Editorial Policy

This policy governs everything published on UKCasinoPlay.net. It applies to every contributor, including the owner.

1. Independence

Editorial decisions — what we cover, what we say, what score we give — are made by the editorial team alone.

Commercial partners have no right of review before publication.
Commercial partners cannot commission, edit, amend or suppress any review, guide or news item.
No operator has ever been given, and will never be given, approval over its own review.
Reviewers are not told the commission rate of the operator they are assessing.
Commercial staff have no ability to alter scores in our content management system; scores are editable only by editorial roles, and every change is logged.

If an operator makes continued partnership conditional on changing our coverage, we end the partnership and say so in the review.

2. Accuracy

Every factual claim must be traceable to a named source: the operator’s own terms, the UKGC register, a regulator’s published decision, a game provider’s information page, or our own recorded testing.
Bonus figures, wagering requirements and payout times are taken from primary sources, never from another affiliate site.
Where we’re reporting our own test results, we say so and give the date.
Where we’re uncertain, we say we’re uncertain rather than rounding up to confidence.

3. Transparency

Every article carries an author byline, a publication date and a last-updated date.
Every page containing affiliate links carries a disclosure above the first link, not in the footer.
Material changes to reviews are recorded in a visible revision note.
Sponsored content, if we ever publish any, will be labelled “Paid partnership” at the top of the page, will not receive a rating, and will not appear in any ranking or toplist. [Delete this clause entirely if you don’t intend to run sponsored content — an unused promise is a liability.]

4. Who writes for us

Contributors must have demonstrable knowledge of UK gambling products, regulation or consumer finance. Every writer has a public profile page listing their experience and any relevant interests. We do not publish anonymously.

AI and automation. We use software to monitor bonus terms for changes and to flag pages for re-checking. We do not publish machine-generated reviews, ratings or opinion. Any article where generative AI assisted with drafting is labelled as such, and a named human editor is responsible for its accuracy either way.

5. Conflicts of interest

Contributors must declare:

any employment, consultancy or contract with a gambling operator, supplier or affiliate network, current or within the past two years;
any shareholding in a listed or private gambling company;
any close family relationship with someone in the above categories.

Anyone with a declared interest is recused from covering that company. Declarations are held by the editor and disclosed on the relevant author page.

6. Advertising and gambling ad standards

We follow the CAP Code and the Gambling Commission’s licence conditions and codes of practice as they apply to affiliates. In practice that means:

No content that is likely to appeal particularly to under-18s: no cartoon styling aimed at children, no characters from youth culture, no framing gambling as a solution to money problems.
No claim that gambling is a way to make money, achieve financial security, or improve social standing.
No urgency pressure (“last chance”, “act now”) on gambling promotions.
Every promotional claim carries the significant conditions attached to the offer.
18+ and safer-gambling signposting on every page that promotes an offer.
We do not target advertising at anyone registered with GAMSTOP or otherwise self-excluded, to the extent our tools allow, and we honour operator instructions to suppress marketing.

7. Reader complaints and right of reply

Anyone — reader or operator — may challenge our reporting. Send the challenge and any evidence to [editorial@ukcasinoplay.net]. We aim to respond within five working days. Where we’re wrong, we correct promptly and visibly under our Corrections & Updates Policy.

8. What we will not do

Publish a review we haven’t tested.
Remove a negative review for money.
Recommend an unlicensed or “no verification” casino.
Promote gambling to anyone who has told us they don’t want it, or anyone who appears to be under 18.
Present gambling as anything other than a paid entertainment product with a built-in mathematical disadvantage to the player.