Parliament gave the Online Safety Act three new crimes to police and a way to flag a dead child's phone use to Ofcom. Four and a half months after Royal Assent, none of it has been switched on.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. This site published a teardown of the Online Safety Act's Category 1 mechanism this morning. Hours later, the scanner that watches the Act's own legislation.gov.uk record flagged it as changed again, confirmed twice. The cause: the Crime and Policing Act 2026, given Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, inserts three new priority offences into the Online Safety Act's Schedule 7 (pornographic images of strangulation or suffocation, of sex between relatives, and of apparent under-16 sexual activity) and a duty requiring coroners to notify Ofcom when a child dies, so it can order platforms to retain the child's online activity data. Four and a half months after Royal Assent, and across three commencement orders made since, none of the substantive provisions has been switched on. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Rule 3 of this site's constitution is that updates produce diffs, never a silent overwrite [1]. The Online Safety Act 2023 is exactly the kind of document that rule exists for: heavily amended by other legislation as it goes, so its own page changes even when nobody has touched a single word of the sections already in force. The change this time came from the Crime and Policing Act 2026, a 257-section policing and criminal justice Act that received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026 and, among its anti-social behaviour, retail crime and offender management provisions, also amends the Online Safety Act in four places [2].
The claims, tested
| The amending Act's claim | What we found | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Sections 104, 106 and 107 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 add three new offences to Schedule 7 of the Online Safety Act, the list of "priority offences" platforms must proactively tackle as illegal content: section 67A, "possession or publication of pornographic images of strangulation or suffocation"; section 67E, "possession or publication of pornographic images of sex between relatives"; and section 67H, "possession or publication of pornographic images of sexual activity with child under 16" [3] [4] [5] | Schedule 7's own page carries the note that all three insertions are "not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 255," and none of the three commencement orders made since Royal Assent brings sections 104, 106 or 107 into effect [6] [7] [8] [9] | Three priority offences on the statute book, zero live, no date fixed |
| Section 247 inserts a duty on senior coroners to notify Ofcom "within 5 working days" when the body of a deceased child is found, so Ofcom can require platforms to retain that child's online activity data under Online Safety Act sections 101 and 102 [10] | Only the narrowest limb, subsection (3)(b), a technical point about referencing a document "as amended from time to time," commenced on 29 June 2026. The substantive coroner-notification duty and the section 101 and 102 amendments that depend on it remain marked "not yet applied" on both sections' own pages [11] [12] [7] | The alert mechanism does not exist yet; only a drafting footnote attached to it does |
The mistakes, counted
Three new categories of illegal content, none of them live (1). Schedule 7 to the Online Safety Act is the list Ofcom and platforms both work from when deciding what counts as a "priority offence," the category of illegal content a service has to look for proactively rather than just take down on notice. Paragraph 29 already covered extreme pornographic images under section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 [6]. Sections 104, 106 and 107 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 each insert a further sub-paragraph, adding three new offences created by the same Act: strangulation and suffocation pornography, incest pornography, and pornographic images of apparent under-16 sexual activity, a category aimed at content that depicts what looks like a child but may not meet the definitions in existing child sexual abuse material law [3] [4] [5]. All three carry the same note on the Act's own page: "not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 255." Section 255 sets the default rule that most of the Act "comes into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint" [13]. Three commencement orders have followed Royal Assent since: No. 1 on 29 June 2026, No. 2 on 1 September 2026, and No. 3 bringing further provisions into force between 21 September and 29 October 2026 [7] [8] [9]. None of the three lists sections 104, 106 or 107. Four and a half months after Parliament decided these three content types belong on the Online Safety Act's most serious list, no platform has a live duty to treat any of them that way, and no date has been set for when one will.
A dead child's online activity can be flagged to Ofcom, except the flagging duty is not switched on (2). Section 247 inserts a new section 31A into the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, requiring a senior coroner who becomes aware of a deceased child's body to notify Ofcom within five working days, unless the coroner is satisfied the child's online activity has no relevance to the death [10]. That notification is meant to feed straight into the Online Safety Act's existing machinery: section 101 already lets Ofcom compel information about a deceased child's use of a regulated service for a coroner's investigation, and section 247 amends it so a coroner's notification under the new section 31A counts as a trigger, while also amending section 102 to shorten the retention period Ofcom can demand from one year to six months where the investigating authority is an English or Welsh coroner [11] [12]. Of section 247's provisions, only subsection (3)(b), a technical point letting future regulations reference a document "as amended from time to time," has commenced, on 29 June 2026 [7]. The coroner's duty to notify Ofcom in the first place, and the amendments that let that notification trigger an information notice, are not yet in force and appear in none of the three commencement orders made since Royal Assent. The infrastructure a bereaved family might expect to already exist, because Parliament has already legislated for it, does not.
Credit where due
This is not a case of an Act sitting unimplemented across the board. The three commencement orders made so far bring dozens of other sections into force on schedule, including large blocks of the Act's anti-social behaviour, barred-list and special-forces provisions, and section 247(3)(b) shows the drafting is being tidied up in the right order even where the substance is not yet live [7] [8] [9]. And unlike some delayed duties this site has covered, nothing here suggests deliberate slow-walking: a 257-section Act inevitably commences in stages, and these four Online Safety Act amendments are a small part of a much larger commencement programme still working through the calendar.
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes. Parliament has decided that strangulation pornography, incest pornography and apparent-child pornography belong on the Online Safety Act's most serious list, and that coroners should be able to alert Ofcom when a child dies, and it decided both of those things almost five months ago. Neither exists yet where it counts, on a platform's actual legal duties, and neither commencement order made since Royal Assent puts a date on when that changes. A law that creates a protection is not the same as a law that has switched it on.
Sources
- Online Safety Act 2023, legislation.gov.uk
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, legislation.gov.uk
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 104, legislation.gov.uk
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 106, legislation.gov.uk
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 107, legislation.gov.uk
- Online Safety Act 2023, Schedule 7, legislation.gov.uk
- The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 1 and Saving Provision) Regulations 2026, regulation 2, legislation.gov.uk
- The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 2) Regulations 2026, regulation 2, legislation.gov.uk
- The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No. 3 and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026, regulation 2, legislation.gov.uk
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 247, legislation.gov.uk
- Online Safety Act 2023, section 101, legislation.gov.uk
- Online Safety Act 2023, section 102, legislation.gov.uk
- Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 255, legislation.gov.uk