Our Editorial Policy: How We Source, Check And Correct UK Recall Information

Every page is written from official sources, mainly DVSA's car recall data, GOV.UK guidance and legislation. Every fact is recorded with its source and the date we checked it before it can be published.

Who Writes And Reviews Our Content

Our guides are researched and drafted from the fact register, then checked line by line against that register by our editorial team before publishing. Pages that give safety, legal or insurance guidance are reviewed a second time before they go live and again whenever a source they rely on changes. We write for UK drivers, in UK English, and we explain official terms in plain words, with a glossary for the rest.

Sourcing Rules

We use primary sources first and label everything else.

1. Primary sources first: DVSA, GOV.UK, legislation.gov.uk, written answers to Parliament and manufacturers' own UK recall pages.
2. Press only for dated events, such as a recall announcement or a court ruling, always attributed to the publication.
3. Commercial studies are labelled as commercial, with a note when their method is not public.
4. US and other foreign figures are labelled as foreign, because they rarely apply to UK cars.
5. Phone numbers come only from manufacturers' own websites, never from dealer groups, forums or search snippets.

Our Fact Register

Each claim on the site has an ID, a source and a check date in our fact register. A sentence that cannot be traced to a fact or to DVSA's data is not published.

Facts are re-checked at least every six months, and immediately when a source changes. An automatic weekly check watches GOV.UK pages, legal sources and manufacturer contact pages, and flags any change for review. Data in our guides, such as the number of recalls this year, is pulled from the same data as our tables, so the two always match.

How We Write About Safety

We never describe a vehicle as safe. We report what the manufacturer and DVSA say about a recall, and the action an owner should take.

• Stop-drive wording is exact. If a manufacturer says do not drive, we say so plainly and link to the recall.
• Urgency labels follow fixed rules, published on our methodology page.
• Symptoms are signs, not diagnoses. We tell readers when to stop and get help, and we never tell them a symptom means a particular recall.
• The recall letter takes priority. Where our general guidance and a letter differ, we tell readers to follow the letter.

Legal And Insurance Pages

Pages about the law, insurance and compensation quote the legislation and official guidance directly, with links. They explain how the rules work in general and are not legal advice. Where a question depends on individual facts, we say so and point to the right organisation.

How We Handle Data

• We check DVSA's recall file daily and publish changes after automatic quality checks.
• Our classification rules are public, including how we group recalls by fault and grade urgency.
• Overlapping counts are called vehicle-records, not cars, because one car can be in several recalls.
• Implausible figures are excluded, such as a small number of US-import recalls with UK volumes that cannot be right, and we say so where it matters.
• We never change DVSA's facts. Our explanations sit alongside the original wording.

Independence

This site is funded by advertising and clearly labelled affiliate links. Advertisers and affiliate partners have no say over our content, rankings or urgency labels. Ads are never placed inside a registration check, a stop-now warning or a directory of helpline numbers. Affiliate links are marked, and we only include them where the product is relevant to the reader, such as a history check before buying a used car.

Corrections

If you spot an error, contact us. We aim to correct factual errors within [CORRECTION TIME] of confirming them, and we record every correction with its date.

The full log, with figures, is on our methodology page.

Use Of AI Tools

We use software tools, including AI, to help process DVSA's data and to draft text. Every page is checked against our fact register by a person before it is published, and safety and legal pages get a second review. Tools never publish content on their own, and guides are never rewritten automatically when data changes.

Updates And Review Dates

Every guide shows when it was last reviewed, and every data page shows the date of the last DVSA import. The "last updated" date changes only when the content changes. Read more about us.