Tip Us

We depend on our readers, experts and public servants to help us cover UK public affairs with accuracy and depth. If you have information about a decision, a policy, or an issue affecting public life that you think we should investigate, we want to hear from you. This page explains what makes a useful tip, how to send it, and what happens next.

What makes a good tip for our desks

We are especially interested in tips that involve specific, verifiable information relating to one of our core coverage areas. Before you write, consider whether your tip contains:

Local government decisions: Unpublished council reports, unusual procurement processes, conflicts of interest, or decisions that affect services such as housing, planning, refuse collection or social care.
Public spending: Contract awards, budget allocations, grant distributions, or cost overruns that are not adequately explained or transparent.
Policy implementation: The gap between what a government department or agency says it will do and what happens in practice; regulatory failures; internal assessments or impact studies.
Public services: Conditions in hospitals, schools, social services or the courts, especially where official data or whistleblower accounts suggest problems with safety, waiting times, or quality.
Education: School funding, academy trusts, governance issues, curriculum decisions, or outcomes data that raise questions about equity or accountability.
Health administration: Commissioning decisions, hospital closures or mergers, waiting list management, or the effects of health policy on patients and communities.

Tips that include source documents, official correspondence, internal memos, or first-hand accounts are far stronger than rumours or unsupported allegations. We do not publish every tip, but every submission is reviewed.

How to reach us

Use the following addresses for the fastest response:

General tips and story ideas: editorial@civicinsight.uk — for all tips, leads and documents.
Time-sensitive news: newsdesk@civicinsight.uk — for breaking stories or events that require same-day attention.
Press releases and official announcements: press@civicinsight.uk — we cannot guarantee coverage of every release.
By phone: Main line +44 20 4576 3840. For the editor-in-chief or newsdesk, ask for the relevant journalist.

What to include

To help us assess your tip quickly, please include as many of the following as possible:

Who, what, when, where: Clear identification of the individuals, organisations, decisions or events involved, with dates and locations.
Supporting material: Links, documents, screenshots, emails, internal reports or photographs. If you have a data set, describe what it contains and where it came from.
Your contact details: Even if you wish to remain anonymous, a way to reach you (encrypted communication, a temporary email address) allows us to ask follow-up questions.
On or off the record: Tell us at the outset whether you are speaking on the record, on background, or off the record. We are committed to respecting your preferences.

If you are unsure about how to protect yourself, please read our guidance on source protection and secure communications before contacting us.

How we verify tips

All tips are reviewed by the relevant desk editor. If the information merits investigation, it is assigned to one of our reporters or directly to our Standards & Fact-Checking desk, led by Michael Trent. Our verification process typically includes:

Cross-referencing your information with official documents, public databases and independent sources.
Contacting the relevant organisations or individuals for comment, where appropriate.
Reviewing documents for authenticity and provenance.
Applying our editorial standards as set out in our Editorial Policy and Fact-Checking Policy.

We do not publish information that we cannot independently corroborate. For a detailed explanation of how we handle sensitive material, see our page on Sources & Standards.

Confidentiality and source protection

We take the protection of sources extremely seriously. Our journalists and editors are trained to handle confidential material securely. We will not disclose your identity or contact details without your explicit consent. If you have specific concerns about legal risks, please contact our legal team directly at legal@civicinsight.uk before sending any information. For more detail, please see our Privacy Policy.

What happens after submission

We aim to acknowledge receipt of all tips within two working days. Where we are unable to reply fully, we will confirm that your message has been received and is under consideration. Given the volume of submissions, we cannot guarantee a detailed response to every tip. If we decide to pursue your information, we will contact you to discuss next steps. For a full list of editorial contacts, see our Contact page.

Corrections to published articles

If you wish to report an error in a story we have already published, please write to corrections@civicinsight.uk. We treat all correction requests seriously and in line with our Corrections Policy.

Thank you for helping us hold power to account.