Ofcom home

The new Online Safety Act (OSA) and existing VSP regulation place duties on relevant online services to protect their users from illegal content and children from certain harmful content.

This document details our progress since we published our last annual plan in April 2023. We are proud of all we have achieved over the last 18 months across a range of disciplines including policy, research, evaluation, commissioning activities for communities and working with platforms.

Ofcom’s Behavioural Insights Hub ran its first in-house online trial this year, and we’re looking to do more.

The Online Safety Act (OSA) makes businesses, and anyone else who operates a wide range of online services, legally responsible for keeping people (especially children) in the UK safe online.

The Online Safety Act makes companies that operate a wide range of online services legally responsible for keeping people, especially children, safe online. If you provide an online service, there are actions you must take when duties come into force. This page explains the important milestones.

The Online Safety Act makes businesses responsible for keeping people, especially children, safe online. Here’s what you need to know and do now.

How Ofcom plans to issue information notices to relevant providers for the purpose of categorisation.

Our plans for putting online safety laws into practice, and what we expect from tech firms.

Use our tool to find out if the rules are likely to apply to you, and what you can do next.