UK Facts
What the data actually shows about Britain today. An independent, non-partisan guide to official UK statistics — the economy, housing, the NHS, crime, immigration and the public finances — in plain English, with a local lens on Hampshire and every source cited.
Non-partisan
No party affiliation. We present the data and check claims from the left and the right by the same standards.
Sources cited
Statistics come from official producers — ONS, OBR, Home Office, NHS England, Bank of England, council records — and each is cited with its series, period and geography. Where we use a secondary source, such as a House of Commons Library briefing, or where a historical document has no reachable official copy, we say so at the point of use rather than implying otherwise.
Corrections policy
We correct errors promptly and transparently, with a public changelog on every amended fact check.
Who we are
UK Facts is an independent, non-partisan project based in Portsmouth, run by a very small team. It is published at uk-statpack.co.uk — the site is the address, UK Facts is the name. We take the official statistics behind Britain’s political arguments — costs, percentages, headcounts, waiting lists, crime figures, council budgets — and present them in plain English, so anyone can see what the data actually shows.
The project exists because political debate is heavy on claims and light on sources. Material statistical claims link to their underlying source, with official data used wherever it is available. Some figures on this site are calculated from official inputs, or drawn from House of Commons Library computations and independent models — where that is so, the page says which, rather than implying a single official publication carries the number.
What we do
Britain in numbers. Plain-English data pages on the economy and cost of living, housing, jobs and pay, the NHS, crime, immigration, inequality and the public finances — alongside long-run historical charts, and trackers for national polling, manifesto pledges and government promises.
How power works. Four linked sections on the machinery behind the arguments: who owns the media, who funds the parties, how votes become seats and what Brexit actually changed. Each is built from official registers and each is explicit about the difference between what the evidence shows and what it cannot.
A local lens. National statistics rarely get broken down to the places people actually live. Our Hampshire section covers all 13 local authorities — including Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester — with comparisons, political maps and service geography. More counties are planned.
Fact checks. We check viral and political claims — national ones, and local ones circulating in Portsmouth and Hampshire — against official data, and publish rated verdicts with every source linked and a public changelog on each check. Recent checks have covered asylum accommodation costs, council debt, viral videos about Portsmouth civic decisions, and misreported care cases. Our full process is set out on our methodology page.
Where the data comes from
Headline statistics are refreshed regularly from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the Bank of England and NHS England. Other figures are drawn from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), local authority records and other official publications. Where a figure cannot be refreshed live, we serve the most recent verified snapshot and say so.
The sections on how power works draw on further official registers: the Electoral Commission’s political finance database, Companies House, the House of Commons Library and Ofcom.
We use official, publicly available data only. Every page cites its sources, and every fact-check verdict links directly to the primary evidence.
Editorial independence
UK Facts has no affiliation with any political party. We accept no money from political parties, politicians or their staff, and we carry no political advertising. The project is self-funded, so no outside funder has any influence over what we cover or what we conclude.
We select claims for checking based on their reach and their statistical content — not on who made them — and we apply the same standards of evidence to claims from every part of the political spectrum.
Privacy notice and cookies
We only set analytics cookies if you agree.On your first visit we ask whether we may measure how the site is used. “Accept analytics” and “Reject analytics” are equally easy, nothing is pre-selected, and you can change your mind at any time with Cookie settings at the foot of every page.
If you accept
We set a random visitor ID and a session ID as first-party cookies (only this site can read them). With each page you view we record: the page address (without anything after a “?”, except standard campaign tags such as utm_source), the website you came from (its domain name only), whether this is your first visit, how long the page was visible to you, your screen size as mobile, tablet or desktop, and your country. That lets us count returning visitors and see which pages people arrive on, read and leave from.
If you reject, or have not chosen
We count the page view with no cookie and no identifier: just the page address and country, added to a daily total. Nothing is stored on your device except your choice. If your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, we treat that as a rejection and do not show the banner.
What we never collect
We do not store your IP address or your browser’s full identifying details, and we never record anything you type into a search box or calculator. Your country comes from the country code that Cloudflare, the network this site is served through, attaches to each request. We run no advertising, use no advertising or social-media tracking pixels, and do not sell or share analytics data with anyone.
When the website’s server hits an error, a technical error report is sent to Sentry, an error-monitoring service that processes it on our behalf. It is sent from our server, not your browser, sets no cookies, has personal data switched off and is scrubbed of request details before sending. It tells us what broke, not who was visiting.
| Name | Purpose | When | Lasts |
|---|---|---|---|
| ukf_consent | Remembers your analytics choice (strictly necessary) | When you choose | 12 months, then we ask again |
| ukf_vid | Random visitor ID, to tell first visits from return visits | Only after you accept | 13 months |
| ukf_sid | Random session ID, to link the pages of one visit | Only after you accept | 30 minutes after your last page view |
Lawful basis, retention and your rights
Our lawful basis for the analytics cookies and the page-by-page records linked to them is your consent (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(a) and regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations). The data is kept in our own database on a server we control; it is not sent to any analytics company. Page-by-page records are deleted after 25 months; daily totals, which contain no identifiers, are kept.
You can withdraw consent at any time with Cookie settings. Withdrawing deletes the cookies from your browser and asks our server to delete every record held under your visitor ID. Because the ID is random, we cannot find your records any other way. For any other request, or a question about this notice, email [email protected]. If you are unhappy with our answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare delivers and protects this site. Like any network provider it handles your IP address to do that, and it keeps its own cookieless traffic statistics (requests, pages and countries) which we can view. We may also use Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookieless script that stores nothing on your device and does not follow you between sites. If you block any of this, nothing on the site stops working.
Our team
UK Facts is built and run by a very small, Portsmouth-based team. Everyone who works on the site must disclose any political memberships or conflicts of interest, and anyone with an active role in a political party or campaign may not work on our fact checks.
Contact us
Seen a claim you think we should check, or a number that looks wrong? Have a question about our work, or a concern about something we have published? We read everything we receive.
For general enquiries, claim suggestions, corrections and complaints, email [email protected].
Last updated: 3 October 2026