Editorial policy

What this site is for

Due to You is a UK benefits-triage service. Our goal is to make it easy for someone to find every entitlement they qualify for, understand the rules in plain English, and act. The entire corpus is written to the standard laid out on this page. When a page falls short of it — through an error, a missed update, or a judgment call you disagree with — we want to know, and we will fix or explain it.

Sourcing

Every factual claim on this site — every rate, every eligibility rule, every threshold, every cut-off date — is sourced. Sources are cited inline on the page where the claim appears, linked to the underlying primary source, and shown on the page's Sources panel.

We use a source cascade, in the following order of preference:

1. Legislation — Acts of Parliament, Acts of the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru legislation, Northern Ireland Assembly legislation, statutory instruments, and Social Security Benefits Up-rating Orders.
2. Primary administrator — gov.uk (DWP, HMRC), mygov.scot (Social Security Scotland), gov.wales (Welsh Government), nidirect.gov.uk (Department for Communities Northern Ireland), and the relevant council websites for council-administered schemes.
3. Public guidance documents published by administrators — DWP Advice for Decision Makers, HMRC internal manuals where published, Social Security Scotland's decision-making guidance, Parliamentary answers, DWP Memos and Amendments.
4. Recognised authorities where the primary source is unclear or ambiguous — Citizens Advice, Turn2us, Age UK, Shelter, Carers UK, the Child Poverty Action Group's Welfare Benefits & Tax Credits Handbook, and Rightsnet. We quote these to clarify interpretation, not to replace the primary source.

We never reproduce verbatim passages from source pages. Quotations under 15 words are acceptable and are clearly attributed. We never infer, estimate, or round figures that aren't stated on the source — if a value isn't stated, it isn't on our page.

At the time we publish or update a page, we submit the source URL to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and store the archive URL alongside our record so the source remains citable if it later moves or is removed.

Authorship

The organisational author of every page is the Due to You editorial team. The responsible individual — the person who owns the page and is named on it — appears in the byline and has a public author profile linking to every page they have authored.

We publish named author profiles (not anonymous "staff" or "editors") so readers can assess who has written what they are reading. Author profiles include professional background, any relevant qualifications, and any published work outside this site.

Review

Every published entitlement page, comparison, and guide is reviewed by a named individual with stated credentials in UK benefits, welfare rights, social policy, or adjacent specialisms (mental health, disability rights, children's services). Reviewers are listed on each page and on their own reviewer profile, which shows every page they have reviewed and when.

A review means: a line-by-line read against the cited sources, a check that every regulatory reference is current and in force, a check that the worked examples arithmetic is correct, and an independent judgment that the page describes the benefit clearly and without material omission. We do not publish a page until it has been reviewed and signed off.

Reviewers are independent of the writing team. A page is never reviewed by its author.

Pre-publication checklist

Before a new entitlement page, guide, comparison, calculator, or hub goes live, the editor responsible for the page checks that it passes a written release checklist. The checklist is designed to catch exactly the errors that cause benefit pages to lose trust: stale rates, unclear nation coverage, untested arithmetic, and unsupported eligibility claims.

• Every monetary figure is checked against a current primary source.
• Nation coverage is explicit: UK-wide, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, or a council-administered local route.
• Worked examples and calculator outputs are checked independently from the person who drafted them.
• The page links to the relevant official claim route and any related Due to You guide, comparison, calculator, or hub.
• The title, description, canonical URL, Open Graph type, and structured data match the page type.
• The primary sources are archived, and the page is added to the sitemap only after the review is complete.

Freshness

UK benefits change constantly. Rates are uprated annually each April (some on different cycles), eligibility rules change mid-year, devolved schemes launch and migrate. Our freshness process:

• Every page has a Last updated date shown in the byline, reflecting the most recent substantive edit — not a cosmetic change.
• We monitor the primary source of each page for changes. When a change is detected and appears material, the page is flagged for editorial review within 72 hours.
• During the period between a detected material change and the page being updated, the page carries a freshness alert telling the reader that the source has changed and we are reviewing.
• For all pages with monetary rates, we run a systematic review against the relevant Up-rating Order within two weeks of its publication each February, with updates deployed in time for the April effective date.

Uncertainty and interpretation

Some rules are genuinely ambiguous — overlapping-benefits interactions, mixed-age couple rules, the exact scope of some transitional-protection provisions. Where a rule is unclear, we:

• say so explicitly on the page;
• explain the most widely-held interpretation and cite the authority we're relying on;
• link to the cases (Upper Tribunal decisions, CPAG guidance, Rightsnet threads) that inform our reading; and
• recommend the reader seek individualised advice from a welfare-rights service if the ambiguity matters for their specific circumstances.

Advice boundary

Due to You publishes general information, not personalised advice. We never tell an individual reader what to do in their specific circumstances, and our content does not constitute authorised welfare-rights advice.

Our triage tool returns a ranked list of benefits the reader likely qualifies for based on the questions answered, with estimated values where we can calculate them. That is informational output, not personalised advice — the reader should confirm every entitlement with the relevant administrator or an accredited welfare-rights service before acting.

For personalised advice, we recommend: Citizens Advice, Turn2us, local welfare-rights services (many councils have a dedicated team; some are contracted to CAB or Law Centres), Age UK for pensioners, Carers UK for carers, and the relevant primary administrator's contact line.

Corrections

If you spot an error, report it via our corrections page. We acknowledge substantive reports within two working days and either fix the page, challenge the correction with our reasoning, or — if the underlying fact is unclear — add a note flagging the uncertainty while we investigate.

Every substantive correction is logged with the date, the page, the nature of the change, the source consulted, and the outcome. Public corrections are shown on the corrections page after review; we do not publish personal details about the person who reported the issue unless they have explicitly asked to be named.

Conflicts of interest and commercial relationships

Due to You is not affiliated with DWP, HMRC, Social Security Scotland, Welsh Government, the Department for Communities Northern Ireland, or any local council. We do not take commissions, fees, or referral income from welfare services, benefits-advice providers, or third-party platforms.

Where we link externally, we link to primary sources and recognised authorities for the reader's benefit, not because we receive compensation. Any future change to this would be disclosed prominently on this page and on each affected page.

Advertising and editorial are fully separate. We plan to support the site through display advertising (see about for the full policy). No advertiser has any visibility into our roadmap, commissioning decisions, or page content prior to publication. The reviewer for a page is never the person managing the ad network; the two functions are held separately and documented as such. We will never link to or promote an advertiser within editorial body copy, and we maintain a blocklist of ad categories whose incentives conflict with welfare advice.

AI and content generation

We use editorial tools, including AI-assisted drafting, to help produce and maintain the volume of content this site requires. Every word published, however, is reviewed by a named human editor against the cited sources before being made public. We do not publish unreviewed AI output, and we do not treat AI output as authority. The human review line is where our editorial standard is enforced.

Accessibility

We aim for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance across the site. See our accessibility statement for the current status, known gaps, and how to report an issue.

Feedback

If something on this page is wrong or could be better, please tell us. Use the corrections form for specific content errors, or the general contact route on the about page for broader feedback on how the site is run.