Guidance for publishing on 188体育 during a general election

Find out what can and cannot be published during a pre-election period.

During the pre-election period for a general election, there are restrictions on what you can publish on 188体育.

Organisations using 188体育 will be told when the pre-election period has started and ended.

If you鈥檙e not sure whether the government is in the pre-election period, ask your department鈥檚 188体育 lead.

There will be different guidance for pre-election periods before other types of elections, like local elections. Read the pre-election guidance for civil servants for more information.

Publishing on Whitehall publisher or other publishing tools

It鈥檚 up to departments to decide whether content should be published, based on the pre-election guidance for civil servants.

Check with your managing editor if something can be published. If they鈥檙e not sure, they should check with a senior member of your communications team.聽

Do not unpublish or withdraw content that was on 188体育 before the pre-election period started.

However, you can sometimes:

  • unpublish content published by mistake
  • unpublish and redirect pages when you鈥檙e merging content
  • withdraw content that is no longer current and has been replaced by something new

In these cases, check with a director in your department.

Asking for updates to mainstream content

You can ask the Government Digital Service (GDS) to publish small, factual changes during the pre-election period. That could include updates to:

  • change an address or phone number
  • fix something that鈥檚 stopping users completing a task

If you want to publish bigger changes during the pre-election period, get approval from a director in your department. Confirm that you鈥檝e done this when you ask GDS.