How we research, verify and update every figure and rule on this site — and what to do if you think we have got something wrong.
UK Work Rights is created, directed and published by Matt Thompson, the founder and sole director of UK Work Rights Ltd (Company No. 17228507, registered in England & Wales).
We use AI to produce content, and we are open about that. Pages and guidance on this site are drafted with AI assistance, working to a structure and a set of verified facts that Matt defines. No page is published automatically. The answers our checkers give are different: they are written fresh for each visitor and are not read by a person before you see them, which is why they are built only from our verified facts and checked automatically afterwards. Statutory figures are checked against a primary source before they go live, and we record when each was last checked. We do get things wrong — when we find out, we correct it and log it. Matt takes editorial responsibility for everything on this site.
We think being straight about this matters more than pretending otherwise. The risk with AI and legal information is invented figures and confident guesswork — so rather than hide the fact that we use it, we have built the whole system around stopping it. That is what the section below describes.
We are not a law firm and we are not solicitors. We do not claim professional legal accreditation. What we offer is carefully sourced, plain-English guidance built for people who cannot afford paid legal advice — and we are open about exactly where every figure comes from so you can check it yourself.
Every statutory figure, deadline and legal rule on this site is taken from primary sources — the law itself and official guidance:
We also cross-check practical guidance against established advice organisations such as Citizens Advice and Shelter, and occasionally cite recognised research bodies where they are the clearest public source. Where we do, we say so on the page.
What we never do is take a statutory figure from an AI system, from a summary, or from another site's copy of it. Figures come from the source that sets them.
Our rights checkers use AI to explain your situation in plain English. AI systems are known to invent plausible-sounding numbers, and in this subject that is dangerous — a wrong deadline can cost someone a claim.
So the AI is instructed not to supply legal figures of its own. Instead:
Checking a tool like this is harder than it sounds. There are dozens of checkers, each covering a different area of law, and the only way to know an answer is right is to read it and check every figure against the source. One person cannot read everything.
So the site checks itself. When a checker produces a report, the figures, time limits, legislation and phone numbers in it are automatically compared against our verified list for that page. Every report is kept for this check for up to 90 days, and any report that states something not on that list is flagged for us to look at. Either the tool has invented something and we correct it, or our verified list was missing something and we add it.
Your question itself is not part of this check, and we never attach your name, email address or any identifier to a report. Any figures you mentioned yourself are removed before the comparison, so they are not treated as claims by us.
It helps us catch mistakes early, though it does not catch everything — it compares an answer against our own facts, so it cannot tell us when one of those facts has gone out of date.
The automatic check above compares an answer against our own facts. It cannot tell us whether the answer was any good. So we also test the checkers directly.
We keep sets of realistic questions — written the way people actually ask them, with the detail a real situation carries — run them through the site, and mark each answer against what a correct answer must contain and must not contain. Marking is automatic, so the same question can be re-run after a change and compared like for like.
At the last count, more than 4,300 marked test checks had been run across the site. Every checker but one has been through this process, typically several dozen times each, covering England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Testing is weighted towards England because that is where most questions come from, and towards the devolved nations where the risk of the wrong answer is highest.
Three things about this we would rather state than leave you to assume:
We do not publish an accuracy percentage. Any single figure would either flatter one part of the site or unfairly condemn another, and it would tell you nothing about whether the answer in front of you is right. What we can tell you is how we check, what that catches, and what it does not.
Employment, housing and benefits law differ across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Where a rule applies to only one nation, we say so. If you have not told us where you live, we assume England and say so clearly in the answer.
Statutory rates change at fixed points in the year — most commonly in April, and at other dates when new legislation commences. This is a one-person site, so we will be straight with you about how that works in practice: we do not monitor every statutory rate automatically — rates are checked and updated by hand. What is automated is the accuracy check described above, which runs on every report the site produces.
We also have a consistency check that flags any figure stated two different ways in different places, which is run when rates are updated. That catches the most dangerous kind of error — a rate updated in one place but not another.
Many of our pages carry a verified date so you can see how current the information is, where a page does not carry one, we have not recorded it rather than checked it less carefully. If a change is coming but is not yet law, we say so rather than presenting it as if it already applies.
This is general guidance, not legal advice. We do not know your full circumstances, we cannot represent you, and we will never tell you that you will win or lose a case. For anything high-stakes, please speak to ACAS, Citizens Advice, Shelter, a trade union, or a solicitor.
If you think something on this site is wrong, please tell us. We would rather know. Report it at ukworkrights.co.uk/?feedback=1 or email hello@ukworkrights.co.uk.
Every report is read and checked against the primary source. Where we have made an error we correct it and update the page. This is a small site run by one person — you will not be ignored.
Most corrections now start with our own automatic check rather than a report from a user, but user reports are still read and still the fastest way to tell us something is wrong.
UK Work Rights is free to use and always will be. There is no paywall, and you never need an account to use a checker, download a report or generate a letter — signing in is optional and only exists to save your details between visits. The site is funded by advertising, and readers can support it voluntarily through Buy Me a Coffee. Advertisers have no influence whatsoever over our guidance, and we do not accept payment to feature or recommend any organisation.