Ofcom told industry its own safety-fee invoices would arrive in September. A week into October they still have not, and three passages on Ofcom's own fees page have not caught up with the one that admits it.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In short. Ofcom's own compliance calendar for the Online Safety Act, "Important dates for Online Safety compliance," sets "September 2026" as when "Ofcom expects to publish the 2026/27 tariff and issue invoices for the 2026/27 charging year" [1]. Ofcom's own fees page, last updated 30 September 2026, now says invoices are moving to "throughout October 2026" instead [2]. That same page, in three other places, still tells readers invoices "are expected to be issued... by September 2026" [2], and the compliance calendar that is supposed to be the single reference point for the whole regime has not been touched since 24 August 2026, over a month before the slip was confirmed [1]. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Ofcom's online safety fees exist to pay for Ofcom's own regulation of online safety. The Online Safety Act 2023 requires Ofcom to recover its operating costs for the regime from providers of regulated services with qualifying worldwide revenue above the threshold the Secretary of State sets, currently 250 million pounds, subject to the parliamentary process [2]. Ofcom runs its own compliance calendar to tell that industry when each milestone in the fees cycle falls. Checked against Ofcom's own fees page, the calendar's milestone for this exact week has already slipped, and the fees page meant to correct it has not finished correcting itself.
What the calendar promised
"Important dates for Online Safety compliance" is Ofcom's own reference page for the whole regime, first published 17 October 2024 and last updated, as it stands today, 24 August 2026 [1]. Its introduction tells industry plainly what the page is for and what happens if a date is missed: "If you do not meet the deadlines for compliance, Ofcom can take enforcement action against your service under the Online Safety Act 2023" [1]. Its own fees row, under "Duties and actions," sets the start date as "September 2026" with the milestone "Ofcom expects to publish the 2026/27 tariff and issue invoices for the 2026/27 charging year," linking to Ofcom's fees page for detail [1]. September has been and gone. Today is 7 October.
What Ofcom's own fees page now says
Follow that link and the picture has moved. "Online safety fees: what the duties are and how to comply with them" carries an "Update" banner, dated by the page's own "Last updated: 30 September 2026" stamp, headed "Year 1 tariff published. Year 2 notification window now closed": "We have now set the percentage tariff for the initial 2026/27 charging year... We intend to issue invoices to all providers who notified us they are liable to pay fees for the 2026/27 charging year throughout October 2026" [2]. The tariff landed roughly on schedule. The invoices did not: "throughout October" is not "September," and the compliance calendar that promised September has not been edited to say so.
The same page has not caught up with its own update
The inconsistency does not stop at the calendar. The Update banner sits at the top of a page that, three sections further down, still carries the old date. Explaining how fees are calculated: "For the 2026/27 charging year, we expect to issue invoices by September 2026" [2]. Under the page's own step-by-step "Pay your invoice" guidance, step four of four: "Invoices for the initial 2026/27 charging year are expected to be issued by Ofcom to fee-liable providers by September 2026. Due to exceptional timings, this is only for the first year" [2]. And the fees page's own internal dates table, a near-duplicate of the compliance calendar's, still reads "September 2026 / Ofcom expects to issue invoices for the 2026/27 charging year and publish the 2026/27 tariff" followed by "September 2026 to March 2027 / Providers pay invoices for 2026/27 charging year" [2]. A provider working through Ofcom's own numbered steps to pay a legally required fee hits an instruction that is already a month out of date, on the same page that, a few paragraphs higher, says otherwise.
The claims, tested
| Ofcom's own words | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance calendar: "September 2026... Ofcom expects to publish the 2026/27 tariff and issue invoices for the 2026/27 charging year" [1] | Ofcom's own fees page, updated 30 September 2026, says invoices are moving to "throughout October 2026" [2] | The calendar has not been revised to reflect a slip Ofcom had already confirmed on its own linked page a week earlier |
| Fees page Update banner: invoices "throughout October 2026" [2] | Three further passages on the identical page still say invoices are "expected to be issued... by September 2026" [2] | The page contradicts itself; a reader who scrolls past the banner lands on the superseded date |
Credit where due
Ofcom did not bury the slip. The Update banner is at the top of the page, not hidden in a footnote, and it states plainly that the tariff is set and names the new month for invoices rather than leaving the date open-ended [2]. The tariff itself, the harder number to produce because it depends on verifying every provider's notified revenue, was published close to its original target. A one-month slip on invoicing, with the harder number delivered on time, is a long way from the regime stalling.
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes. A regulator that tells industry it can face enforcement action for missing a compliance date has, by its own account, missed one of its own, and a month after admitting it on one page has not yet corrected the page industry is told to treat as the master calendar, nor finished correcting the page that carries the admission itself. Providers budgeting against "September" are reading a date Ofcom's own newer words have already overtaken.
The star score counts two documented mistakes: the compliance calendar's "September 2026" invoice milestone, left unrevised a week after Ofcom's own fees page confirmed the slip to October; and that same fees page's internal inconsistency, where an Update banner stating "throughout October 2026" sits above three unrevised passages, including the page's own dates table, that still say "by September 2026." Two mistakes in the 1-to-3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. This piece makes no finding that the tariff itself is wrong, that any provider has been overcharged or undercharged, or that the one-month slip is evidence of mismanagement of the fees regime as a whole; the finding is narrower, that the documents industry is told to rely on for these dates do not yet agree with each other or with Ofcom's own most recent statement. Checked directly against both live pages, fetched 7 October 2026.
Sources
- Important dates for Online Safety compliance, Ofcom, published 17 October 2024, last updated 24 August 2026
- Online safety fees: what the duties are and how to comply with them, Ofcom, published 21 November 2025, last updated 30 September 2026