About UK Facts
Public information, brought together. A self-funded, not-for-profit public-information project. It is free to use, with nothing to buy. Run by Danny Shipp and James Harris.
Public information, brought together
UK Facts is a self-funded, not-for-profit public-information project run by Danny Shipp and James Harris. It is free to use, with nothing to buy.
Our purpose is to help people understand the United Kingdom through evidence: what is changing, where people’s experiences differ, and what the available data can—and cannot—tell us.
Why we are building it
Useful information about the UK is spread across statistical agencies, government departments, local authorities and research organisations. Finding the right figures often means visiting several websites, reading unfamiliar definitions and checking whether different numbers can fairly be compared.
We bring those sources into one place, alongside explanations, charts and links back to the original evidence. We want to make it easier to ask a question, find relevant information and understand its limitations.
Who it is for
UK Facts is for anyone who wants to understand the country and their community. That includes residents, students, teachers, journalists and local decision-makers.
We also want to support academics and researchers by making relevant datasets, definitions and source trails easier to discover. Our explanations can provide a starting point for research; the original publications and their methods remain essential.
Our approach
We aim to explain statistics in plain English while preserving the detail that gives them meaning: the population and place covered, the period measured, the definition used and any uncertainty or break in the series.
Facts, interpretations and proposed policy responses should be clearly distinguishable. A forecast is not an observed result, and a proposal is not evidence that an intervention will work.
Our aim is to inform public understanding, not to advance a political party. Sources are identified so readers can examine the evidence and reach their own conclusions. Citing an organisation does not imply its endorsement of UK Facts.
People, funding and responsibility
Danny Shipp and James Harris run and self-fund the project. We are responsible for what UK Facts publishes and for improving the quality and clarity of its content.
We use AI-assisted tools in developing the site and preparing material. AI output can be wrong, and automated or agent review is not independent human verification. Readers should use the source and review information on each page to understand what has been checked and what remains uncertain.
Making data easier to use
Our longer-term aim is a connected collection of UK evidence that is useful both to readers and to people working directly with data.
Today, UK Facts brings together explanations, visualisations and source links. A comprehensive dataset-download service and public API are not yet available. We want to develop clearer access to reusable data, including CSV downloads and an API, while retaining the original source, definitions, update history and reuse conditions.
An evolving project
UK Facts is still being developed. Coverage and review depth vary between subjects and places. We want to make those limits clear, correct mistakes and improve the evidence available to everyone. See corrections and page histories and our accessibility statement.
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 |
Consent, retention and your choices
The analytics cookies, and the page-by-page records linked to them, are used only if you choose “Accept analytics”. 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 connect@uk-statpack.co.uk. 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. Cloudflare Web Analytics, a cookieless measurement script, loads only after you choose “Accept analytics”; it does not load before you choose or after you reject. If you block any of this, nothing on the site stops working.
Contact us
For general enquiries, corrections, accessibility problems and complaints, email connect@uk-statpack.co.uk.
Last updated: 23 October 2026