General elections
During the pre-election period for a general election, there are restrictions on what you can publish on GOV.UK.
Organisations using GOV.UK will be told when the pre-election period has started and ended.
If you’re not sure whether the government is in the pre-election period, ask your GOV.UK 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 content
It’s up to your organisation to decide whether content should be published, based on the pre-election guidance for civil servants.
Check with a managing editor if something can be published. If they’re not sure, they should check with a senior member of your communications team.
Do not unpublish or withdraw content that was on GOV.UK before the pre-election period started.
However, you can sometimes:
- unpublish content published by mistake
- unpublish and redirect pages when you’re 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- withdraw content that is no longer current and has been replaced by something new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)](link tbc) to publish small, factual changes during the pre-election period. That could include updates to:
- change an address or phone number
- fix something that’s 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’ve done this when you ask GDS.
Preparing for history mode
If the government changes after a general election, history mode could be activated.
If you’re in one of the organisations that could be affected by history mode, you’ll be contacted by GDS.
They’ll tell you how to audit your content that might go into history mode. You can choose which content you would allow to go into history mode.