The Short Answer
Every figure on this site comes from an official source, is verified against that source on a stated date, and carries that date next to it. That is the whole policy in one sentence. The rest of this page sets out the sources we accept, the checking ritual behind the Last checked stamps, the claims we refuse to make, and how corrections work when we get something wrong.
Where Our Facts Come From
Facts on this site have a fixed hierarchy of sources. Benefit rates and official processes come from GOV.UK and the DWP's benefit and pension rates publications. Legal wording, descriptors and points come from legislation.gov.uk, using the latest revised text. Statistics come from the DWP's own releases and the Ministry of Justice tribunal statistics. Typical timescales that the government does not publish, such as how long tribunal payouts take, are sourced from the advice sector and attributed, principally Citizens Advice.
Tools carry the same discipline into code. The pip back pay calculator and every other tool on the site read their rates from one verified data file, regenerated from the official publications rather than typed by hand, so the calculators and the guides can never quietly disagree.
The Checking Ritual
A figure enters a page only after being checked against its source on the day of writing, and the Last checked date under each table records exactly that. The date is a claim about verification, never a decoration: an unchecked figure does not get a stamp, and a stamped figure was read from the source it cites.
April uprating is the standing test of the system. When new rates publish, we regenerate the rate data from the new documents, refresh every affected page, and update the stamps together. Between April changes, we re-verify time-sensitive facts whenever we touch a page that carries them.
What We Will Not Publish
Some content rules here are absolute. We do not invent statistics, usage numbers or testimonials. We do not manufacture urgency; the only deadlines on this site are statutory ones, stated as fact. We do not give medical advice, and condition pages describe only how the points system treats difficulties. We do not coach dishonesty; questions about assessment tricks are answered as honest preparation. And we do not soften bad news into hedges: where the law is definite, we say so plainly.
Authorship follows the same honesty. Content is produced by the editorial team as an organisation, described on Who Writes and Checks Our Content, with no invented experts and no fabricated credentials.
Corrections
A wrong figure is the most serious defect this site can have, and corrections take priority over new content. Anything wrong, from a rate to a typo in a phone number, can be reported through Contact Us; include the page and what looks wrong. Verified corrections are applied to the page and its Last checked stamp is updated to the recheck date.
Language gets the same discipline as numbers, because on money-and-health pages wording is accuracy. Must appears only for legal obligations, will only for certainties, normally always with a timescale, and may only where genuine discretion exists. A page here should never leave you unsure whether a rule is definite; where the law is definite we say so, and where outcomes genuinely vary we say that instead.
The complete list of institutions behind our figures, with what each one supplies, sits on Our Sources.