Nine rules, and the articles that do not exist because of them.
These are working rules rather than an aspiration. They explain the missing numbers, the missing names and the places where an article stops rather than continuing.
The rules this publication writes under
These are the working rules, not an aspiration. They are the reason several obvious articles do not exist here and several obvious sentences are missing from the ones that do.
1. No invented specifics
No pool, club, swim school, facility, training provider, practitioner or company is named anywhere in the editorial. No prices. No addresses. No case studies about people we did not meet. If a piece cannot be written without inventing a specific, the piece changes.
2. No figures we cannot stand behind
We publish no chemical concentrations, no dosing values, no water parameter targets, no turnover periods, no temperature figures and no water quality numbers. Not approximate ones, not typical ones, not illustrative ones. Pool water values belong to the operator, tested on site against current guidance from Pool Water Treatment Advisory Group and Health and Safety Executive, HSG179 Health and safety in swimming pools. Reprinting them here would strip the context that makes them mean anything.
3. No clinical advice
We do not diagnose, we do not treat, and we do not describe how to manage a skin condition, an infection or an injury. Everyday care, such as rinsing after a swim, is described as everyday care. Anything beyond that goes to a pharmacist, a GP or NHS 111. Where a reader might reasonably expect us to keep going, we stop and say why.
4. Sources are institutional and checkable
We cite the Health and Safety Executive, Pool Water Treatment Advisory Group, Swim England, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, water safety, the Environment Agency and its Scottish and Welsh counterparts, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the NHS, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the British Association of Dermatologists, Cancer Research UK, sun, UV and cancer and the World Health Organization. Every external link on this site is nofollow, without exception. We do not cite anonymous blogs, product marketing or trade material dressed as research.
5. Nothing on this site is for sale except the two things that are
No product recommendations, no affiliate links, no sponsored articles, no paid links, no display advertising, no paid search. The paid register and the labelled newsletter sponsor line are the whole commercial surface, and both are described in public before anyone buys either.
6. The register is never a ranking
Alphabetical, always. Marked as paid, always. Never presented as a recommendation, a shortlist, a best of, a top ten or an accreditation. A listing states disclosed facts a reader can check for themselves, and states that we have checked nothing on site.
7. We are explicit about who owns each decision
The structural device of this publication exists because vague advice is worse than none in a supervised environment. Telling a parent to apply sunscreen before a school swimming lesson is not useful if the school's policy forbids it in the changing room. So we split the decision.
8. Style
British English. No em dashes. No scare copy. We never try to frighten anyone out of the water, because swimming is good for people and the risks here are manageable ones. We also never moralise about who applies what to their own skin.
9. Review
Every article carries the date it was last reviewed. Guidance changes. Bathing water classifications change every season. When something we relied on changes, the article changes and the change is described.