Newsroom — how we work

Who runs the newsroom

Kent Local News is operated by NHNN Ltd (registered company number 08344538 at Companies House; registered office 40 Gracechurch Street, London, EC3V 0BT). The editor of record is Daniel Dabin, Director of NHNN Ltd. Daniel is also an authorised independent financial adviser (CeFA, CeMAP, DipFA, IMC, Cert PFS), operating London International Corporation Ltd (Financial Conduct Authority firm reference 603072). The two businesses are separate; KLN's editorial decisions are made independently of any LIC client interest.

Regulator: IMPRESS

Kent Local News is a regulated member of IMPRESS — The Independent Monitor for the Press, the UK's only press regulator approved under the Royal Charter by the Press Recognition Panel. Our membership identifier is NHNN67893 and is publicly verifiable on the IMPRESS regulated-publisher register.

IMPRESS membership commits us to the IMPRESS Standards Code (accuracy, attribution, privacy, harassment, children, discrimination, public interest, transparency), to a binding complaints procedure, to the IMPRESS arbitration scheme, and to ongoing editorial standards review by an independent regulator.

Editorial standards

The principles we apply on every story:

• Independence. No proprietor, advertiser, sponsor, political party, or business interest dictates the story list.
• Accuracy. Claims are sourced. Numbers are checked. We say "we don't know" rather than guess. Where a fact is disputed, we explain who disputes it and why.
• Public interest first. Stories are chosen because they matter to Kent residents and to accountability of public institutions — not because of click metrics or aggregator optimisation.
• Right of reply. Where we report a specific allegation against a named person or institution, we approach them for comment before publication. Their response, refusal, or non-response is recorded in the story.
• Named bylines. Every article carries the name of a human journalist with accountability for it.
• Stable URLs. Once published, our articles keep the same URL. We do not silently delete or rewrite stories. Material edits are dated and disclosed in the article footer or in corrections.

Our full editorial code is at Editorial Policy.

Sources and verification

We rely on primary sources where possible: government legislation (Acts and statutory instruments), council minutes and meeting recordings, Companies House and Charity Commission filings, court records, regulator reports, FOI responses, and on-the-record statements from named people. Secondary sources (other journalism, press releases, social-media posts) are corroborated against primary sources before they are repeated as fact.

For investigations, we publish supporting documents alongside the article wherever rights and confidentiality permit. Our FOI requests are available on request.

Anonymous sources are used only where the public interest in the information clearly outweighs the loss of attribution, where the source's identity is known to the editor, and where the information is corroborated by separate evidence. We do not publish material on the basis of an unverifiable anonymous tip.

Corrections and complaints

Mistakes happen. When we get something wrong we correct it openly: the corrected article carries a dated correction note, and the correction is also logged on our Corrections page. We do not silently rewrite history.

If you believe an article breaches the IMPRESS Standards Code, please raise it via our complaints procedure. Unresolved complaints can be referred to IMPRESS for independent review.

Ownership, funding, and revenue

Kent Local News is wholly owned by NHNN Ltd. NHNN Ltd has no political party affiliation and accepts no political funding. There is no controlling external shareholder.

Current revenue streams:

• Display advertising. Programmatic display via authorised ad-tech partners (see /ads.txt for the current list of authorised sellers).
• Direct sponsorships. Where a Kent business sponsors a specific category or vertical, the sponsorship is disclosed in-page and on this site. Sponsors do not see articles before publication and have no editorial input on content, tone, or scheduling.

Donations and member contributions are not currently solicited. If that changes, this page will be updated and the funding source disclosed.

Use of AI in the newsroom

We use AI tools as part of our production workflow — and we are open about it because AI use is a legitimate transparency question for any modern publisher.

What AI does in our workflow:

• Helps draft article copy from primary sources we have already gathered and verified
• Generates branded hero cards (the coloured graphic at the top of an article) where we don't have an appropriate photo
• Drafts headline candidates, social-media copy, and email-newsletter summaries which a human editor then selects from and edits
• Assists with code, scrapers, and back-office automation

What AI does NOT do in our workflow:

• Decide which stories to publish
• Determine editorial position or tone of voice
• Fabricate quotes, sources, or facts — every factual claim is sourced from primary or corroborated material
• Publish without human review — every article passes through editor sign-off before going live
• Generate photographs presented as documentary record of an event

Where an article's hero image is AI-generated as a branded card (rather than documentary photography), the image style and category colouring is the signal: a flat coloured composite with the headline overlaid. Documentary photographs carry a credit line identifying the photographer or source.

Diversity, harassment, and protected characteristics

We follow the IMPRESS Standards Code on discrimination (Clause 4), harassment (Clause 3), and children (Clause 5). We identify a person by reference to a protected characteristic only where it is directly relevant to the story.

KLN operates within UK and EU data protection law (UK GDPR, Data Protection Act 2018, ePrivacy Regulations). See our Privacy Policy for our full data handling commitments.

Contact

News tips, story leads

newshound@kentlocalnews.co.uk

Editor (Daniel Dabin)

editor@kentlocalnews.co.uk

Corrections requests

/corrections/ or editor@kentlocalnews.co.uk

Complaints under the IMPRESS Standards Code

/complaints-procedure/

Postal address

NHNN Ltd, 40 Gracechurch Street, London, EC3V 0BT, UK