Artifact GuideUKChildren's Access Assessment

UK Online Safety Act Children's Access Assessment

Children's Access Assessment decisions under the UK Online Safety Act should be written in operational language: who is in scope, what must happen, what evidence proves it, and when escalation is needed.

Use this guide to turn official requirements into scope, evidence, owner, and review decisions. This guidance is practical, source-linked, and should be validated against current legal and policy requirements before implementation.

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Author

Sorena AI

Published

May 9, 2026

Updated

May 9, 2026

Sections

Structured answer sets in this page tree.

Primary sources

Cited legal and guidance references.

Publication metadata

Sorena AI

Published May 9, 2026

Updated May 9, 2026

Overview

A Children's Access Assessment checks whether a service is likely to be accessed by children and, if it is, what child-safety duties and age-assurance steps apply. Use it to decide whether the service stays as-is, needs child-safety controls, or needs further review before launch or change.

Section 1

How should a Children's Access Assessment workflow run under the UK Online Safety Act?

Run the workflow as online-safety triage: service scope, user group, risk duty, code mapping, mitigation, evidence, owner, deadline, and Ofcom escalation.

Capture the request, product, role, data flow, jurisdiction, and deadline.
Check whether the service is likely to be accessed by children and whether Ofcom's child-safety duties or age-assurance requirements apply before implementation.
Record the action taken, owner, reviewer, evidence location, and next review date.
Keep a plain-language output that support, product, legal, security, and compliance teams can all understand.

Sources for this answer

Online Safety Act: Protection of Children Codes of Practice - explanatory memorandum

Supports the Children's Access Assessment workflow by tying the page to official UK Online Safety Act child-safety codes.

Age assurance for the Children's code

Supports the Children's Access Assessment workflow by tying the page to official UK Online Safety Act child-safety and age-assurance materials.

Section 2

What fields should the Children's Access Assessment template capture?

A useful template captures service type, user group, risk type, child-access result, code measure, mitigation owner, evidence, review date, and unresolved assumptions.

Source URL and source quote.
Entity, product, service, system, data category, and user group.
Decision result, control action, owner, reviewer, due date, and escalation reason.
Evidence attachment, approval note, exception note, and review cadence.

Sources for this answer

Age assurance for the Children's code

Template field support for Children's Access Assessment.

UK Government - Online Safety Act explainer

Template field support for Children's Access Assessment.

Section 3

How should teams review and improve the Children's Access Assessment workflow?

Review the workflow after Ofcom code updates, feature changes, algorithm changes, user-base changes, incident trends, complaints, enforcement notices, or transparency-report cycles.

Track recurring exception categories and update intake questions.
Remove fields that never affect the decision.
Add fields when reviews show missing source evidence or unclear ownership.
Confirm the Children's Access Assessment output still reflects the current source-linked child-access and age-assurance analysis.

Sources for this answer

Online Safety Act: Protection of Children Codes of Practice - explanatory memorandum

Review support for Children's Access Assessment.

Age assurance for the Children's code

Review support for Children's Access Assessment.

UK Government - Online Safety Act explainer

Review support for Children's Access Assessment.

Recommended next step

Turn UK Online Safety Act Children's Access Assessment into assigned work

Use this UK Online Safety Act guide to turn Children's Access Assessment into owners, evidence requests, review checkpoints, and reusable operating records inside Sorena.

Assessment workflow

Open Assessment Autopilot for UK Online Safety Act

Turn Children's Access Assessment into scoped questions, evidence fields, and review tasks.

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Research workflow

Review UK Online Safety Act source evidence

Use Research Copilot to answer follow-up questions with cited source material.

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Talk to Sorena

Talk through implementation

Review scope, evidence, owners, and the next compliance actions with Sorena.

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