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How it works.
AskBritain turns thousands of official government pages into one place to ask questions.
Where answers come from
Answers come from GOV.UK, mygov.scot, Social Security Scotland, GOV.WALES, nidirect and the NHS website (nhs.uk, for NHS services in England). Every month we read their public guidance pages, such as guides, services and forms, and store the text so we can search it quickly. News, statistics, consultations and opinion pieces are left out. NHS website pages are refreshed at least every 7 days.
Information from the NHS website is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
When you ask a question, we find the official pages that match it and that apply to the nation you chose. Every answer lists the pages it used, with a link and the date each page was last updated.
How the AI is used
Some common questions have answers we have already written and checked against official pages. For other questions, an AI model (Claude, made by Anthropic) reads the matching official pages and writes a short answer. It is told to use only those pages, to cite each fact with a number, and to say so when the pages do not answer the question.
AI can make mistakes. Always check the linked official page before you act.
Why not just ask a general AI?
General AI chatbots answer from a mix of websites, forums and what they learned during training, which can be out of date. AskBritain does one job.
- Official pages only: answers come only from GOV.UK, mygov.scot, Social Security Scotland, GOV.WALES, nidirect and the NHS website (nhs.uk, for NHS services in England), and every fact links to the page it came from.
- Checked before you see it: each answer is checked against its sources, and anything the sources do not support is removed.
- Right for where you live: rules differ between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and answers show those differences.
- Kept current: official pages are re-read regularly, including when rates change each April, and past years' rates are kept and labelled by year.
- Free, private, independent: no adverts, no account, no data sold, and not run by the UK Government.
The FAQ answers the same question in short form.
Limits
- Each visitor can get up to 10 AI answers a day. A question with a photo or PDF counts as 2.
- We cap our total AI spending each day. If a limit is reached, we show the most relevant official pages instead.
- Answers to repeated questions are reused for up to 30 days, then written again from fresh pages.
- We give information, not personal legal, tax, immigration or financial advice.
- We do not give party, candidate or opinion information. We can explain how to register and vote.
Images
The photos on our homepage are original pictures created by AI for AskBritain. They are not photographs of real people or places, and they are not official government images.
Independence
AskBritain is an independent service. It is not run by, or affiliated with, HM Government or GOV.UK. Government services linked here are free, so you never need to pay a third party to use them.
Licence
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Our page reader identifies itself as AskBritain-Ingest/1.0 and limits how often it asks for pages.
Questions? See the FAQ.