Misconduct in Public Office:Terms of use

Last revised 25 May 2026. These terms govern use of misconductinpublicoffice.org ("the site"). By using the site, by submitting material to the campaign, or by editing the wiki, you agree to these terms.

Summary

• Content on the site is published under a Creative Commons licence, with

exceptions identified below.

• The site provides journalism and public-interest documentation, not legal

advice. Nothing on it creates a solicitor-client or any other professional relationship.

• You may use the site freely as a reader.
• If you submit material to the campaign, you grant us the right to use it

for editorial purposes within the limits we set out.

• If you edit the wiki (with editor permissions), additional terms apply.
• Your statutory and common-law rights are unaffected by these terms.

About the site

The site is operated by the editor identified at Project:About as an independent campaign and accountability archive. It is not a law firm, a regulator, or a public body. It does not provide legal services. The editor is, at the date of this policy, a litigant in person in proceedings referenced on the site.

No legal advice

Nothing published on the site, and no correspondence with the editor through the site or its associated channels, constitutes legal advice or creates a solicitor-client relationship.

Specifically:

• The law-explainer pages at Law of misconduct in public office and

related pages set out general information about the offence of misconduct in public office and connected legal topics. They do not advise you on your own circumstances.

• The case-file pages set out the procedural history of specific litigation.

They are not a guide to bringing your own proceedings.

• Correspondence with the editor about a matter is correspondence with a

campaigner, not legal advice. The editor is a litigant in person and is not qualified to give legal advice. The editor will not give legal advice.

If you have a legal question concerning your own affairs, you should consult a solicitor or barrister, the Citizens Advice service, or a relevant law centre. For matters of misconduct in public office specifically, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police have statutory roles; for prosecutorial decisions, the DPP's office is the relevant point of contact.

Content licensing

Content created by the campaign

Editorial content created by the campaign and published on the site is licensed under the [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence] ("CC BY-SA 4.0"). You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose,

including commercially.

Under the following terms:

• Attribution — you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the

licence, and indicate if changes were made.

• ShareAlike — if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you

must distribute your contributions under the same licence.

• No additional restrictions — you may not apply legal terms or

technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the licence permits.

Court documents and reproduced public documents

Court documents, council papers, statutory instruments, and other public documents reproduced on the site retain whatever licensing or status they have in their original form. Most fall within Crown copyright with open licensing under the Open Government Licence, or within fair dealing for reporting of current events. Reproduction on this site does not place such documents under CC BY-SA; they remain governed by their original terms.

Verbatim responses under the right-of-reply policy

Responses submitted by named persons under the right-of-reply policy are reproduced verbatim. The author of the response retains copyright in their own words. Publication on the site is made under an implied licence sufficient to permit reproduction for the purposes for which the response was submitted — namely publication on the page that names the author and continued retention as part of the editorial audit record.

Third-party material

Where third-party material appears on the site (for example, a quotation from a published article, a screenshot of a public document, an image with identified provenance), it appears under fair dealing for the purposes of criticism, review, or news reporting under sections 30 and 30A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Sufficient attribution is given to identify the work and its author. Where a rights-holder considers the use exceeds fair dealing, they should make a complaint under the [[Project:Complaints and takedown policy|complaints and takedown policy]].

Submitting material to the campaign

When you submit material to the campaign — through the contact form, by email, by post, or by any other channel — the following terms apply.

Submissions are not published automatically

Material you submit is received privately by the editor. Nothing you submit is published unless and until the editor decides to publish it. The decision to publish is an editorial decision based on news values, the public interest, verification, and legal considerations.

Licensing of submitted material

By submitting material to the campaign, you grant the campaign a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide licence to:

1. Receive and store the material as part of the editorial process.
2. Use the material as the basis for editorial decisions, including by

referring to it in correspondence with other sources, with subjects of
coverage exercising their right of reply, and with regulators.

1. Where the editor decides to publish the material, publish it in whole or in

part with appropriate context.

You retain ownership and copyright in your material. The licence you grant is not exclusive — you remain free to publish the same material yourself, to provide it to other parties, or otherwise to deal with it as you see fit. The licence does not transfer ownership.

Confidentiality of sources

Where you have identified yourself as a confidential source, the editor will not voluntarily disclose your identity to any third party. The campaign maintains a journalistic-privilege posture in respect of source-identifying material. See the privacy policy for further detail.

Warranties from submitters

By submitting material, you warrant that:

• You have the right to share the material with the campaign and to grant the

licence described above.

• The material does not infringe the copyright or other rights of any third

party.

• You have not been deceived as to the material's origin or significance by

any party who provided it to you.

• You are not seeking to use the campaign to publish material that is

defamatory of any person, or for any purpose contrary to law.

You do not warrant that the material is true. You may submit material whose truth is in question; the editor will assess it.

Material we will not act on

We will not act on material that:

• Was obtained through unlawful intrusion into private communications.
• Has been provided in breach of a court order, contempt of court, or breach

of a non-disclosure order, where compliance with the order is the relevant legal duty rather than mere inconvenience to the provider.

• Concerns matters wholly outside our editorial scope.

This is not a guarantee. We assess submissions on their merits.

Use of the site as a reader

You may use the site freely as a reader. You may quote, share, and link to content in accordance with the licensing terms above. We ask that you:

• Quote accurately and in context.
• Where you reproduce substantial content, attribute it and link to the

source page on the site.

• Where you criticise content, engage with what we have actually said rather

than with a parody of it.

These are courtesies, not legal requirements.

Editing the wiki

The wiki is editable only by users with editor permissions, granted by the editor on a case-by-case basis. If you become an editor, the following additional terms apply:

1. Your editing is subject to the editorial policy.
2. Edits inconsistent with that policy may be reverted.
3. You agree that your contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
4. You agree to identify yourself by an account name with a reasonable degree

of consistency, and to follow the campaign's discussion conventions.

1. Sustained breach of editorial policy may result in revocation of editing

permissions.

Prohibited uses

You may not use the site to:

• Submit material with the intention of misleading the campaign or its

readers.

• Attempt to impersonate the editor, a contributor, or a subject of coverage.
• Use automated means to scrape or harvest content at a rate inconsistent

with normal reading. (Reasonable indexing by search engines is permitted.)

• Attempt to compromise the security of the site or its associated systems.
• Engage in conduct unlawful under English law.

Disclaimer and limitation of liability

The site is provided as a public-interest resource, in good faith, with such editorial care as the editor can reasonably apply. To the extent permitted by law:

• The site does not warrant that content is free of errors, that the site

will be available continuously, or that any specific outcome will follow from use of the site.

• Liability for any indirect, consequential, or special loss arising from use

of the site is excluded.

Nothing in this disclaimer:

• Excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by

negligence.

• Excludes or limits liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation.
• Excludes or limits any liability which cannot lawfully be excluded.

Your statutory and common-law rights are unaffected by these terms.

Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with these terms or the site.

Changes to these terms

We will update these terms when the operation of the site changes, when the legal regime changes, or when we identify drafting that can be improved. Material changes will be flagged at the top of the page and a record of revisions is maintained in the page history. Use of the site following such a change constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

Contact

For questions about these terms: [email protected].