Chris Goodall complained to IPSO about fifteen errors in a Daily Mail article on renewable energy. He set out the outcome for Hacked Off in Climate misinformation and press regulation. Here he publishes the full timeline of the process.

On 15 September 2025 I wrote to IPSO, the newspaper industry’s complaints office, with a list of fifteen errors in a Daily Mail article of 27 August on renewable energy in the UK. A full year later, on 17 September 2026, I received final notice that IPSO would publish its decision on my complaint.

And so it did. A 6,700 word document on about fifteen pages appeared on its Rulings site on the same day. IPSO had judged that only one of the errors needed to be corrected while the rest of my points were dismissed. I was sent evidence that the Mail had published a short correction on this one point on page 2 of the paper the previous day, stating that it was doing so after an IPSO adjudication.

When I submitted the complaint I had no conception of the task I was taking on. My folder holding all the communications with the newspaper industry’s complaint handling office now contains over 80 emails, many of them detailed and long. 55 of these emails are included in this timeline. Pursuing the case involved hundreds of hours of work but I failed to convince IPSO that the many egregious errors in the article should be corrected.

One lesson I have learned is that the complaints office will do absolutely anything to protect the interests of their funders in the newspaper industry. Only the most blatant factual mistakes will be corrected. So a journalist has the freedom to distort, misrepresent and misunderstand with no check from IPSO.

Perhaps as strikingly, twice during the process of assembling the material for IPSO’s Complaints Committee, the Daily Mail offered some corrections in response to my criticisms. I didn’t accept these offers, looking to get a more favourable outcome from the complaints handling process at IPSO. In other words, the newspaper itself accepted it had made more errors than IPSO eventually determined. That is another lesson for us all.

Several people have asked me to provide a timeline of the year-long process to help demonstrate the difficulties facing a complainant. The text follows and while it is tedious to read, it does demonstrate how time-consuming and demanding an IPSO complaint can be. It is only because I have free time that this battle was even possible. Most complainants would not have been able to pursue such a time-consuming battle against a well-resourced media organisation that was repeatedly allowed by IPSO to respond far more slowly than me. And IPSO itself was tardy and sometimes unresponsive.

The timeline

27 August 2025

The Daily Mail publishes an article by Andrew Neil on its editorial page entitled ‘It’s stifling growth, killing industry and making households poorer. That’s why Net Zero is the most costly self-inflicted wound in modern British history’.

28 August 2025

A contact of mine sends me a copy of the article, suggesting I might want to comment on it.

1 September 2025

I write to the Daily Mail ‘Corrections’ email address with a detailed explanation of the 15 errors that I say were in the article. I get no response.

8 September 2025

I wrote again to the Daily Mail ‘Corrections’ address. Again, no response.

15 September 2025

I submit the complaint to IPSO, using the same document as I sent to the Daily Mail. (Not via email, as this process is carried out on the IPSO website.)

15 September 2025

A staff member at IPSO acknowledged receipt of my document by email.

17 September 2025

The same staff member asks me to clarify a point about energy costs in my complaint. I was requested to respond within 7 days.

19 September 2025

Two days later, I provide the detailed information requested. I attached a spreadsheet with 5,000 data points that supported my contention that Mr Neil had under-estimated the wholesale price of electricity in the UK.

25 September 2025 (2 weeks in)

Another IPSO staff member writes to say that my complaint had been accepted for adjudication. He states that a copy of my document had been sent to the Daily Mail so that it could offer to resolve the issues raised. A third IPSO staff member is assigned to the case.

3 October 2025 (3 weeks in)

The Daily Mail writes by email to me on Friday to say it is considering the complaint and will respond ‘early next week’.

8 October 2025

Not having received a substantive response by ‘early next week’, I send an email to the Daily Mail staff member who wrote on 3 October. This message received no reply.

8 October 2025

I also write to the IPSO employee who sent me the email of 25 September, and the IPSO colleague he said had been assigned to the case, saying I had written to the Daily Mail person who had communicated with me on 3 October.

13 October 2025 (4 weeks in)

The staff member at IPSO charged with dealing with the case writes back, saying that the Daily Mail had until 22 October to respond and, if possible, resolve the complaint.

20 October 2025 (5 weeks in)

A senior staff member at the Daily Mail writes to me with a detailed response to many of the points I make. However she adds that ‘At the outset, I should say that Andrew Neil is in Australia for the next month, and has told us that he is unable to access his research notes’ so her analysis is incomplete.

She makes a partial admission that two of my points are valid and offers to ‘update the article’ in one case and ‘rephrase the sentence’ in the other. As it turns out, it would have been better for me to accept this offer than push ahead with the IPSO process, which concluded only requiring the Daily Mail to correct one of these errors.

22 October 2025 (6 weeks in)

I respond to the 20 October email from the Daily Mail giving my detailed reasons why I think its assertions, particularly on the support scheme for wind energy, are wholly wrong. This is a 9 page, 3,000 word document.

23 October 2025

Not having seen the recent communications between the Daily Mail and me, the second IPSO staff member writes to ask whether I wanted to proceed with the complaint in light of any admissions by the newspaper. I am given 7 days to respond.

23 October 2025

On the same day, I reply to say that substantial differences remain between us and asking therefore for IPSO to continue to work on the complaint.

24 October 2025

IPSO confirms it is proceeding with the case and will ‘begin to prepare your complaint for investigation’.

10 November 2025 (8 weeks in)

A new IPSO person takes over the case. He writes that ‘I have now emailed the publication you are complaining about to make them aware that we have begun an investigation into this matter. Please accept my apologies, as I appreciate this has taken a little longer than we aim for.’

22 December 2025 (14 weeks in)

6 weeks later, the new staff member writes again.

‘I just wanted to provide a quick update on your complaint, as I’m aware you haven’t heard back from me for a while. Please be assured the investigation is ongoing – I’m corresponding with the publication regarding how it calculated some of the figures in its article. I would hope to be back in touch with a full update, and to provide you within the newspaper’s correspondence, soon. This will likely be in the New Year’.

23 December 2025

I write to thank the IPSO person for his 22 December email, including a one paragraph summary of the central point of my case. (Almost all my communications with IPSO from this point are with this person.)

8 January 2026 (16 weeks in)

The IPSO person writes, copying analysis and responses from the Daily Mail. In those responses the newspaper asserts the accuracy of the article’s assertions, particularly regarding the actions and intentions of the wind energy developer Ørsted.

9 January 2026

So I phone Ørsted and follow up with an email asking whether the article’s statements and the Daily Mail’s January responses were accurate. (The full and unambiguous response from Ørsted is described in the 12 January email below.)

9 January 2026

I write to the case manager at IPSO in response to his 8 January note. I focus on the most important error in the Daily Mail article. The journalist does not seem to understand that wind power developers in the UK only receive one payment for their electricity, not the series of different subsidies specified in the Daily Mail. This is a 3 page, 900 word response.

12 January 2026

Ørsted responds to me about the questions I raised on 9 January. Among other points, they confirm that the statements in the Daily Mail article that suggested that the company was withdrawing from the UK offshore wind market were wrong. The company stated without equivocation that Ørsted would continue to actively look for opportunities here, in contradiction to the Daily Mail piece.

12 January 2026

I forward the Ørsted email to IPSO because I believe it undermines some of the key assertions in the Daily Mail article. I receive no response.

16 January 2026

I write again to the IPSO case manager asking him to confirm receipt of my new material and mentioning the new results of the government auction for the offshore wind support scheme, which showed that the Daily Mail article had exaggerated the costs.

16 January 2026 (18 weeks in)

The IPSO case manager replies, saying ‘I apologise for the delay in getting back to you – we have been experiencing a particularly high volume of complaints recently, which has slowed down our processes somewhat. Please be assured that I’ll be back in touch with a substantive response to your emails as soon as possible.’

20 January 2026

He writes a longer letter, setting out some questions on the operation of the UK’s support scheme for renewable electricity. He says he would be grateful for a response within seven days.

22 January 2026

I respond in detail to his points in a two and a half page document. I admit to a misunderstanding of one of the points made by the Daily Mail but state that my arguments remain.

30 January 2026 (20 weeks in)

Eight days later, the case manager at IPSO replies, saying he will communicate my argument to the Daily Mail.

18 February 2026 (23 weeks in)

Replies from the Daily Mail to my points are contained in an email from the IPSO case manager. The newspaper offers several corrections to the article. In retrospect, I should have accepted these and settled the case after five months.

19 February 2026

I write to respond to IPSO in detail again, continuing with my main theme that the Daily Mail article had wholly misstated the way that wind power is supported in the UK and providing numbers to support this assertion. I sense that the arguments are getting too complex to understand and communicate, so I ask permission to write a summary of my case so that the Complaints Committee has a crisp statement of what I see as errors.

24 February 2026

The case manager writes that it probably isn’t yet appropriate to write such a summary.

25 February 2026

I suggest I wait to write the summary until the evidence collection phase has been completed.

24 March 2026

Four weeks later, I write to IPSO to inquire about progress.

26 March 2026 (28 weeks in)

The case manager responds saying ‘Please accept my apologies, we haven’t quite finished our review of your complaint. I acknowledge this has taken longer than hoped – as I believe I may have mentioned, we have been receiving a particularly high volume of complaints recently which had caused a few delays.’

1 April 2026 (29 weeks in)

He writes again to say that the case material is now ready for adjudication by the Complaints Committee. (This is five and a half months before the case was finally resolved by IPSO, and slightly longer since the complaint was lodged.) He suggests that now would be a good time to submit a summary and says I should provide this by 10 April, the longer period allowing for the Easter break.

2 April 2026

I say I will write a summary over the next weekend.

6 April 2026

I submit the summary.

10 April 2026

I write to the case manager to check he had received the summary.

10 April 2026

He responds confirming he has received it.

20 April 2026

He says the file is complete and will be forwarded to the Complaints Committee but another email will formally confirm this.

21 April 2026 (32 weeks in)

Formal confirmation is provided. So the case should have been decided by perhaps late April or early May. Instead it was pushed back until July, and then complaints by the Daily Mail resulted in another two months of delay.

21 April 2026

In my summary of each of my 15 assertions of error on the part of the Daily Mail, I said several times that the newspaper had not contested several specific complaints. The case manager wrote to me to state that just because the newspaper hadn’t contested an assertion of an error did not mean it accepted the complaint.

22 April 2026

I say the case manager can remove the sentence about the Daily Mail not contesting a number of my complaints if he wishes to.

22 April 2026

The case manager says in an email that the text of the summary doesn’t need to be changed.

6 May 2026 (34 weeks in)

The case manager writes to say that the Daily Mail had submitted a new point about the price paid for electricity by heavy industry in the UK after the conclusion of the investigation period. I was given seven days to respond.

6 May 2026

I say that my previous comments had covered the point raised by the Daily Mail.

7 May 2026

The case manager said all comments would be passed to the Committee. He wrote ‘I’ll be back in touch when it has considered the complaint. I would note that this may take a little longer than usual, as we have been receiving a particularly high volume of complaints recently.’

12 June 2026

Five weeks later, I write to ask how the complaint is proceeding.

16 June 2026 (39 weeks in)

The case manager responds by saying ‘I apologise this is taking a little longer than usual, but delays can happen when the complaint is particularly complex, and when we receiving a particularly high volume of complaints (as we have been recently).’

24 June 2026

I send an email to the chief executive of IPSO asking about the prolonged delays in handling the complaint. I note that the case manager had said on 1 April that the material was ready to go to the Complaints Committee for a decision.

14 July 2026 (43 weeks in)

The Head of Complaints at IPSO wrote to explain the delays. She wrote:

‘As Mr Pike has previously mentioned, it has been an unusually busy period at IPSO, with a higher volume of complaints received than is usual. In this case, this appears to have been compounded by delays on the part of the publication – it appears that it required several extensions in order to fully answer our questions – and the complexity of the complaint, which encompassed several points.’

16 July 2026

The case manager wrote, copying the decision document from the Complaints Committee. This document upholds one of my complaints and rejects the other fourteen, including those that had been previously agreed by the Daily Mail. This long document fails to understand much of the detail of many of the key arguments between the newspaper and me.

16 July 2026

The case manager writes again with a statement of how an appeal can be made against IPSO’s processes.

7 August 2026 (47 weeks in)

The Daily Mail made a request for a review of the remedial action required by the Committee. IPSO told me that the decision would not be published until this request was assessed and any amendments made.

17 September 2026 (52 weeks and 2 days in)

The case manager writes to say that the decision was unchanged after the appeal and it would be published later on that day.