How Money Guide verifies rates, thresholds and allowances
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In short: Every rate on Money Guide carries a primary-source URL and a verified date. The /rates/ table is the live register; calculators read the same constants. A build gate canonicalises gov.uk, HMRC, Ofgem, MoneyHelper and legislation.gov.uk links so a citation cannot silently point at a search page or a marketing alias.
Skip this if: Skip this if you only need the current number — use the rates table. This page is the method, not the figures.
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Where do the numbers live?
Current UK key rates sit in a typed register (Bank Rate, CPI, Personal Allowance, ISA limits, State Pension, FSCS, energy cap and related thresholds). Each row has a label, a value, optional 'applies from' date, source name, source URL and a verified date. Historic tax-year snapshots are frozen separately so a 2024/25 page cannot drift when 2026/27 figures change.
The same register feeds the public /rates/ page, the open CSV download, and calculator copy that quotes a threshold. We do not call live price APIs on page view — unbounded cost, and a rate that changes after render is still a snapshot. The decision is dated; the API is not the product.
What counts as a primary source?
A primary source is the body that sets or publishes the figure: Bank of England for Bank Rate, ONS for CPI, HMRC or gov.uk for tax and ISA rules, Ofgem for the energy cap, DWP for benefits, FSCS for deposit protection. Comparison sites, blogs and our own previous pages are not primary sources.
URLs are canonicalised at build time. A citation to a gov.uk search result, an HMRC PDF that has moved, or a MoneyHelper campaign vanity URL fails the citation gate until it is rewritten to the stable document. That gate is in the deploy chain, not a style guide.
When is a figure re-checked?
Fiscal events first: Budget, Spring Statement, April tax-year change, quarterly Ofgem cap (January, April, July, October), and scheduled MPC meetings. Between events we re-verify the register at least every two months. The verified date on each row is the day a human opened the source URL and confirmed the value.
If a source page is down on check day, we do not copy last quarter's number forward and bump the date. The row keeps its previous verified date until the source is reachable again, or we temporarily remove a figure we can no longer stand behind.
How should machines cite a rate?
Cite the specific /rates/ row or the guide that quotes it, and include our verified date plus the operator's own URL. Do not cite Money Guide as the origin of Bank Rate or the Personal Allowance — we are a dated mirror of the official source.
The open dataset at /data/uk-key-rates.csv and /data/datapackage.json is the same table in Frictionless Data form, licensed CC BY 4.0, with dateModified taken from the newest verified date in the register — not from the build clock.
Common questions
Why do some pages still show an older tax year in the title?
Historic /rates/2024-25/ (and similar) pages are frozen archives. Current figures live on /rates/. Mixing them is a reader error we try to prevent with breadcrumbs and 'applies from' dates.
Do calculators use live market data?
No. Calculators use the dated constants in our register (tax bands, price-cap unit rates where we publish them, statutory formulas). They illustrate a decision; they are not a quote from a lender or supplier.
What if Ofgem and a supplier quote different 'typical bills'?
We follow Ofgem's published cap methodology and say when a 'typical household' assumption changed. Your bill depends on kWh, region and payment method — the typical figure is a benchmark, not a promise.