Today we are publishing our second statement to implement the online safety fees regime. Given the complementary nature of the Qualifying Worldwide Revenue (QWR) and Notification guidance documents, we have decided to publish a single statement.
We have carefully considered responses to our public consultations, which ran from 18 July 2025 to 10 September 2025 for the QWR guidance and 1 September 2025 to 1 October 2025 for the Notification guidance. This statement summarises the outcomes of these consultations, sets out our final positions and includes a final version of both our QWR and Notification guidance in the annexes.
We intend to continue our engagement with stakeholders through the implementation of the fees regime including supporting providers in navigating the notification process.
The Online Safety Act 2023 (Act) requires that Ofcom’s operating costs for the online safety regime are recovered through fees imposed on certain providers of regulated services. In particular, providers whose QWR is above a threshold set by the Secretary of State (following advice from Ofcom) and which are not exempt from the duty to pay fees.
On 26 June 2025, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology laid The Online Safety Act 2023 (Qualifying Worldwide Revenue) Regulations 2025 which set out the approach for providers to calculate their QWR. These Regulations define QWR in respect of a provider as the total amount of revenue that arises in connection with the provision of relevant parts of its regulated service(s) anywhere in the world. They also require that providers take a ‘just and reasonable approach’ to calculating QWR when apportioning revenue that arises partly in connection with the provision of relevant parts of a regulated service and partly in connection with other things.
Supporting documents
Responses
Contact information
Online Safety Fees team
Ofcom
Riverside House
2A Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA