Reverse NHS England's decision to make its code repositories closed-source. - Petitions
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Open petition:
Reverse NHS England's decision to make its code repositories closed-source.
Created by Mr. Roke Julian Lockhart Beedell
Closes on
10 December 2026
Previously, the NHS Service Standard held that “public services are built with public money, so unless there's a good reason not to, the code they're based on should be made available for other people to reuse and build on.” This is what the current policy should be reverted to.
NHS England has issued guidance, called SDLC-8, which requires that all source code repositories be private from the 11th of May, 2026, unless there is an exceptional need, approved by the Engineering Board.
The Free Software Foundation Europe have warned that open repositories allow security researchers to inspect and report vulnerabilities, and that de-publishing code does nothing to prevent attackers from analysing already-deployed systems, binaries, or previously copied source code.
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52 signatures
Progress of the petition towards its next target:
52 of 10,000 signatures required to get a Government response
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10,000
signatures required to get a Government response
Petition progress
View all updates for this petition, with the most recent first.
10 June 2026
Petition published
This petition can now be signed.
If this petition gets 10,000 signatures, government will respond to it.
If this petition gets 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.
This petition will stay open until 10 December 2026 .
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