Today we are publishing our Age Assurance and Children’s Access Statement, marking the first step in our Protection of Children work.
These decisions on age assurance and children's access assessments mark a major milestone, kick-starting the process for user-to-user and search services (Part 3 services) to conduct their children's access assessment, while platforms that publish their own pornographic content (Part 5 services) must take steps immediately to introduce robust age checks that meet our guidance.
Our statement sets out our decisions on highly effective age assurance for platforms that publish their own pornographic content (Part 5 Guidance) and for user-to-user and search services (Part 3 HEAA Guidance.) We are also publishing our Children’s Access Assessments Guidance for all user-to-user and search services.
Documents
We published proposals about the steps that Part 5 services should take to ensure that children are not normally able to encounter pornographic content in December 2023, together with our draft Part 5 Guidance.
In our May 2024 consultation Protecting children from harms online, we consulted on our approach to children’s access assessments. We also proposed a number of measures in our draft Protection of Children Codes for services to comply with the children’s safety duties under the Act. For user-to-user services, these include measures relating to the use of highly effective age assurance.
This is our first statement focused on the protection of children, adding to the safety measures set out in our Illegal Harms Statement which we published in December 2024. In April, we will follow up with our Protection of Children statement that lays out our decisions on the Protection of Children Codes and other guidance.
With today’s publication, online providers must take action to start to comply with these new rules. The result will be a safer life online for people in the UK, especially children. All services that allow pornography must implement highly effective age assurance to ensure that children are not normally able to access pornographic content by July 2025 at the latest. For Part 5 services, the duty to implement highly effective age assurance comes into effect on 17 January, once the Government commences Part 5 of the Act. All user-to-user and search services in scope of Part 3 of the Act must carry out a children’s access assessment by 16 April 2025 to determine if they are likely to be accessed by children.
Alongside the statement, we have updated our resources to help services understand what they need to do:
Contact information
Online Safety Group
Ofcom
Riverside House
2A Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA