Plainfiles guides explain rules that small UK organisations, landlords and employers have to follow. They are meant to be accurate first and easy to read second. This page says how they are made so you can judge how far to trust them.
Where the facts come from
- We write from primary sources: legislation on legislation.gov.uk, GOV.UK guidance, and the pages of the regulator or agency that enforces the rule, such as HSE, HMRC, the Home Office, DEFRA or Acas.
- We link to every source at the bottom of the guide, and to the exact page, not to a home page.
- We do not copy other publishers’ explanations. If a point depends on a commentator’s view and not on an official source, we say so or leave it out.
- We keep three things apart: what is law, what is guidance, and what is not yet in force. A status box at the top of a guide says where a rule stands on the date we checked.
How we use AI
Our guides, kits and logbooks are drafted with the help of AI tools, and laid out with them too. We say so on every guide. AI is not the source of any fact. Every rule, number, date and deadline in a guide is traced back to one of the listed sources before the guide is published, and numbers are re-checked against the source after any edit. We do not publish AI text that we have not checked against those sources. Each guide says “Written and designed by Plainfiles with the help of AI tools, then checked against the official legislation and guidance listed in the sources.”
Dates on each guide
- Last checked is the date we last read the sources and confirmed the guide still matches them.
- Last updated changes only when the wording, a number or a link in the guide changes. It is also the date we give search engines. We do not change a date to make a page look fresh.
- Each guide ends with Changes to this guide, a short dated list of what changed and why.
Named reviewers
A guide is by Plainfiles, the publisher, and its byline says so. It shows “Reviewed by” and a name only after that named person has actually read that guide against the sources listed at its foot, and has agreed to be named. The date next to the name is the date of that review.
A review is a read-through against the official sources. It is not professional advice, and it does not turn a guide into legal, tax, safety or licensing advice. If a guide is changed after a review, its “Last updated” date will be later than the review date, so you can see that the review does not cover the latest change. We do not invent reviewers, and we do not claim qualifications or experience that nobody has.
Keeping guides current
Rules change, and some guides cover rules that have not started yet. We re-check every guide against its sources at least every 90 days, and sooner when an official page changes. We use a script that fetches every official page listed in our guides and kits and flags any whose text has changed, and a check that stops us changing a “last updated” date without changing the guide. If a source has changed in a way that affects the guide, we edit it, update both dates and add a line to “Changes to this guide”. If nothing has changed, we only update the last-checked date.
Independence and money
- Plainfiles is run by TurboKast Ltd and is not part of, endorsed by or acting for any government body, regulator or council.
- Our guides are free. We also sell editable templates and paperback logbooks, and guides link to them where they help. You do not need to buy anything to follow a guide, and a guide never depends on a purchase.
- We do not take payment to mention a product or a company, and the guides contain no affiliate links.
- We do not publish customer reviews on this site.
What our guides are not
They are general information, not legal, tax, licensing or financial advice, and they cannot decide what applies to your own premises, income or business. They say which part of the UK they cover. Where a rule differs between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we say so or limit the guide to the part we have checked.
Corrections
If you think something is wrong or out of date, email support@turbokast.com with the page and, if you have it, the official source. We will check it against that source and correct confirmed errors promptly. If a correction changes what a reader should do, we say so on the page.
Who is responsible
Plainfiles is published by TurboKast Ltd, company number SC881077, 29 Commercial Street, Dundee, DD1 3DG. You can read more about Plainfiles or contact us.