The Domain Release Clause

Why it exists

Most organisations have a policy for acquiring domain names. It says who may register one, in whose name, and who pays for it. Very few say anything about giving one up, because releasing an address has never looked like a decision. It looks like tidying.

It is a decision. An address an organisation has used for years carries inbound links from funders, universities, councils, the press and reference works, and that accumulated standing passes to whoever registers it next. In twenty-eight British cases I examined in September 2026, the new owner used it to advertise online casinos holding no UK licence. Only three of the twenty-eight involved an organisation that had actually closed. The rest had merged, renamed, finished a project, or moved to a shorter address.

This is one provision rather than a whole policy, so that it can be adopted without displacing anything you already have.

The clause

No domain name registered to, or on behalf of, this organisation shall be released, allowed to lapse, or transferred outside the organisation until the checks at paragraph 2 have been completed and recorded.
Before any release, lapse or transfer, a named individual shall record: what the address was used for and when it was last in use; what still links to it, including links from public bodies, funders, academic sources, the press and reference works; whether it carries the organisation’s name, or the name of a project, service or brand associated with it; and the decision taken, the reason for it, and who took it.
Where those checks show that the address retains inbound links from third parties, or bears a name that could be mistaken for the organisation’s own, the presumption is retention. The address continues to be renewed and resolves either to the organisation’s current website or to a page stating plainly where the service has moved.
This clause applies on a change of name, a merger, an acquisition, a rebrand, the end of a project, campaign or funded programme, the decommissioning of a website, and the winding up of the organisation. On winding up, responsibility for continued renewal is assigned in the same way as responsibility for the organisation’s other assets.
Where a domain is registered by a supplier, contractor or agency on the organisation’s behalf, this clause forms part of the terms of that engagement, and the supplier shall not release, lapse or transfer the address without the organisation’s written instruction.
The organisation keeps a record of the addresses it has released, and checks periodically what those addresses now serve.

Download as Word

How to use it

Add it as a numbered section of your existing domain name, IT or information governance policy, under a heading such as “Releasing a domain”. Change “this organisation” to your own name if your policy is written that way, and adjust paragraph 5 to match how you contract with suppliers. Nothing else needs altering.

Paragraph 5 matters more than it looks. An address registered by an agency for a client outlives the engagement, and is then let go by a supplier who has no reason to know what still links to it. Two of the twenty-eight were fixed-term projects whose funding had ended.

One control that belongs in a domain policy is deliberately not here, because it concerns websites rather than addresses: if your website lets the public create accounts, each new account should be approved by a person before it can publish anything. One of the twenty-eight was a council whose .gov.uk site was carrying several hundred words of casino marketing, published through its own membership form.

Checking what links to an address

Paragraph 2 asks for a check most organisations have no routine way of making. Spare Key is a free tool that does it: give it a domain and it reads public records to find where the website, email and domain settings live and when the registration runs out, then writes a handover document recording who is responsible for what. It runs in your browser, asks for no passwords and stores nothing.

I built it, so treat that as a recommendation from an interested party. The clause does not depend on it, and any method that produces the record at paragraph 2 will do.

Licence and citation

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. You may copy it, adapt it and include it in your own policies, including commercially, provided you credit the source. Attribution inside an internal policy document is enough, and you do not need to ask.

Harbourne, J. (2026) The Domain Release Clause, version 1.0. Available at jharbourne.com/domain-release-clause.html. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Later versions will be published at this address with a new version number, and earlier versions will stay available. A clause about not moving addresses should not move.

Before you need the clause

Paragraph 2 asks you to know what points at an address before you let it go. This is that check, written out: five minutes, no tools and no account. It is the one I run on the organisations I write about.

Check your own web estate →