Ethical and Editorial Policy

All content on The Rooftop must ensure:

  • People are treated with dignity and respect regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation
  • At all times people’s feelings will be valued and respected. Language or humour that people find offensive will not be used, e.g. sexist or racist jokes or terminology which is derogatory to someone with a disability.

No one using our site or social media channels will be or feel harassed, abused or intimidated on the ground of their age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. Incidents of harassment will be taken seriously and the editors reserve the right to remove comments and block users who contravene this policy.

In addition, we will not take content from organisations that have contravene the equal opportunities statement above and/or that:

  • Promote alcohol, nicotine, cannabis or recreational drugs.
  • Manufacture whole or strategic parts of weapons systems and weapons platforms.
  • Actively support regimes with a poor record of human rights and/or fail to have a human rights policy in place.
  • Have a harmful effect on their employees, such as a poor health and safety practices, or companies with evidence of abusive employment practices or which discriminate or punish trade union membership.
  • Have breached environmental protection legislation or make significant contributions to carbon emissions, carbon intensive mining (e.g. tar sands, uranium) or chemicals of concern (e.g. pesticides and ozone depleting chemicals).
  • Produce, manufacture or use commodities (such as cotton, timber, soya, palm oil or cattle) without sufficient processes in place to ensure their activities do not contribute to significant or unmitigated deforestation, significant biodiversity loss, or harm to the environment or communities.
  • Manufacture products or ingredients that have been tested on animals (with the exception of medical trials where no viable alternative can be found).
  • Do not respect the five freedoms of animal husbandry (freedom from hunger and thirst; discomfort; pain, injury and disease; behave normally; fear and distress) and/or manufacture or sell fur products, that are not a by-product of the meat industry (e.g. wool or leather).
  • Create pornographic or violent media.
  • Market breast milk substitutes and have failed to commit to adopting industry leading marketing practices (such as those defined under the World Health Organisation’s International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes).
  • Operate poor business practices that cause harm to society or their employees that have not already been captured under other criteria (such as predatory lending and high interest rate lenders which have demonstrated poor business practices).

All copy on the site is designed to be easy to read and understand. In addition all articles:

  • Must comply with our Ethical Policy (see above) and cover charities, social enterprises, universities / colleges, trade unions and/or the public sector.
  • Must have an accompanying image, which The Rooftop has been given permission to use.
  • Any video submitted must be via an embeddable YouTube or Vimeo link and must be subtitled.
  • Contain a headline max 50 characters.
  • Will have a social media intro (max 10 words).
  • Are of c.250 words of copy, designed to be read in 2 minutes or less (maximum word count 500 words).
  • Contain a quote from a case study or spokesperson.
  • Adhere to our fact checking policy.

All complaints should start with a request for correction as outlined in our terms and conditions and, if the correction is declined, the complaints policy will be followed. This policy is the recommended approach by regulatory body IMPRESS.