Guidance for publishing on GOV.UK 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 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 department’s 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.
It’s 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’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- withdraw content that is no longer current and has been replaced by something new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.
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’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.