UK OSA Section 11 — Children's risk assessment duties
Conduct a suitable and sufficient children's risk assessment evaluating the risk of harm from primary priority, priority, and other harmful content
Where this comes from
Provision: Section 11 — Children's risk assessment duties
Instrument: UK Online Safety Act 2023
Citation: Online Safety Act 2023, c. 50, Section 11; Ofcom Children's Safety Codes of Practice (December 2024)
Text version: Online Safety Act 2023 c. 50, as enacted (legislation.gov.uk)
Who it applies to
It applies when all of these are true:
- Service is likely to be accessed by children under 18
- Service allows user-generated content
What engineering work it implies
Sample acceptance criteria Landfall generates for this obligation:
- Assessment covers data flows, the risks to the affected group, and likelihood/severity
- Each identified risk has a mitigation mapped to a concrete control or backlog item
- The assessment is dated, has named sign-off, and is scheduled for review
- The assessment is retrievable for regulators on request
- Signed assessment document is stored and version-controlled
Questions people ask
- Does UK OSA Section 11 — Children's risk assessment duties apply to my service?
- It applies when Service is likely to be accessed by children under 18; Service allows user-generated content.
- From when does this apply?
- UK OSA Section 11 — Children's risk assessment duties applies from 26 October 2023. Its current status is: in force.
Find out whether this one lands on you
Landfall's pre-scan answers the applicability question above for your product in minutes, then turns every obligation that applies into traceable engineering tickets with a citation chain your auditors can follow.
Not legal advice. Landfall maps regulatory obligations to engineering work for planning purposes. Its verdicts are not legal advice and create no attorney-client relationship — verify with qualified counsel before relying on them.