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Standard content types

Fatality notices

When to use this content type

Use fatality notices to announce the death of a member of the armed forces or Ministry of Defence (MOD) personnel.

Published fatality notices will appear on the MOD’s ‘Fields of operation’ page.

Do not publish a news story which duplicates the fatality notice.

If there were multiple deaths in one incident, create a fatality notice for the whole incident rather than for each individual death.

To work on a fatality notice, you’ll need a Signon account with access to Whitehall Publisher.

Create a draft

If you’re creating a new fatality notice

  1. Go to Whitehall Publisher.
  2. Select the ‘New document’ tab.
  3. Select ‘Fatality notice’ and then select the ‘Next’ button.
  4. In the ‘Title’, add the names and titles of the people who died.
  5. In the ‘Summary’, confirm the deaths and offer condolences from the MOD.
  6. In the ‘Body’, include the people’s names and titles, the incident in which they died, and the location of their death (if this has been cleared for release).
  7. In the ‘Body’, you can also add an obituary with details of the people’s life and years of services, and quote tributes from those who knew them (like armed forces colleagues, family, friends and MPs like the Secretary of State for Defence). You can update the fatality notice later to add these in if you do not have them now.
  8. Under ‘Field of operation’, select the country the people died in.
  9. Under the ‘Introduction’ part of ‘Roll call info’, include the deceased people’s name and title, the incident in which they died, and the date on which they died. This will display above the link to the fatality notice on the ‘Fields of operation’ page.
  10. Under the ‘Casualties’ part of ‘Roll call info’, create separate entries for each person who died. Include their name and title, their regiment, battalion or air wing (if cleared), their age and where they’re from.
  11. Select ‘Limit access’ under ‘Settings’ if your draft is sensitive. This means only users from organisations tagged to the content can see it before it’s published. It will not be copied across to Integration.
  12. Select the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page.

After saving the page, you can now add images of the people if you have them. You can update the fatality notice later if you do not have images immediately.

If you’re updating an existing fatality notice

  1. Go to Whitehall Publisher.
  2. Select the ‘Documents’ tab.
  3. Search for the fatality notice you want to edit, and select the ‘View’ link next to it. This will take you to the edition summary page. If you only want to update the topic tags and nothing else, select ‘Change tags’ under ‘Topic taxonomy tags’. Otherwise, keep following these steps.
  4. Select the ‘Create new edition’ button. If a new edition has already been created, select the ‘Go to draft’ link. You can then select ‘Edit draft’ or, if you do not want to use this draft, select ‘Delete draft’ and then select ‘Create new edition’.
  5. Make any changes to the title, summary, body and fatality notice details as needed.
  6. Select ‘Limit access’ under ‘Settings’ if your draft is sensitive. This means only users from organisations tagged to the content can see it before it’s published. It will not be copied across to Integration.
  7. Decide whether you need to write public change notes. Go to the bottom of the page and select the relevant option under ‘Do users have to know the content has changed?’, and add your change notes if needed (you can edit them again before you publish the draft).
  8. Select the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page.

You can now edit the images.

Add or remove images

Make sure you’ve correctly formatted the images before you add them.

Select the ‘Images’ tab at the top of the page. You can upload images here. Each image will need a different file name.

Once you upload an image, you’ll be given a ‘Markdown code’. You can copy and paste that into the body and the image will appear there.

If you want to remove an image, you can remove its code from the body. You can then upload a new version of the image and use its code instead.

There’s a default image that appears on every fatality notice before the body content. You cannot change or remove this image.

Attachments

You cannot add attachments to this content type. If you want to include a link to a file, think about whether you can upload it as a separate piece of content.

Change the ‘first published date’

You can change the first published date if the same content was available on another webpage before, like on another GOV.UK page you’re unpublishing or a campaign site you’re closing.

Under ‘First published date’, tick the ‘This document has previously been published on another website’ box. Select the new date.

The new date will show when you publish the draft.

Add or remove tags to ministers and organisations

You can tag your content under the ‘Associations’ heading. You do this by adding or removing associations.

These associations include:

  • ministers – use this if a government minister has had direct involvement with the content, like if they wrote a foreword
  • lead and supporting organisations – your own organisation will be set as a lead organisation as default, but you can change that or add any other organisations if they’re responsible for the content

Update settings of the draft

Under the ‘Settings’ heading, you can:

  • change the ‘Email address for ordering attachment files in an accessible format’
  • select ‘Schedule publication’, if you want the draft published at a certain time and date
  • select ‘Review date’, if you want to get an email asking you to check the content at a later date after you’ve published it

Add or remove topic tags

You need to tag your draft to at least one topic page before you can publish it.

Your content will appear on the tagged topic pages when:

  • the draft is published, if it’s new content
  • you save the new tagged topic pages, if you’re updating existing content

See the ‘Education, training and skills’ topic page for an example of what these topic pages look like.

To add tags:

  1. Select ‘Save and go to document summary’ on your current draft.
  2. Under the ‘Topic taxonomy tags’ heading, select ‘Add tags’ or ‘Change tags’.
  3. Tick the boxes next to each topic that applies. The arrows next to each topic will expand the topic out, showing all sub-topics in that topic ‘tree’.
  4. Select ‘Save’.

To remove tags, select ‘Remove topic’ next to the one you want to remove and then select ‘Save’.

Choose topic tags:

  • based only on what the content is about
  • from anywhere in the topic ‘tree’, not just the areas that your organisation uses the most

Try to choose the most specific topics you can.

You can tag your content to as many topic pages as are relevant. There’s no limit.

Translations

You cannot add translations of this content type.

Update the URL

URLs are automatically created from the page title when you first publish the content. You might want to update the URL if there’s a spelling mistake or if it no longer reflects the content.

If the content has never been published before

You can update the draft title and the URL will change.

If the content has been published already

You can:

  1. Create a new piece of content with the desired title and URL.
  2. Copy over the current content to this new draft.
  3. Publish the new draft.
  4. Unpublish the page with the incorrect URL. When you unpublish it, you’ll be able to set up a redirect to the new page.

The change notes history will be lost if you do this. If you need to keep that history, contact the Government Digital Service (GDS) and ask them to change the URL instead.

Publish the draft

Find out how to send the draft for review.

If you need to publish it urgently without a review, find out when you can publish your own draft.