Rules and ethics
Part of UK rules for an announcement, mapped route by route from claims to supplier contracts
Distribution contracts: correction, retention and exit terms to settle
Settle how a distribution service handles corrections, data return and deletion, licences and account closure before you sign, with evidence for each.
These terms form a non-ranked review list, not model clauses or legal advice. They concern a buyer operating in England and a supplier handling an authorised announcement under UK-facing terms. The focus is the end of the arrangement: what happens when a fact needs correcting or the buyer leaves.
What to take away
- Settle correction, retention and exit terms before signing, while the terms are still open to change.
- A supplier can correct its own record or relay a request, but cannot guarantee alteration of independent journalism.
- Commissioned work is not automatically transferred to the commissioner, so licences that survive termination must be written down.
- At the end of a contract, personal data is returned or deleted at the controller's choice, and suppression records need to continue.
- Define a stop condition if the buyer cannot recover the approved source or revoke access.
Why the ending is worth settling first
The ending of a distribution contract is where the buyer's real position shows. A wrong fact needs correcting, a supplier changes, or the buyer decides to leave, and each case depends on terms agreed at signature.
Three situations test the contract: a correction request, a termination and an unresolved incident. Each needs a named owner, a written route and a record that shows what happened.
None of this can be added after the event. A supplier's goodwill is not a term, and a verbal promise will not export a contact list or close an account.
Correction: what the supplier can and cannot promise
A correction clause should say who may ask, through which channel, for which destinations, and what evidence comes back. It should also be honest about limits. The table separates what a supplier controls from what it does not.
| Request | Supplier can | Supplier cannot |
|---|---|---|
| Fix the supplier's own record or page | Amend it and confirm the change | Rewrite what others already hold |
| Correct a transmitted version | Relay a request to the destinations it served | Guarantee that a destination acts |
| Change independent coverage | Pass on a request | Alter independent journalism |
Name the request channel, the authorised requester, the affected destinations, the response evidence and the escalation path. Without an escalation path, a correction sits in a queue with nobody responsible.
The CAP Code's recognition rules reinforce the same limit. A contract cannot turn purchased placement into earned endorsement, and the advertising rules explain how paid and independent treatment must stay distinct.
Rights that must survive termination
Licences are the clause most often forgotten at exit, and they decide whether the buyer may keep using material it paid to produce. Specify ownership and licences for copy, photographs, video, logos, quotations and reports.
Include territory, media, term, alterations, credits, archiving and post-termination use. The Intellectual Property Office's guidance on ownership of copyright works says that when you commission a work, the first legal owner is the creator, not the commissioner, unless you agree otherwise in writing.
The same guidance says this shows the importance of establishing who owns copyright through a contract. If the supplier created any asset, the buyer's right to reuse it after exit rests on the wording, not on having paid.
Personal data at the end of the contract
Contacts are the asset most easily lost or left behind. The ICO's guidance on what the contract must include says the processor must, at the controller's choice, delete or return all the personal data it has been processing, and delete existing copies unless UK law requires storage.
Describe the real instructions, purposes, recipient data, subprocessors, transfers, assistance, incident notices, retention and deletion in the contract. The ICO's controller-processor guidance is under DUAA review and should be rechecked before signature.
Two points need separate wording. Contract allocation does not create PECR permission or cancel a person's objection, so suppression records must continue after exit. The data protection workflow shows where those records sit.
Recovery and unresolved incidents
Exit is not only a clean handover. An incident may still be open when the buyer leaves, and the contract should say who owns it. Set evidence requirements for access control, logging, account recovery, protected backups, incident handling and supplier change.
Define a stop condition for the case in which the buyer cannot recover the approved source or revoke access. If that happens, signature waits, because a service the buyer cannot leave is a risk the contract has not priced.
Ask the supplier directly. The questions for a provider include how it separates a trading label from the contracting entity, which tells you who is actually bound.
Money at the exit
Disputed delivery usually surfaces at the end. Write the currency, VAT treatment, unit, period, quantities, inclusions, failed-send handling, credits, invoice evidence and approval threshold into the contract.
Leave the values blank until a current quotation exists. Finance and tax reviewers must assess the actual supply, and neither this list nor a supplier invoice decides tax treatment. A blank budget gives a place to hold those fields.
Before you sign
- Name the request channel, the authorised requester and the escalation path for corrections.
- State which destinations the supplier can relay a request to, and what it cannot promise.
- List licences that survive termination, with territory, media and term.
- Set return or deletion of personal data, and continuity of suppression.
- Add export formats, account closure and handling of unresolved incidents.
- Record the stop condition for recovery and access.
Every term is a separate gate. Named commercial counsel, privacy and PECR, IP, security, accessibility, finance and editorial reviewers must approve the final contract and service evidence. The wider rules map shows where each regime applies.
