United Kingdom: Office of Communications closes consultation on Draft Updated Illegal content Codes of Practice for search services under Online Safety Act 2023

On 24 April 2026, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) closes the consultation on a draft for an updated Illegal Content Codes of Practice for search services. The Codes were prepared under the Online Safety Act 2023 and set out recommended measures for providers of regulated search services to comply with illegal content safety, reporting, and complaints duties. The consultation concerns proposed amendments to reflect the designation of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm and cyberflashing as new priority offences, which has resulted in the need to update the Codes. These offences would be integrated into the existing framework of illegal harms, with suicide and self-harm being treated as a single category for risk assessment purposes. The amendments extend the application of existing measures to these harms across search moderation, reporting and complaints, and user support functionalities. This includes applying crisis prevention measures to self-harm-related queries without introducing new categories of measures. The draft also specifies that crisis support information must be provided in response to general and instructive queries relating to suicide and self-harm.