Use and licensing
Framework content is published under the SRCF Public Reference and Adoption Licence (v1.2, 22 August 2026) — free to read, adopt internally and reference academically, with official use, reproduction and status claims licensed separately so the framework's integrity can be maintained. © 2026 London Reporting Academy Limited.
Download the full licence (DOCX) · The licence applies to each Framework Release that expressly identifies it. The plain-English summary below is for convenience; the licence clauses prevail.
The definition itself stays free, and is meant to stay that way. Reading the register, citing it, using it inside your organisation and teaching about it — including in fee-charging degree and executive programmes — carry no fee and need no separate agreement: the public licence already grants them, on the conditions summarised below. That undertaking is about the framework: access, personal use, internal use, reasonable quotation and independent academic reference. Software and assessment materials sit outside it, so where this site says a tool is intended to be free to use, read that as a present intention and not as a commitment the licence makes.
What is paid is the trust layer built on top of the definition — and it is being built in sequence, free end first. Published today: the register, free to read here, and the three working packs, free to download. In design: self-testing tools that let a practitioner check themselves against named units, intended to be free to use, self-scored and private, with no result reported to anyone; and the Practice Lab, which drills the real work against named units and returns practice feedback, never a level, a result or a pass. Planned: assessment and professional credentials — the paid, deep end of the sequence, reserved to the separate Assessment and Credentials Board and piloted before anything is claimed on them; official statuses when the claims scheme is published, expected from version 1.0 at the earliest; enterprise analytics and licensed APIs. The paid layer sells trust that has been tested — never access to the definition.
Two things this does not mean. Free to use is not free to take: the public licence grants reading, internal use, limited quotation and independent mapping — it is not an open-content licence, and it does not permit redistributing substantial parts in a product or platform, translations and adaptations for publication, redistributing machine-readable exports, or using the materials to train a model or build a retrieval corpus. And announcing free tools is not an invitation to build them: a reusable diagnostic, a toolkit, a data or AI product, or software carrying SRCF content to third parties is a licensed category whoever is building it.
Universities and training providers: what free academic use looks like in practice — mapping, teaching, the reference statement and the Learn criteria — for universities and educators.
Where SRCF materially informs an artefact shared beyond its author — a job description, competency model, curriculum or methodology — the artefact must carry:
Short form where space is genuinely constrained: “With reference to SRCF 1.4.0 (Working Draft) — London Reporting Academy.” This states a source relationship only — it is not approval, alignment, accreditation, certification or endorsement.
Cite the Release you actually used. The version shown here is the current content version — 1.4.0, issued in review package 1.2 and labelled Working Draft. Identifying the Release, and not presenting draft material as final or approved, are conditions of the permission rather than a matter of style. If you later adopt a newer Release, cite that one instead, and drop the draft label only when the Release you are citing no longer carries it.
| Wording | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| “References SRCF” · “developed with reference to SRCF” | Permitted for everyone, subject to the licence conditions | Free layer |
| “Independently mapped with reference to SRCF” | Permitted only with the independent-mapping disclaimer | Free layer + clause 7.3 notice |
| “Based on SRCF” · “SRCF-aligned” | Requires a separate written licence or status grant | Written licence |
| “Curriculum Aligned to SRCF” · “SRCF Academic Partner” · “Licensed Learning Partner” · “Authorised Trainer” · “Licensed Integration” · “Verified Technology” | Requires the exact current written status and compliance with its rules | Status scheme |
| “SRCF-certified” · “accredited” · “approved” · “endorsed” | Prohibited unless the exact claim is granted under a published scheme | Prohibited |
Marks note: LRA LONDON REPORTING ACADEMY is a UK registered trade mark (UK00004143034). Plain-text factual reference to SRCF and to London Reporting Academy is permitted; logos, badges and stylised marks are not, and the ® symbol must not be applied except as authorised in current brand guidance.
The ladder above covers claims about programmes, mappings, products and organisations. It does not cover the commonest individual use of this framework: telling someone what you found when you assessed yourself against it. That use needs no licence and no separate permission — the licence grants personal use and internal self-assessment, plain-text factual reference, and a factual mapping that names the units and levels you compared yourself against. But it is not condition-free: the Release and its draft status must travel with the claim. The licence does not deal with CVs or professional profiles by name, so what follows is the Secretariat's reading of the clauses that do apply, not a further permission granted here.
The register sets the bar itself. Sixty-four of the 81 units name observable performance in their assessment boundary, and calibration rule CAL-EV-02 asks for at least two evidence dimensions at Practitioner and Advanced — a work product plus process, review or observed-performance evidence — recording that self-assessment and course attendance are supplementary, not primary evidence of competence. Naming the boundary for the units you claim, and having both dimensions ready, is the strongest thing you can do for a self-assessment's credibility.
What fails, and why| Wording | Why it fails |
|---|---|
| “SRCF Practitioner”, “SRCF Level 2 professional” — even with “(self-assessed)” appended | A credential-shaped label reads as a conferred status. The shape and the placement are the claim; a parenthesis does not cure them. |
| “I hold SRCF Level 2”, “my SRCF level is 2” | Holding language presupposes issuance. Nothing has been issued to anyone. |
| “SRCF-aligned professional”, “my practice is aligned with SRCF” | Requires a separate written licence or status grant. Nothing has been granted to any individual, so it is unavailable today. |
| “SRCF-certified”, “accredited”, “approved”, “endorsed”, “verified” | Prohibited unless London Reporting Academy has expressly granted the exact claim in writing under a published scheme. No scheme is published, so the claim is available to no one. |
| “Working towards SRCF certification”, “SRCF certification pending” | Worse than it looks: it implies a scheme exists and that admission is in train. Neither is true. |
| “Assessed at SRCF Practitioner level”, “rated Level 2 against SRCF” | Agentless passive — the reader supplies SRCF as the assessor. Implying it is as prohibited as stating it. |
| “SRCF Level 2, confirmed by my employer” | A third party’s confirmation creates no SRCF status and dresses a private opinion as a framework outcome. An employer’s capability review is internal use; publishing its result externally as an SRCF result travels outside that. |
| Any SRCF logo, badge, seal or stylised lockup on a CV, profile or email signature | Plain-text factual reference only. Logos, badges, seals and stylised marks need separate written permission, and the ® symbol must not be applied except as authorised in current brand guidance. |
| The line placed in LinkedIn’s “Licenses & Certifications” or “Honors & Awards” field | The field is the claim. A correct sentence in a credential field asserts a credential. About, Summary or Experience is the right home. This one is our reading, not a clause. |
| A CV appendix reproducing a domain’s full unit table, a role map or the whole proficiency ladder | Extracts must stay reasonable and incidental and must not substitute for the official Release. Cite the IDs and link to the register instead. |
One distinction worth holding on to. A CV line that mentions SRCF and names a level is a factual reference and needs no notice. A personal competency model or a portfolio that reproduces the unit structure, the ladder or role-map rows is an artefact materially informed by the register, and if you share it beyond yourself it carries the reference statement above — which records a source relationship and nothing more, and does not cure a status claim anywhere else on the page.
This note is guidance, not licence text, and where anything here differs from the SRCF Public Reference and Adoption Licence the clauses prevail. Some of what it says is written into them — the status wording, the notices, the conditions attached to every permission. The rest is the Secretariat's reading of those clauses applied to situations the licence does not address by name.