Artifact GuideUKOnline Safety Risk Assessment Template

UK Online Safety Act Online Safety Risk Assessment Template

Online Safety Risk Assessment Template 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

This page is for services, product teams, legal teams, and compliance teams that need to decide whether a UK Online Safety Act risk assessment is needed. It explains when to use this template for illegal content duties, children-safety duties, or both, and how to record the scope, owners, evidence, and review path.

Section 1

How should a Online Safety Risk Assessment Template 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. For user-to-user and search services, that can mean an illegal-content risk assessment; for services likely to be accessed by children, it can also mean a children-safety risk assessment.

Capture the request, product, role, data flow, jurisdiction, and deadline.
Check the source-linked rule and route exceptions 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

GOV.UK source for child-safety risk assessment, children access assessment, and Ofcom guidance fields in the template.

Online Safety Act - Illegal Content Codes of Practice 2024: explanatory memorandum

GOV.UK source for illegal-content risk assessment, recordkeeping, and code-of-practice evidence fields in the template.

Age assurance for the Children's code

ICO source for age-assurance and data-protection fields in the Online Safety risk assessment template.

Section 2

What fields should the Online Safety Risk 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

Online Safety Act - Illegal Content Codes of Practice 2024: explanatory memorandum

GOV.UK source for illegal-content risk assessment, recordkeeping, and code-of-practice evidence fields in the template.

Age assurance for the Children's code

ICO source for age-assurance and data-protection fields in the Online Safety risk assessment template.

Children's code strategy: interim impact review

ICO review source for child-privacy observations that can inform template review and improvement fields.

Section 3

How should teams review and improve the Online Safety Risk Assessment Template 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 generated markdown and page content include the same visible source-linked guidance.

Sources for this answer

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

GOV.UK source for child-safety risk assessment, children access assessment, and Ofcom guidance fields in the template.

Online Safety Act - Illegal Content Codes of Practice 2024: explanatory memorandum

GOV.UK source for illegal-content risk assessment, recordkeeping, and code-of-practice evidence fields in the template.

Age assurance for the Children's code

ICO source for age-assurance and data-protection fields in the Online Safety risk assessment template.

Children's code strategy: interim impact review

ICO review source for child-privacy observations that can inform template review and improvement fields.

Recommended next step

Turn UK Online Safety Act Online Safety Risk Assessment Template into assigned work

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

Assessment workflow

Open Assessment Autopilot for UK Online Safety Act

Turn Online Safety Risk Assessment Template into scoped questions, evidence fields, and review tasks.

Explore next step

Research workflow

Review UK Online Safety Act source evidence

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

Explore next step

Talk to Sorena

Talk through implementation

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

Explore next step