WriteToThem

Questions and answers

About WriteToThem

Is this a government website?

No. WriteToThem is an independent website.

It covers the whole of the UK, and you can use it to write to any of your representatives, from your councillors to your MPs.

In 2025–27, we received funding from the Welsh Government’s Democratic Engagement Grant programme.

Who are you, and why are you doing this?

WriteToThem is run by the charity mySociety. Our aim is to make it easier to contact your representatives, and to help you send the right message to the right place.

Learn more about us.

Does it cost money to send a message?

No. WriteToThem is a free service, and always will be.

How WriteToThem works

How do I send a message to my representative?

Start at WriteToThem’s homepage. Type in your postcode and press ‘Go’.

We’ll show you a list of everyone who represents you, from your local councillors to your MPs. Choose the one you want to write to, and we’ll take you to a simple form where you can start writing straight away.

When you’re ready, click ‘Preview and send’. This shows you exactly what your message will look like when we send it. If everything is in order, click ‘I’m happy, send it’. If not, click ‘Edit some more’ to make changes.

There’s just one more step: check your email inbox for our confirmation message, and click the link inside it.

Any reply from your representative comes straight to your own inbox, so do make sure you’ve entered your email address correctly.

How are messages sent to councillors, MPs and everyone else?

Most messages are sent directly to representatives’ email addresses.

Messages to local councillors often go to the council’s Democratic Services office, which then forwards them to the right person.

Can I send an attachment with my message?

No, WriteToThem doesn’t offer this.

If you need to send a photograph or a document, mention it in your first message. Then wait for your representative to reply: you can respond to their email directly and attach whatever you need through your own email account.

How do I edit my message?

Before you click ‘I’m happy, send it’, you can edit your message as many times as you like by clicking ‘Edit some more’.

Once your message has been sent, it can no longer be edited.

How do I cancel my message?

Simply don’t click the link in the confirmation email we send you. Without that click, your message is never sent.

Bear in mind that clicking the link sends your message almost immediately, so read it carefully before you confirm.

Why do I have to confirm my message?

We ask you to click the link in our confirmation email for a few important reasons.

It lets us check that the message comes from a real person, and stops anyone else using your email address to send a message you didn’t authorise. It also confirms that your email address works, so you’ll receive any reply your representative sends.

Finally, it’s a chance for us to send you a copy of your message for your own records.

Can you guarantee my message will be sent?

If your message doesn’t get through for any reason, we’ll let you know.

We have more than 24,000 representatives in our database. Email addresses change, inboxes fill up, and representatives retire; council, parliamentary or our own servers can also fail. We do everything we can to spot and fix these problems, so please tell us if you find any.

How do I know if my message has been sent?

When you click the link in our confirmation email, your browser shows a message to tell you it’s on its way.

If you hear nothing more, you can be confident it reached its destination. If there’s a problem — for example, your message bounces back from the representative’s inbox — we’ll let you know.

How do I get a copy of my message?

We include a copy of your message automatically in our confirmation email, and again in the follow-up email we send two weeks later to ask whether you received a reply.

To find these in your inbox, search for the phrases ‘Please confirm that you want to send a message’ and ‘Did your MP reply to your letter?’.

Why shouldn’t I copy and paste ‘form’ letters?

It’s far more powerful to write in your own words, telling your representative about your own beliefs and experiences. We want to amplify the voice of the individual, so we block ‘identikit’ letters.

We’d rather representatives could trust that a message from WriteToThem comes from a real person, telling their own story.

Here’s a quote from a parliamentary researcher, whose job is to make the MP they work for as accessible as possible:

MPs rather naturally take a sudden influx of identical or similar messages with a large pinch of salt, since they know that what they are seeing is stuff from a minority of constituents who are either impassioned/neurotic about the topic concerned or who are easily gulled into agreeing with some plausible story and sending the message, since it takes minimum effort to do so.

Given a daily mailbag of (say) 50 individual messages from individual constituents, on a wide range of topics, when the mailbag suddenly rises to 100 a day, 50 of which are much the same as each other, the representative has no way at all of knowing whether the message concerned is representative of opinion in the constituency.

All he or she knows is that 50 constituents have been persuaded to mail them about ‘topic X’. Much more notice is taken of trends within the regular flow of messages from clearly identified constituents. If in a month 50 people write in different ways and through different routes with similar views on a subject, this is much more likely to raise the profile of the topic with the MP.

So please don’t send the same message as everyone else. Ask people to write in their own words. For more on how to write a message your representative will engage with, see Communicating for change.

Can’t you just give me the direct email address of my MP?

There are several reasons we don’t simply publish representatives’ email addresses on WriteToThem.

We have safeguards in place to stop spam and other abusive mass mailings reaching representatives.
Strict parliamentary protocols mean MPs can only help their own constituents, so our system only lets you write to your own representatives. If we published every address, we couldn’t make sure people were writing to the representatives who are actually allowed to help them.
We monitor, as best we can, whether messages reach their destination. That means we can fix bad contact details rather than leave them broken.

If you do need an address for a legitimate reason, you can usually find MPs’ addresses on the Parliament website, and councillors’ addresses on your own council’s site.

Why should I recommend this website, rather than the Parliament/Senedd/Council website?

We want to help people send the right message to the right place. All the contact information we hold exists elsewhere, but we bring it together in one place.

Because we’re the only place you can see all your representatives at once, we can help people understand how our democracy works and write to the right people.

Representatives

I have multiple representatives — who should I write to?

WriteToThem lets you write to an individual representative or all of your representatives at once.

Which option is best depends on whether you’re asking for help with a personal problem (casework), or campaigning to change policy.

If you’re writing about a personal problem (casework)

For the Scottish Parliament or London Assembly, you’ll have a constituency representative as well as several list representatives. Your constituency representative is generally the best point of contact for a personal problem, though you’re free to write to a specific list member instead.

For the Senedd, the Northern Ireland Assembly and local councils, there’s no single constituency representative, so you can write to any of your representatives for assistance.

If you have an existing association with a particular party, you may prefer to write to a representative from that party — but you are free to write to any of your representatives.

You can also write to all your representatives at once, but if you’re asking them to take up your case with a public authority, it’s usually better to write to one at a time.

For more, see What can your representative do for you?.

If you’re campaigning to change policy

You have the option to email all your representatives at once to raise an issue. We’d recommend doing some research first though to see if there are representatives who are particularly relevant to your issue. You can investigate their areas of interest — have they spoken about the issue before, or do they sit on a relevant committee?

Representatives can play different roles depending on their position. Members of the governing party may be able to act differently from those in opposition, and it’s worth raising your issue in different ways with MPs who already support your cause compared with those who do not.

For more, see Communicating for change.

Why can’t I write to any representative I like?

Our service exists to help you write to your own elected representatives (or any Lord).

We want every message from WriteToThem to be a trusted, genuine letter from a genuine constituent.

Why can’t I write to a minister through the site?

Ministers are often best contacted through your own MP.

Ask your MP to pass your concern to the relevant minister. They’ll do this even if they disagree with you — though if they do agree, ask them to add their own support. Your MP will then send you the minister’s response, and can chase the minister on your behalf through questions in Parliament if necessary.

If you’d rather contact a minister directly, you can find their details in this list of departments and ministers on the Parliament website.

WriteToThem is designed for contacting your own elected representatives. If your MP also happens to be a minister, you can of course still write to them here. But please don’t use WriteToThem to write to a minister who isn’t your MP: your message would reach their constituency office, which isn’t the right place to deal with it.

How can I write to a Lord through the site?

Lords aren’t tied to any constituency, so you may write to any of them.

But since there’s no link between your postcode and a particular Lord, how do you choose one? That’s what our Write to a Lord section is for — it suggests a Lord for you in a number of ways.

Need a specific Lord? Visit our sister site, TheyWorkForYou, and find them there. Each Lord’s profile page has a link to contact them through WriteToThem.

See more about writing to Lords here.

Problems

What if WriteToThem doesn’t recognise my postcode?

Please read our advice on common reasons why postcodes aren’t recognised, and check your postcode on the Royal Mail site.

If that doesn’t help, please get in touch and tell us which postcode is causing trouble.

In the meantime, if you need to contact your representative urgently, you could try a postcode from a neighbouring street. This will usually bring up the right representatives — but if your postcode is close to a constituency boundary, there’s a small chance of error, so use this with caution.

Why is WriteToThem showing the wrong representatives?

WriteToThem relies on a piece of software called MapIt, which matches postcodes to constituencies.

Your postcode may be one of the few that straddles two constituencies. MapIt can’t assign two constituencies to a single postcode, which causes problems for it and for the people who live in those areas.

If this happens to you, we recommend using a nearby postcode that falls squarely within the correct constituency. It’s a workaround, but in these cases it’s the best we can suggest.

What if you don’t have my representative’s email address?

With more than 24,000 representatives in our database, this does happen occasionally. Perhaps your representative has changed their email address, or the address we held for them bounced.

You can help. If you can find a working email address and send it to us, we’ll add it to the system — which helps everyone else who wants to write to that person too.

Why haven’t I received my confirmation email?

The most common reasons are:

Our message has gone into your spam folder. Please check there. This is hard for us to prevent, but adding the WriteToThem address to your email whitelist should help in future.
You made a typo when entering your email address, so our message went to the wrong place.
You used a different email address from the one you’re now checking.

If you can’t find our message in your spam folder, and you’ve checked any other email accounts you might have used, please let us know. We can track down your original message and resend it from our end.

How do I stop receiving emails from you?

WriteToThem sends a small number of automated emails:

When you submit a message, we send a confirmation email with a link you must click for the message to be sent. This email also contains a copy of your message. If you don’t click the link, we send one reminder 24 hours later.
Two weeks after you use WriteToThem, we email to ask whether you received a response from your representative. Your answer helps us check that the service is working, and feeds into our researh about representative responsiveness. If you don’t reply, we send one reminder 24 hours later.

If at any point you decide you don’t want to hear from us again, please email support@writetothem.com.

What do I do if something went wrong, or I see an error on the site?

Please let us know. Include the text of any error message you saw, and tell us whether you’re on a desktop or mobile device and which browser you’re using (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge).

You might also like to check our Bluesky feed to see whether we’ve already flagged a current problem with the site.

Privacy

Why do you want my address, name, email address and phone number?

To let your representative get in touch with you, and to make your message look more like a formal letter. Your phone number is optional but useful — some representatives would rather call you than write back.
To send you a copy of your message for your records, and to tell you if there’s a delivery problem.
To confirm who you are and that you live in a particular area. WriteToThem is committed to making sure the service is used responsibly.

What will you do with the personal information used by this site?

Please see our separate Privacy page.

How private is my correspondence?

If everything goes smoothly, your message is seen only by you and its recipient. Some representatives have staff who help with their mail, and councillors’ emails often go through a Democratic Services office.

If there’s a problem — for example, your message bounces, or our system flags it as possible abuse — WriteToThem support staff may need to look at it. When that happens, we read as little of the content as possible: just enough to fix the problem and, where appropriate, get your message on its way.

As set out in our privacy policy, your message is completely erased from our system after five weeks.

Next steps

How long should I wait for a reply?

We email you two weeks after your message is sent to ask whether you heard back from your representative.

If you haven’t had a reply by then, see the next question.

What should I do if my MP (or other representative) doesn’t reply?

There are lots of things you can do to follow up if you get no reply.

See your representative in person by raising your issue at their local surgery. To arrange this, call your MP’s constituency office or your representative’s party office. You’ll find the number on their website.
Make sure you’ve tried every other route to solve the problem. For example, contact the relevant central government department and the relevant officers at your local council, and ask your local Citizens Advice for help.
Write to your local newspaper about your issue, and about your dissatisfaction with your MP or councillor.
Write to your other representatives — your MP, your local councillors, or regional representatives — where appropriate. You can do this for free using WriteToThem.
Complain about your representative to their local party by contacting the local party office. The local party can decide not to select your MP as a candidate at the next general election.

If your issue is a personal case with a government department or public body — such as immigration or benefits — see What can your representative do for you? for how to ask them to chase it up on your behalf.

What if I get an unsatisfactory reply?

If you’re unhappy with a response, we’d encourage a follow-up — by message, phone call, or a face-to-face visit at a local surgery.

If you prefer email, you can send another message through WriteToThem. Representatives benefit from knowing when their responses have fallen short.

Can you help me get my problem fixed?

Sorry, no. WriteToThem is a way to contact the people who are there to help you. We’ll do everything we can to get your message through, but after that it’s up to your representatives.

Questionnaire and responsiveness

Why do you send a follow-up email?

Two weeks after you use WriteToThem, we email to ask whether you received a reply from your representative.

The results of this questionnaire let us check that the service is still working for people.

What is the responsiveness league table?

The responsiveness league table was an annual ranking of representatives by how responsive they were to constituents. We discontinued it in 2017, and have blogged about that decision and our research into replacement measures.

What if none of the questionnaire options suit me?

Our questionnaire asks a simple question: did you receive a response (beyond a mere acknowledgement)?

We know things can be more complicated than that. Perhaps your message didn’t need a response, or perhaps you got one that didn’t actually answer your question. We keep the question simple because its answer tells us the one thing we care about most: is WriteToThem still working?

If you feel your answer won’t add much to our results, don’t worry — we have plenty of data. You can always respond next time.

What if the questionnaire link doesn’t work?

Unfortunately, our links break in some email programs.

Try copying and pasting the link into your browser’s address bar. If that doesn’t work, check the link for anything obviously wrong, such as a space or a line break in the middle of it.

If neither of these helps, please forward the whole email — including the link — to us, and we’ll try to get to the bottom of it.

How do I change my questionnaire response?

You can return to the questionnaire email at any time and click the relevant link — your last click always overrides any earlier ones.

Feedback

WriteToThem really helped me. How can I help you back?

We’re very glad to hear it!

If you’d like to show your appreciation, please consider making a donation to mySociety, who built and maintain WriteToThem.

You can also help us a great deal by spreading the word. Tell your friends, write to the local paper, or put a note on your library’s noticeboard. It all helps.

I’ve got a suggestion for improving WriteToThem

We’d love to hear it. Please contact us.

You might also like to browse our development list to see what we’re already working on or have planned.

Conditions of use

What types of message are not allowed?

As explained above, WriteToThem is only for contacting your own representatives.

On top of that, you may not use WriteToThem to send messages that are abusive or threatening, and you should not bombard a representative with a stream of messages in a short space of time.

If we discover this kind of use, we may, at our discretion, ban you from using WriteToThem.

Like all mySociety services, WriteToThem is covered by the organisation’s Code of Conduct. This applies to everything related to the service, including any correspondence with mySociety staff.

If a user sends a message intended to harass, threaten, abuse or distress a member of mySociety staff, we will, at our discretion, stop communicating with them, and we may ban them from future use of the site. Where a message is especially concerning, we will pass details of the correspondence to the police.

I’d like to use WriteToThem for a campaign. How do I do that?

Please see our pages on running a campaign. For a quick introduction to the options, try this blog post.