assertion has been shown to be inaccurate, or where an attribution has been wrongly made. Corrections deal with matters of fact, not matters of opinion or interpretation.

Examples:

• A date is wrong.
• A name is misspelled.
• A statutory provision is misquoted or its number transposed.
• A document is attributed to the wrong author or court.
• A figure (an amount, a number of cases, a count of pages) is wrong.

The correction appears on the page at the point of the error, with the original wording struck through if helpful for context. A note at the top of the page identifies that a correction has been made, the date it was made, and the substance of what was changed.

2. Clarification

A clarification is made where the original wording was open to a meaning we did not intend, where context was insufficient, or where a partial truth read as more than it should have done. Clarifications do not assert prior error; they add or rebalance.

Examples:

• The original wording could be read as imputing personal misconduct where a

reference to institutional conduct was intended.

• A summary of a court judgment was accurate but omitted a qualifying

paragraph the reader needed to know.

• A statistic was correctly cited but without the comparator that gave it

context.

The clarification appears as a note inline or at the foot of the section, identifying what has been added or rebalanced. The original wording remains.

3. Retraction

A retraction is made where a substantive claim cannot be sustained on reflection, after representations, or in the light of further evidence. A retraction is a stronger step than a correction: it withdraws an assertion rather than fixing it.

Where a substantive claim is retracted, the assertion is removed from the running text. A retraction notice replaces it, identifying what was previously said and that it has been withdrawn. The original wording is recoverable through page history but does not appear in the current published version.

Where a whole page is retracted, the page is replaced with a retraction notice that identifies the page that previously existed, the date of retraction, and the reasons for retraction. The page history remains available.

4. Annotation

An annotation is made where the content remains accurate but events since publication require the reader's attention. Annotations are typically made when proceedings have moved on, when a person has changed role or status, or when a related matter has been concluded elsewhere.

Examples:

• Proceedings referenced as pending have now been decided.
• The named office-holder has left the role.
• The body referenced has been reorganised or renamed.

Annotations appear as dated notes at the top of the page or in the relevant section. They do not amend the original content.

Where corrections appear

Every correction (of any of the four categories) appears in two places:

1. On the page itself, as set out for each category above. The page

carries a banner or note flagging that a correction has been made, with the
date and a brief description.

1. In the corrections log at Project:Corrections log, which is a

running record of every correction made on the site, organised by date and
by page.

The corrections log is searchable, linkable, and itself permanent. It is one of the documents we expect any serious reader of the site to be able to inspect.

Timescales

We aim to act on corrections promptly:

• Material errors of fact (a substantive misstatement that affects a

reader's understanding of the subject-matter): corrected within 48 hours of acceptance.

• Less material errors (typographical errors, transposed references,

formatting issues): corrected within 7 days of acceptance.

• Retractions of substantive content: made within 48 hours of the

decision to retract; the decision itself may take longer where the matter requires deliberation.

• Annotations for evolving matters: made promptly when the editor becomes

aware of the change of circumstances.

Where a correction is urgent because of the risk of continued harm to a subject, we will act as quickly as reasonably possible, including outside normal working hours where necessary.

How to request a correction

If you believe content on the site contains an error of fact, please tell us.

The fastest route is by email to [email protected]. Please include:

1. A link to the page or pages where the error appears.
2. A quotation or specific identification of the wording you say is wrong.
3. What you say the correct position is.
4. Where possible, a source for the correct position. This can be a primary

document, a contemporaneous record, a published reference, or your own
first-hand knowledge — whichever is appropriate.

You do not need to use a specific form of words. A clear, plain-English message is enough.

Where the correction concerns a person identified on the site, the request can also be made under the complaints and takedown policy; the corrections procedure runs in parallel. Where the correction concerns a document, an interpretation, or a procedural matter, this route is direct.

We will:

• Acknowledge your request within 7 days.
• Investigate.
• Respond within 28 days with our position, which may be to accept the

correction, to accept it in part, or to reject it with reasons.

• If we accept the correction, make it within the relevant timescale above.

Editorial determination

Whether a correction is required is an editorial decision, made by the editor. We do not act on assertions of error that are themselves unsupported. The discipline of correction depends on a parallel discipline of resisting demands for correction that are unfounded.

In particular:

• A different interpretation of an event is not an error and does not give

rise to a correction. It may, however, give rise to a right-of-reply submission under the right-of-reply policy, which is reproduced verbatim on the page.

• A demand to remove unfavourable but accurate content is not a request for

correction and will be dealt with under the complaints procedure.

• Where the requester provides a source we cannot verify, or where the source

contradicts other primary documents we hold, we will explain that in our response and not act on the request unless and until further evidence is provided.

Where we are uncertain, we err on the side of correction. The cost of a correction made unnecessarily is small; the cost of an error left in place is substantial.

Preserving the record

Every revision of every page on this site is preserved in the page history. A correction does not remove the original wording from the historical record; it changes the current published version while keeping the prior version accessible by version number and date.

This applies even to retractions. Retracted material remains in the page history; the current page identifies that it has been retracted. The aim is that any reader who wants to see what was previously said, when, and what was changed, can do so.

We will not delete a page from the page history except where required to by law, or where the page contains material so problematic (for example, personal data we should never have published in the first place) that the harm of continued accessibility outweighs the principle of preservation. Where we delete from page history, the corrections log records that fact and the reasons, without reproducing the deleted material.

Corrections that affect other pages

Where a corrected fact appears elsewhere on the site, we propagate the correction. This usually requires manual editing of every page where the incorrect fact was repeated. We aim to identify all such occurrences in our investigation of the correction and to address them in the same correction exercise.

Where we identify additional occurrences after the original correction is made, we treat them as further corrections logged separately. The log records the connection between them.

Annual review

Each calendar year, the editor reviews the corrections log against the editorial output for the year. The review identifies:

• Categories of error that have recurred and require systemic attention.
• Pages that have required multiple corrections, which may indicate a

structural issue rather than discrete errors.

• The aggregate volume of corrections, which is published in periodic

transparency reporting at Project:Transparency.

The review is not itself published, but the findings inform the editorial policy and the way subsequent pages are written.

Relationship to other policies

• The complaints and takedown policy

provides the formal route for complaints, including complaints of factual inaccuracy. Where such a complaint is upheld, the correction is made under this policy.

• The right-of-reply policy provides for

publication of responses by named persons. Where the response identifies a factual error, the correction is made under this policy and the response is published in addition.

• The editorial policy sets the standards by

reference to which an assertion is judged to have been in error.

• The privacy policy governs requests for

rectification under UK GDPR; such requests are handled in coordination with this policy where they concern published content.

Bad-faith correction requests

A correction request is not bad-faith merely because the editor disagrees with it. We expect to receive many requests we do not act on, including some that we think are wrong. Disagreement is not bad faith.

A correction request is bad-faith only where the requester knows or ought to know that the basis on which they are seeking correction is itself misleading. We do not log routine disagreements as bad-faith.

Where a request is genuinely bad-faith — for example, a request to "correct" accurate reporting of public proceedings by replacing it with an untrue account — we may, in addition to declining the request, publish the correspondence under the bad-faith provision of the [[Project:Complaints and takedown policy|complaints and takedown policy]]. This is rare and is not done lightly.

Contact

To request a correction: [email protected].

The corrections log is at Project:Corrections log.

Changes to this policy

Material changes to this policy will be flagged at the top of the page and a record of revisions is maintained in the page history.