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Can I Name Them? UK Reporting Restrictions Decision Engine

The question a court reporter actually asks is never “what does the Contempt of Court Act say” — it is whether this particular person, in this particular hearing, can go in the copy by name. The answer depends on a combination of role, age, forum and whether anyone has made an order, and getting it wrong is a criminal offence in several of the branches.

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Can I Name Them? Decision Engine

Enter details of the person you want to name, the court context, and any orders — get the applicable UK reporting-restriction rules with statute citations.

Not legal advice. This tool flags commonly applicable rules only, from the facts you enter. Always take specialist legal advice for high-risk stories — see disclaimer.

Select all five options above to see whether you can name this person.

General guidance based on statute and code positions. Always take specialist legal advice for high-risk stories. See /disclaimer.

How it works

  • Five dropdowns: who you want to name (nine roles including defendant, complainant, non-sexual victim, witness, juror, teacher accused by a pupil, whistleblower, defendant’s family member, convicted person post-sentence), their age, the court or forum, the offence or matter type, and whether a reporting-restriction order is known.
  • A confirmed order is evaluated first and is authoritative — s.11 CCA 1981, s.45 YJCEA 1999, s.39 or automatic s.49 CYPA 1933, or an Education Act 2011 s.13 teacher direction all return CANNOT NAME; a s.4(2) postponement returns DEPENDS with a warning to read the order’s exact wording.
  • Where no order is confirmed, the rules run on role. A sexual-offence complainant always returns CANNOT NAME on the lifetime anonymity in s.1 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. A juror always returns CANNOT NAME under s.20D of the Juries Act 1974. An under-18 defendant returns CANNOT NAME in the Youth Court and DEPENDS anywhere else.
  • Answering “unknown” to the order question deliberately downgrades otherwise permissive rules to CAUTION rather than letting them return a green verdict — the engine assumes open justice only when you have positively confirmed no order exists.
  • Verdicts are aggregated into one overall band, and the most restrictive wins: any CANNOT NAME makes the whole result DO NOT NAME. Each card carries the statute, often a quoted extract, a linked landmark case, and a link to the relevant guide.
  • Verdicts that involve a protected person — a complainant, someone under 18, or anyone covered by a confirmed order — carry a jigsaw-identification warning: a reminder that other published details, such as address, workplace, school or relationships, can identify that person even without naming them directly.

When to use it

  • From the press bench, when a name has come out in open court and you need to know whether it can go in the copy.
  • When a youth defendant has been sent to the Crown Court and the automatic Youth Court anonymity no longer applies.
  • On a story about a teacher accused by a pupil, where anonymity runs from allegation until charge and publishing a day early is an offence.
  • When a whistleblower wants to be named and you need the source-protection and employment-detriment considerations in front of you before agreeing.
  • At a tribunal or inquest, where the power to anonymise comes from a different rule than in the criminal courts.

What it does not do

  • Not legal advice. This is a rules engine over five dropdowns and it can only be as right as the facts you give it — most importantly the order question, which it cannot verify.
  • Age “unknown” is no longer treated as adult. A defendant whose age you have not confirmed matches no role-specific rule and falls through to the general “no specific automatic restriction identified” caution rather than a green verdict — treat that amber CAUTION as a prompt to confirm age, not as a finding that nothing restricts naming them.
  • The jigsaw-identification warning is a generic reminder attached to any verdict involving a protected person. It does not analyse the actual details in your copy, so you still have to work out for yourself whether what you’ve written, combined, identifies someone the rules say you can’t name.
  • England and Wales only — there are no Scottish or Northern Irish forums in the court list — and it cannot see court listings, orders made in chambers, or anything a judge said this morning.

More tools

This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.

Related guides

LawReporting restrictionsRead →Court reportingYouth court and section 49Read →Court reportingSexual offences anonymityRead →LawNaming suspects pre-chargeRead →Court reportingChallenging a reporting restrictionRead →

Primary sources