Closed 9 September 2026 after the authorised public-source pass. This packet adds an author-attributed report of a 2026–27 Service Agreement signing and a meeting involving the Alliance for Intellectual Property and Sky. It does not acquire the agreement, a pilot specification, an industry contribution or a private right to select police work.
The three periods remain separate: the government announced public baseline funding for April 2026–March 2029; a later public LinkedIn post reports signing the first annual Service Agreement for 2026–27; the industry co-funding pilot remains planned from April 2027. The annual document must not be relabelled as an acquired three-year contract or a signed industry-funding agreement.
The retained [IPO/DSIT announcement of 9 March 2026](http[local research file] opening paragraph and Background 3–4, specifies approximately £3 million per year of baseline funding, provided by DSIT via the IPO, through March 2029. Its pilot paragraph describes testing additional enforcement activity with partnership funding. The paragraph immediately after Adam Williams's quotation assigns development of the pilot's priorities and contribution level to the IPO and PIPCU together. It anticipates stakeholder engagement; it gives neither contributor admission criteria nor a method for accepting or rejecting contributions. The Commissioner describes public-sector enforcement powers and strategic oversight alongside industry expertise and intelligence. That is a public account of roles, not an acquired independence or conflicts clause.
[Parliamentary answer 119446](http[local research file] asked 10 March and answered by Ian Murray for DCMS on 19 March 2026, confirms funding through 2029 in an answer about illegal streaming and broadcaster sustainability. The complete question and answer were read; the decisive funding passage is the second answer paragraph (reader lines 17–18). This corroborates the announced duration without supplying an assurance schedule, payment condition or pilot rule. No actual police receipt is established by either announcement.
The new [public post displayed as IPO Counter-Infringement](http[local research file] says its enforcement team and CEO Adam Williams met to sign the 2026–27 Service Agreement and met representatives of the Alliance for Intellectual Property and Sky. Its embedded post, displayed as Intellectual Property Office UK, says the annual agreement was signed as the first step after the three-year commitment. It names Daniel Guthrie, Director General of the Alliance, and Matthew Hibbert, Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, among attendees. This establishes an attributed report of an actual meeting, a narrower advance beyond the March intention to engage. Neither body says that Sky or the Alliance paid, committed a contribution, approved a priority, obtained a seat, or signed the agreement.
The main post's retained JSON-LD gives datePublished as 2026-05-29T15:21:33.883Z. The displayed date is 3mo / Edited. The embedded body says the visit occurred that week; an exact meeting date, the embedded post's publication date and the date of any edit are not independently established. Its image caption/alt text names Adam Williams and Pete O'Doherty as signing. That caption is readable source text, not our visual verification of signatures: the image pixels, signature page and agreement text were not acquired or inspected.
Author identity also has a limit. Root's separate check found that the official GOV.UK IPO landing links a LinkedIn profile at /company/uk-ipo/, whereas this retained page identifies its embedded author at /company/intellectual-property-office-uk. The gov-linked profile returned 999 when root tried it; that route is closed. The account alias has not been independently reconciled. Accordingly the signing and attendance findings are attributed to the displayed authors of the public posts, not presented as a separately verified GOV.UK publication. This is distinct from the directly attributable government funding announcement.
The March government announcement attributes to Dan Guthrie a welcome for continued public funding and an intention to engage with IPO/PIPCU about expanding the unit's work. The [Alliance's own About page](http[local research file] first two substantive paragraphs and Staff and board section, describes a UK coalition and identifies Dan Guthrie as Director General. This supports counterpart identification; it supplies no corporate contracting identity, pilot mandate or authority to commit every member.
The retained signing-page HTML also includes a separate related-post card displayed as Alliance for Intellectual Property welcoming the security of three years' funding. Its exact link is [the Alliance's related post](http[local research file] That text was read within the retained page; this separate URL was not fetched. It confirms the displayed counterpart's supportive public position at that scope. It does not promise to co-fund.
The Alliance's [Consumer Protection page](http[local research file] links PIPCU but publishes no pilot conditions. Its [Online Accountability page](http[local research file] including the Know Your Business Customer section, advocates verification protocols by hosting providers, online advertising companies, proxies, payment gateways and marketplaces, with loss of business-critical hosting/payment access as a consequence for illicit activity. This is a business-customer verification demand, not a consumer age-identification requirement. This is a policy position of a named participant in the reported meeting. No inspected record connects that position to an adopted PIPCU pilot priority or policing condition. The page's precise publication/update date is unknown; its copyright year is not treated as that date. No linked policy genealogy was followed.
| Decision or resource boundary | Best public evidence in this packet | Unacquired discriminator |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline and additional capacity | March announcement separates the public baseline from proposed additional pilot work. | Executed 2026–27 agreement, financial schedules, baseline definition and any substitution restriction. |
| Who develops pilot priorities | March announcement identifies IPO and PIPCU jointly. | Priority-selection procedure, committee membership, approval rights and minutes. |
| Who may contribute, and how much | General invitation to interested industry partners; contribution level under development. | Eligibility/exclusion rules, contribution bands, recipient and acceptance instrument. |
| Industry access | Public post reports Alliance and Sky attendance; displayed Alliance card welcomes funding. | Agenda, minutes or consultation output establishing what was proposed and what was decided. |
| Conflict controls and operational independence | Commissioner describes public strategic oversight; no current pilot clause acquired. | Conflicts, recusal, earmarking, non-contributor access, reporting, audit, withdrawal and repayment provisions. |
The defensible additions are government confirmation of baseline duration, displayed-author report of annual agreement signing, reported meeting participation by Alliance and Sky, and attributed Alliance support for public funding. Their stages are respectively an official public commitment, reported execution, reported engagement, and a public position. There is no supported contribution-to-priority entitlement edge.
A capacity-expansion explanation remains strongest: public funding continues, public bodies develop a supplementary pilot, and industry contributes expertise and discussion. A competing explanation is that future earmarked resources could shape the queue or preferred sectors without formally transferring police powers. The meeting record makes that mechanism more concrete as a question, but it does not resolve it. The most discriminating records are the annual agreement and a published pilot participation/priority protocol, followed by records showing the disposition of industry proposals. None was acquired in this pass.
funding-design-captures.json records five newly retained original HTML files, one Parliamentary error response, read scopes and three reused original hashes. funding-design-post-scoped.json preserves the main post, embedded IPO text, relevant related cards, precise observed links, metadata and image-caption scope. funding-design-parliament-reader-note.json is a scoped reading note, not an original Parliamentary document. The successful public web reader supplied the substantive answer; the ordinary preservation GET returned 403 and was not repeated. The LinkedIn reader returned Cache miss; its one ordinary GET substitute succeeded. No login, account, form, image fetch or operational interaction was used.
The full original Alliance news index was read. Its first entry is 30 June 2026, an AI-licensing event, whereas the web-reader rendition began at July 2025. The ordinary original supersedes the earlier index-date observation. Neither version supplies pilot conditions; that is only an observation about the inspected index, not proof that engagement did not occur. The successful signing post is positive evidence that engagement was reported elsewhere.
funding-design-search-routes.json records the exact queries and inspected public navigation routes across government, Parliament, police/governance and Alliance surfaces. These yielded no executed agreement, assurance schedule, pilot specification, contributor list, contribution table or conflict protocol. Search absence does not establish nonexistence, concealment or a lack of safeguards. The prior non-public police budget appendix and all closed routes remain untouched. Prior accounts record an IPO-to-DSIT cost-covering dividend; that remains distinct from the new baseline commitment, a police receipt, or future industry money.
Acquisition is closed at this instrument/engagement boundary for root review and a forest assessment. No case, atlas, ZIP, current-work or forest file was changed.