The source rule
Material legal and factual claims should point to a public source you can check yourself. If the evidence required by the current publication standard is incomplete, the candidate is blocked or the existing page is withdrawn for review. Older pages are being audited against that stronger standard rather than being assumed compliant.
What counts as a source here
We cite, in this rough order of weight:
- Legislation — the Acts and Regulations themselves, on legislation.gov.uk.
- Statutory guidance — the codes of practice and DfE guidance that bodies must "have regard to," such as the SEND Code of Practice and Keeping Children Safe in Education.
- Watchdog and Ombudsman findings — Ofsted reports, and decisions of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
- Official data — Ministry of Justice tribunal statistics and government datasets.
- Charity guidance — from established advice organisations, used to explain process, never as a substitute for the law itself.
How to check our work
Published guides should end with the sources they rely on, each with a link and, where it matters, the exact section or paragraph. The source register is public. We retain a fingerprinted source copy for gated publication records. If you find a source that is out of date or wrong, tell us so the page can be corrected or withdrawn.
What we will not source from. We do not build claims on anonymous forums, single news stories without a documentary trail, or anyone's individual case — including our own. No real names, no children's identities, no live-complaint details ever appear here. That is a firewall built into the site, not a promise we might bend.
Why this matters more than usual
Parents in the SEND system are routinely told things that are simply not true — that a council "can't afford" to meet a legal duty, or that a problem is "not our jurisdiction." The only defence against that is a fact you can point to. This site exists to give you those facts, and to show its working every time.