From notice-and-takedown to prevention: what UK marketplace reforms could require

Notice-and-takedown is a response mechanism: a regulator or another organisation identifies a dangerous listing, sends a notice and asks the platform to act. The UK Government’s 2026 product-safety consultations ask whether that model is enough for a market where listings, sellers and small parcels can appear at enormous scale.

The core consultation closed for responses at 23:59 on 23 June 2026. It proposed four outcomes for online marketplaces: preventing unsafe products from being made available; ensuring sellers comply with product-safety duties; giving consumers appropriate information, instructions and warnings before purchase; and cooperating with authorities, including quickly removing known unsafe products.

The proposed framework would place proactive duties across the supply chain. For marketplaces, that could mean due diligence to identify repeat offenders, recognising sellers with multiple profiles, verifying seller contact details and monitoring sellers with a history of non-compliance. These are consultation proposals, not duties that every marketplace is already legally required to perform.

The Government also described additional controls for higher-risk products. Depending on the final rules, a marketplace might need to review compliance documents, test-purchase an item, verify safety information before a listing goes live, or suspend a listing until evidence is supplied. That is a possible risk-based model, not a universal pre-approval system for every product.

Recall cooperation is another proposed shift. The consultation asks how online marketplaces could help reach previous buyers, especially when a seller is unreachable or uncooperative. That would turn a marketplace’s transaction data into part of the corrective-action system, while raising questions about privacy, record retention and the limits of a platform’s role in a sale.

Northern Ireland must be kept separate in any comparison. EU product-safety rules, including the General Product Safety Regulation, apply there under the Windsor Framework; Great Britain is considering its own framework under the Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025. The UK consultations say obligations may be designed to apply across the UK, but the final legal text will decide how that works.

The next step is not to report the proposals as settled law. FOLO-UP will track the Government response, draft regulations and any implementation dates. Until then, consumers should continue to use official recall notices, seller information and product warnings, while platforms remain responsible for acting on known unsafe listings under the rules already in force.

At a glance

• The core product-safety consultation closed for responses on 23 June 2026
• Its four proposed outcomes cover safe products, safe sellers, consumer information and cooperation with authorities
• The proposals include due diligence on repeat offenders and seller contact details
• Higher-risk products could trigger extra documentation, test purchasing or pre-listing checks
• The consultation considers marketplace help with contacting previous buyers during recalls