[derek73]

A new unscored local corpus, govuk-people (tools/differential/local_govuk.py), the third source the 2026-10-30 titled-name survey ranked. It holds the distinct display names of every person GOV.UK has a page for (ministers, senior officials, ambassadors, military chiefs, past prime ministers), paged from the search API filtered to the person format. Each name is the department's own display form, written with the British title run in front and post-nominals behind.

What it holds (fetched 2026-10-30, data date 2026-10-31T01:49:34Z)

• 6,021 distinct names, held by 6,125 people. 99 names are held by two people or more.
• parse() read a title in 1,293 (21.5%), a suffix in 1,261 (20.9%), and one or both in 2,093 (34.8%).
• A raw count by vocabulary roughly agrees: 1,290 open with a listed title word (or The), and 1,149 end in a listed post-nominal.
• Leading runs, by first word: The Rt Hon 272, Dr 229, Professor 227, Sir 147, Lord 94, Baroness 63, Dame 48, Mr 39, then military ranks.
• 83 names hold a comma.

The fetch

• It asks for order=title. Paged without an order, the search returned one person twice and skipped another across its 6,125 results.
• It refuses:
  • a page stating a different total than the first;
  • a person paged twice (keyed by the page path, which is read and then dropped);
  • a set paged short of the total, including an empty page before the total;
  • results of another document type, or with no title, past 1 in 1,000.
• The search states no date, so the data date is the fetch's own start time, in UTC.
• A fetch took 1.7s. A second fetch the same day gave the same corpus.

Licence

• GOV.UK terms (last updated 3 September 2024, read 2026-10-30): content is "published under the Open Government Licence".
• OGL v3: "This licence does not cover: personal data in the Information".
• So the names stay in the cache and are never committed, the same caution as UK MNIS in the 2026-10-27 survey. The tests use invented names only.

Changes

• local_govuk.py, plus a SOURCES row in local_corpora.py.
• tests/v2/test_local_govuk.py: 17 offline tests with a stubbed network. Each refusal has a test. The skip share is tested at its shipped value, where 1 skipped result in 1,000 passes and 2 are refused. Each of seven guard mutations (paged-twice, count, total-moved, empty-page, share, type-skip, order) fails at least one test.
• test_no_module_imports_a_sibling_constant now lists the new module.
• tools/differential/README.md "Local corpora": a row in the table, a paragraph, and the module in the module list.
• AGENTS.md "Validating a new parsing rule": one sentence saying a change to English titles, honorifics or post-nominals reads this corpus.

A sibling Czech corpus and a Mexico DOF corpus register in the same lists, so whichever merges second rebases onto a one-line conflict.

Systematic misreadings it shows (counts only; no parser change here)

• KC (King's Counsel) is in no vocabulary. It reads as the family name in 36 of the 42 names that hold it, for example Jane Doe KC → middle Doe, family KC.
• Other unlisted British post-nominals end the family in 27 more names: FREng, FIET, DL, KFSM, LLB, FRS, FRSA, PC, HMI and others. After a comma, the same words reverse the name in 5 names, for example John Smith, DL → given DL, family John Smith.
• Air Vice-Marshal, hyphenated, is not a title. The spaced form is. All 6 hyphenated names miss it.
• Territorial peerage designations with a two-word place split, for example Baroness Doe of Kings Heath → given Doe of Kings, family Heath. This hits 9 names, while the one-word form reads whole.
• A peerage written after the name and a comma reverses it, for example John Smith, 3rd Earl of Ashby → family John Smith, title 3rd. This hits 16 historical prime ministers.

Issue drafts are held for approval and not filed.

Checks

• uv run pytest: 33,532 passed.
• uv run mypy and uv run ruff check: clean.
• test_local_govuk.py also passes on Python 3.15.
• One real fetch, plus snapshot.py --local govuk-people --record: 6,021 readings recorded, and a check matches.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code