How we check every card

A card is worth a call only if you can trust it. These are the rules each card is held to, and the checks it passes before it reaches you.

1. 1.It starts from a public record with a date

   An application to run more vehicles, an application for an environmental permit or a change to one, a grid connection offer or agreement. Each card begins with a public record and its date. A rumour, an article or a guess is not a start.

2. 2.It is about a business, never a person

   Cards name businesses; people stay off them. Where the record gives a company number, the card shows that company's register entry. Where it gives only a name, we link it to a registered company only when the name matches exactly, and refuse anything looser; the card's details then say it was found by its exact name. A sole trader appears only under the trading name the register gives. Other records about the company are listed with what joins them: the same company number, the same postcode, or the same name only.

3. 3.Every figure and date must be found in the records

   Before anything is published, plain code checks that every number, date and sum of money on the card appears in the records that statement cites (or, for a line that cites none, in the records gathered for the lead), or is the difference of two figures in them, and that every quote taken from a web page is word for word on the page we saved. A card that fails is sent back to be rewritten once; if it still fails, it is held back, not published. The code checks that a figure is in the record, not that it is read right: that is the next check.

4. 4.Then it is read as a buyer would read it

   A separate review reads the night's cards as the people who buy from them would: a truck dealer, a finance broker, a plant supplier, a battery-storage contractor. A card that falls short, or could mislead, goes back for one rewrite, which must pass the figure check again. The review also reads the leads we turned down, so a good one is not lost.

5. 5.Our reading is labelled as ours

   A card keeps what the records show apart from what we make of it. Under “Our reading” come what the lead could mean for your trade and our overall grade: Strong lead, Good lead or Worth knowing, from how big the change is, how firm and dated, and how reachable the company is. It is not a forecast that the company will buy, and it is not shown once the card’s date has passed.

6. 6.What nobody knows is written as unknown

   We do not estimate budgets, project values, order dates or suppliers, nor whether the vehicles will be bought, leased or moved, or whether a build is financed. Where no record says, the card says so, and that is what to ask on the call.

7. 7.Contacts only from a site we can tie to the company

   We take a website as the company's when the site itself shows the company's registration number or one of its postcodes on record. Failing that, we take it when its address is the company's whole name and its pages show that whole name and the town or postcode district of its site or registered office; the card then says the site was matched by name and town, so you can check it before you call. A shared name alone is never enough. From it we take the switchboard and role addresses such as sales@ or info@, never a named person's email, and a mobile only when the site lists no other number. A project company with no site of its own gets its owner's, and the card says whose it is. Where no site passes, the card says so.

8. 8.The dates on a card are the records' dates

   Each card shows the date of the record it starts from and the dates that record names: when the application was published, when objections or comments close, when a connection is due. When a later record about the same lead reaches us, the card is read again and either shows “Updated” with the date and what changed, or moves to the archive with the reason. A lead whose date has long passed moves to the archive too.