Earlier this month, four papers made claims about the average life expectancy one south Wales estate being lower than Haiti or Iraq. Full Fact subsequently found that the evidence for this was dead on arrival.

The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph all stated that men on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil could expect to live for just 58.8 years. As we found in our factcheck, this figure was actually the healthy life expectancy for men – the average length of time men enjoyed good health, not the average age of death.

Using Office for National Statistics data, we found that the true male life expectancy figure was actually closer to 70, greater than that of Haiti or Iraq.

Naturally we contacted the papers concerned to alert them to the mistake, but sadly none have co-operated with our efforts to have the articles corrected.

So today, Full Fact has referred the stories to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), as we believe they breach the standard for accuracy set out in the Editor’s Code of Practice.

Unfortunately, the PCC’s guidelines prevent us from publishing any updates on the progress of our complaint until judgment has been made, a veil of secrecy that we feel is unnecessary and counter-productive.

However we look forward to being able to report back that the four papers involved have all corrected the errors in due course.