UK Online Safety Act Categorisation

Teams should treat Categorisation under the UK Online Safety Act as a source-linked operating decision: confirm whether the service is in scope and which illegal-content, children-safety, age-assurance, user-empowerment, transparency, complaints, risk-assessment, or Ofcom enforcement duty is triggered, assign the team that can change the process, and keep evidence showing the action and review trigger.

The safest first step is to classify the service, user-to-user/search functionality, child-access status, illegal-content risk, and Ofcom code mapping before assigning the Online Safety Act action.

Useful evidence is not just a safety policy. Keep the source, service map, risk assessment, mitigation evidence, age-assurance rationale, terms/complaints records, and Ofcom-readiness trail together.

The common failure pattern is treating online safety as generic moderation without checking service scope, child access, illegal content duties, code measures, age assurance, complaints, and transparency reporting.