Editorial

How we review content

The fact-checking, calculator validation and update process we use to keep every page on the site accurate. The standards below apply to calculators, guides, FAQs and authority pages.

Last updated Last reviewed

The four stages of review

Every piece of content goes through four review stages before publication and at least annually after:

  1. Source verification. Every statutory figure, legal section, tax rule, or formula is checked against the primary source. For employment law, that’s the relevant Act on legislation.gov.uk. For practical implementation, ACAS or gov.uk. For tax, HMRC guidance and the ITEPA 2003.
  2. Fact check. A second pair of eyes reads the page against the cited sources, looking for misinterpretations, outdated figures, or claims that don’t track the source material.
  3. Plain-English review. A separate read for clarity and tone. Removes jargon, marketing language, AI tells, urgency framing, and anything that reads as if written by a process rather than a person.
  4. Pre-publication QA. A final check for the mechanical things: spelling, internal links, schema validity, mobile rendering, accessibility (heading order, alt text, focus states), and that the page genuinely answers the question its title asks.

Calculator validation

Calculators carry an additional layer of review beyond the prose. The pure mathematical functions that drive every calculator live in a separate library, covered by a comprehensive unit-test suite that runs before every deployment.

New calculators or formula changes go through this sequence:

  1. The pure function is written first, with explicit input and output types.
  2. Unit tests are written next, covering: the standard example from gov.uk or ACAS where one exists; the boundary cases (age 22, 41 for redundancy banding; the £700 weekly cap; the £30,000 termination allowance; the 2-year service threshold); the edge cases (zero inputs, negative inputs, leap years, month-end clamping); and any documented HMRC example for tax calculations.
  3. The function is reviewed against the test cases by a second person.
  4. The user-facing component is built on top of the verified function. No business logic lives in the component; it only formats and displays.
  5. The page is checked end-to-end on mobile and desktop. Real values are entered; results are sanity-checked against hand calculations and against the gov.uk redundancy calculator where comparable.

As of the latest review, the test suite contains 94 automated checks across notice arithmetic, redundancy, PILON, holiday, settlement, runway and tax estimation. The full suite runs in under one second locally and is also run as part of the deployment pipeline.

Source verification

The recurring authoritative sources are:

  • Employment Rights Act 1996 — sections 86 (statutory notice), 162 (statutory redundancy formula), 203 (settlement-agreement requirements).
  • Working Time Regulations 1998 — holiday entitlement (5.6 weeks), holiday pay at termination.
  • Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 — sections 401–403 (termination payments £30,000 exemption), PENP provisions (since 6 April 2018).
  • ACAS Codes of Practice — disciplinary and grievance procedures, settlement agreements (s.111A).
  • HMRC guidance — current tax rates and NI thresholds, PILON treatment, P45/P60 processes.
  • Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 — collective consultation thresholds (s.188).

Where a number appears in our content (a statutory cap, a tax-free allowance, a tribunal time limit) it’s either linked directly to the source or referenced in a sources block at the foot of the page.

Update schedule

Three trigger points drive content updates:

Annual review. Every authority page, long-form guide and calculator landing page is reviewed at least once per calendar year. The last-reviewed date at the top of each page reflects the most recent review.

Statutory updates. When a statutory figure changes (the redundancy pay cap, the income tax bands, NI thresholds, the personal allowance, ACAS-stated weekly pay figures), the relevant pages are updated within 4 weeks of the change taking effect. Each update goes through the full review sequence above.

Reader corrections. Corrections raised by readers are investigated within 7 days and either applied or responded to within 14. We’re grateful for corrections; they make the site better.

The corrections process

To raise a correction, use the contact page. The note should include: the page URL, the specific claim or figure that looks wrong, and (if possible) the source that contradicts it. We don’t need formal evidence; a pointer to ACAS or gov.uk is plenty.

When we apply a correction, we update the page, refresh the last-updated date, and note the change in our internal changelog. We don’t currently publish a public changelog; if reader interest justifies one, we’ll add it.

If we’ve published something materially inaccurate, we’ll correct it and, where appropriate, prepend a note acknowledging the correction. We don’t silently rewrite history; a corrected page should be visibly different from one that’s never been wrong.

Conflicts of interest

The site is funded through display advertising and partner (affiliate) relationships. To prevent commercial pressure shaping editorial choices, we apply two rules:

  • Partner relationships are disclosed on every page that carries them, in a clearly labelled disclosure footer.
  • Partner recommendations are placed only after the value of the page has been delivered to the reader; never before inputs in calculators, never as the answer to the page’s primary question, never replacing editorial content with a sales pitch.

The full editorial standard is documented at our editorial policy.