Consultation: Protecting people from illegal harms online

Our consultation closed on 23 February 2024. Gill Whitehead, Ofcom's Group Director for Online Safety, wrote the following note to respondents:

I wanted to share a short note to acknowledge receipt of your response to our consultation, but also to thank you sincerely for devoting time and consideration to your replies.

So much of Ofcom’s work is only made possible through the constructive and often very frank feedback from our stakeholders. In this instance, I know you faced a big task responding to such a critically important and complex consultation.

I’m particularly mindful of the contribution from the stakeholders with fewer resources at hand, such as smaller services and civil society groups. I do not for one moment take for granted how much time and effort this must have required. I can assure you that your submission, and all the contributions we’ve received, will be closely reviewed by our policy team as we seek to make our proposals even stronger.

Finally, a reminder of the next steps. We will carefully consider all the responses and evidence received, and then aim to publish our regulatory statement and conclusions around the end of this year. Services will then need to complete an illegal harms risk assessment, and we will submit our codes to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, for laying before Parliament. Ofcom will issue these unless Parliament resolves not to approve them. We will, of course, update you as our work progresses.

Once again, thank you for helping us with this important work, and I look forward to working more with you in the years to come.

Gill Whitehead, Group Director for Online Safety