Age Verification & Age Assurance Compliance Check

Why this matters

Age checks on UK websites moved from best-practice to enforceable law when Ofcom’s Protection of Children Codes of Practice under the Online Safety Act 2023 came into force on 25 July 2025. Services that publish or allow pornographic content, and platforms where children could otherwise encounter serious harm, must now use “highly effective age assurance” — meaning robust methods such as photo-ID matching, credit card checks, or facial age estimation, not a simple date-of-birth field or a self-declaration tick-box. Ofcom has enforcement powers including fines of up to 10% of global turnover and is actively pursuing early cases through 2026, making this one of the fastest-moving compliance areas for any UK website with adult content or age-gated access. This sits alongside, but is distinct from, the ICO’s Children’s Code on data protection by design — this is specifically about whether your age-checking method actually works. The same tightening is happening product by product. Online sellers of alcohol, vapes and tobacco, knives, fireworks, and gambling products already carry age-verification duties under sector legislation such as the Licensing Act 2003 and Offensive Weapons Act 2019, with recent policy attention on verifying age at the point of dispatch for online knife sales, not just at checkout, and on due-diligence “Challenge 25”-style checks for vape sales ahead of the wider Tobacco and Vapes Act reforms. A business relying only on a checkbox, or that doesn’t check age again on delivery for restricted goods, is exposed on two fronts: Ofcom enforcement if it falls within Online Safety Act scope, and Trading Standards or licensing action for underage sales of restricted products. Getting the method right — and being able to evidence it — matters as much as having a policy at all.

What you'll need

• Whether your business sells age-restricted products online (alcohol, vapes/tobacco, knives, fireworks, gambling) or hosts age-restricted/adult content
• What age verification or age assurance method is currently used at point of sale or access
• Whether age is also checked at the point of delivery for restricted goods
• Whether records of age checks are kept in case of a regulatory enquiry
• Whether staff are trained on the age verification policy

What you'll get

A personalised compliance report covering: a score out of 100, an executive summary, a list of findings ranked by severity, and a prioritised action plan with timeframes.