About this platform
A neutral civic record system. Every decision explained. Every methodology published. Nothing hidden.
Common Ground UK is a real-time civic accountability platform. It takes live parliamentary decisions, puts the same question to the British public, and permanently records the difference between the two. That difference, the Accountability Gap, is the platform's core output.
This is not a polling service. It is not a petition site. It does not tell you how to vote. It presents evidence, asks questions, and publishes what the public decides, permanently, specifically, and publicly.
We don't tell you whether that gap is right or wrong. We show you the evidence, permanently, and let you decide.
Not a media outlet
We do not editoralise. We do not have a political line. We present data.
Not a campaign tool
We do not campaign for any party, candidate, policy outcome, or ideology.
Not a viral content platform
Accountability Gap data is presented as a permanent record, not as outrage content.
Not a representative poll
Every result shows the sample size. This is the public who chose to engage, not a weighted national survey.
Anyone can vote without creating an account. Results update as votes come in and always show the exact number of people who voted.
These results reflect the people who chose to take part. They are not a statistically representative sample of the UK population and should not be reported as a national opinion poll.
Once a question has reached 100 votes and has been open for at least 48 hours, its result is locked as a permanent public record, alongside the parliamentary comparison where one exists. It is never changed after that point.
Sample size, date, and the full breakdown of responses are shown for every result, so the limits of the data are never hidden.
Every question and every position published on the platform must pass all four of the following tests before publication. No exceptions.
Reality Test
Is this genuinely achievable in the real world? Has it been done elsewhere? Is it constitutionally possible?
Cost Test
What does it actually cost? Must be sourced from the OBR, IFS, NHS England, Home Office, or equivalent public body. Estimates must be cited.
Legal Test
What law currently governs this? What legislation would need to change? What parliamentary process does that require? What are the constitutional constraints?
Abuse Test
Could this question be weaponised, used to target a group, or misrepresented? Does it use language that singles out a religion, ethnicity, or protected characteristic? If yes, rewrite or do not publish.
Every question comes from one of four defined sources. No question is invented without a traceable originating event, a real parliamentary vote, petition, news story, or public submission.
Direct integration with the official parliamentary API. Live divisions, bills at key stages, ministerial statements. Each event generates a draft question which enters a human approval queue before publication.
Any petition that crosses 100,000 signatures, the threshold for a parliamentary debate, is automatically fast-tracked. The public has already signalled its interest.
Significant policy stories identified via news monitoring. Questions drafted from current coverage with full source citation. Human approval required.
Users submit questions in plain language. Community voting determines net score. When a question reaches the threshold, it enters Stage 1 of the democratic process.
Questions do not jump straight to the manifesto. They move through six stages that mirror the structure of Parliament. This is what makes the output legitimate rather than advisory.
All voting uses a consistent five-point scale throughout the platform. One vote per question per session. Results update in real time.
Agreement percentage combines Strongly Agree and Agree. Disagree percentage combines Disagree and Strongly Disagree. The five-point breakdown is available for every question. Sample sizes are shown on every result.
Where Parliament has voted on the same question the public has voted on, the platform calculates the Accountability Gap, the difference between the public agree percentage and the parliamentary agree percentage, expressed in percentage points.
A gap becomes official when two conditions are met simultaneously: at least 100 votes have been cast, and the question has been live for at least 48 hours. This prevents organised rapid voting from setting the permanent record.
Once finalised, the gap is written to a permanent record and will not change. It carries a timestamp, the total vote count, and the Hansard reference for the parliamentary vote.
Every single vote contributes directly to the People's Manifesto, that's not a metaphor, it's literally how the document gets built. And how it's built matters as much as the fact it's built. Every person's vote carries the same weight, whether their opinion is the loudest in the room or they've never posted anywhere else, nobody gets drowned out by whoever's most extreme or most online. What that produces is usually a clearer, calmer picture than what dominates social media or the news, because it isn't filtered through what gets shared or who shouts loudest, it's simply where people actually are.
Then it flips the usual relationship. Normally, a party decides its agenda first and tries to persuade you to it. The Manifesto runs the other way: before an election, it's formally submitted to every participating party as evidence of the public's actual priorities, not what a party wishes those priorities were. They have to reckon with what people actually think, not just sell what they'd already decided to push.
That record also has real uses beyond the Manifesto itself. Journalists get a genuinely different kind of story out of it: not "politician says X", but a documented, Hansard-cited gap between what Parliament voted for and what the public actually think, with the receipts attached. And you can see whether your own MP voted with or against what the public, and where the data allows it, your own local area actually thinks, and use that in a real letter to them, not a vague complaint.
It isn't a magic wand, one platform doesn't rewrite a law by itself, and we won't pretend otherwise. But it's not nothing either. It's a real, permanent, growing record that people, parties, and journalists can all point to and say: here's what people actually think, on the record.
Neutrality is not a disclaimer on this platform, it is embedded in every design decision. The five-point voting scale. The publication of evidence on both sides. The equal treatment of all qualifying parties. The sending of formal correspondence to all party leaders simultaneously.
The platform does not tell users how to vote. It does not favour any party, ideology, or outcome. If you believe a question or position has crossed into bias, contact us at challenge@commongrounduk.uk.
Common Ground UK is a private limited company registered in England and Wales.
When you vote, we store your response anonymously using a session identifier. We do not collect your name, email address, or any personally identifiable information unless you choose to create an account. We do not sell data. We do not serve advertising. Your votes are used solely to calculate public opinion results on each question.
For data and privacy enquiries, contact privacy@commongrounduk.uk.
I built Common Ground UK because I believe people deserve somewhere to record what they actually think about the issues that affect their lives.
Not shouted down. Not corrected. Not told what they should think. Simply given the opportunity to answer an honest question and have their view count.
Politics has become dominated by the loudest voices. Protests, social media and political debate can make it seem as though the country is permanently divided between two extremes. But that isn't the whole picture. Millions of people sit somewhere between them, often with opinions that don't fit neatly into a political box.
I wanted to create a place for those opinions to be heard.
Common Ground UK lets people vote anonymously on real questions about real issues. No party tells them what to think. No one has to justify their answer. Every vote becomes part of a bigger picture, one that shows where people actually stand when the noise is taken away.
But recording public opinion is only half of what Common Ground UK is about.
Politicians and political parties put their priorities in front of us through manifestos, policies and campaigns. I wanted to turn that around.
The People's Manifesto is built from the issues people have actually voted on. It creates a record of what people want their representatives to consider, and where Parliament has taken action on the same issue, shows that public view alongside what Parliament actually did.
And that distinction matters.
Common Ground UK doesn't tell you whether Parliament was right or wrong. It doesn't tell you how to vote. It doesn't support one party over another.
Where a parliamentary vote exists, we show it against the public result and source it from Hansard. Where there isn't one, we say so. The platform's job is not to manufacture a conclusion. It is to make the evidence visible.
I'm not a career politician, journalist or pollster. I built Common Ground UK piece by piece, in the evenings, because I believed it was worth doing properly rather than simply getting it out quickly.
That same principle applies to the platform itself.
Common Ground UK is independent and non-partisan. It doesn't belong to a political party, and it never will. Its credibility depends on being as transparent and accountable as the system it exists to examine.
Ultimately, this is about something quite simple:
Giving people a voice, recording what they say, and showing what happens next.
If that matters to you too, thank you for being here.
Steve Hatton
Founder, Common Ground UK