The Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025: impact assessment - RPC opinion (green-rated)
Regulatory Policy Committee opinion on the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology's impact assessment (IA) in respect of the regulations.
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The regulations propose threshold conditions that a regulated service provider must meet to be designated by Ofcom as a service, which is subject to additional duties under the Online Safety Act 2023 to tackle illegal or harmful content. The thresholds relate to whether providers use a content recommendation system and to the number of users they have in the UK.
The regulations stipulate the threshold conditions that Ofcom will use to determine whether the regulated services meet the threshold conditions to be considered a Category 1, 2A, or 2B service and to establish a register of categories of services. Once a service has been entered into the register, the service provider will need to comply with additional duties in force for the service’s category.
The IA [link: The Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 - Impact Assessment provides a satisfactory assessment of the direct impacts on business, including small and micro-businesses. The thresholds set have resulted in fewer businesses in the highest two categories than estimated in the related primary legislation’s enactment stage IA and, therefore, a reduction in the estimated direct cost to business. This present IA would benefit from cross-referencing more clearly to the enactment IA. Also, the IA’s discussion of options would benefit from providing information on how Ofcom arrived at its categorisation thresholds, in particular why categorisation based on size and functionality was chosen over one based on size or functionality.