From Passive Host To Proactive Gatekeeper: Online Marketplaces In The Spotlight Under The PRMA Reforms

Why the UK is reforming product safety now

At its core, the consultations reflect a recognition that the UK’s existing general product safety framework (anchored in the General Product Safety Regulations 2005) was designed for a pre‑digital economy. It has struggled to keep pace with cross‑border e‑commerce, fulfilment‑based models and overseas or transient sellers, leaving regulators with practical difficulty identifying a responsible UK‑based economic operator or acting quickly when unsafe products are made available to UK consumers online.

The Government’s response is to reallocate statutory duties across the supply chain, expressly including online marketplaces alongside producers and onward suppliers (including fulfilment service providers). This reflects a broader regulatory trend: where an actor has structural control over access to consumers, regulators increasingly expect structural responsibility, not just cooperation after the event.

Why online marketplaces are a particular focus

The first consultation around the product safety framework places online marketplaces at the centre of the enforcement gap the Government is trying to close. Platforms shape how products are presented, discovered and made available, and are often the only realistic point of intervention where sellers are overseas, anonymous or difficult to pursue. The term “online marketplace” is deliberately broad and future‑proof, encompassing any service (or feature of a service) provided via a website, mobile application or other internet‑based platform that facilitates the marketing of products in the UK.

The proposals are explicit that the regime applies irrespective of where the marketplace or seller is established: only safe products are allowed to be sold online to UK consumers, whether the seller is UK‑based or overseas. The proposed framework is not limited to new products: safety obligations would apply to second‑hand goods sold in the course of a business (including via online marketplaces). By contrast, private individuals selling second‑hand items on an occasional basis are not generally intended to fall within scope.

A new legal posture: From reactive to proactive controls

The most significant shift for marketplaces is the move from a reactive, notice‑and‑takedown role towards proactive product safety risk management. At the heart of the consultation is a proposed statutory duty on online marketplaces to prevent, identify and remove dangerous products from their platforms. This requires platforms to anticipate and mitigate product safety risks before harm occurs.

The proposals are framed as outcomes-based, flexible and proportionate, reflecting the range of platform models and levels of control over transactions. Operational detail is not prescribed at this stage and is likely to be developed through secondary legislation and guidance – adopting a similar architecture to the Online Safety Act 2023. The regulatory expectation, however, is clear: compliance will depend on systematic governance, resourcing and escalation processes that reduce risk in practice, not merely updated terms and conditions.

In practical terms, the consultation proposes a framework for marketplaces built around:

Seller due diligence: including verification (such as "know your business" checks), maintaining contact details, monitoring repeated non‑compliance, and acting against high‑risk or “bad actor” sellers.

Risk‑based monitoring of listings: particularly for higher‑risk product categories and products subject to recalls, safety alerts or repeat listings of unsafe products.

Pre‑listing controls: preventing non‑compliant or high‑risk products from being listed unless appropriate assurance of compliance with applicable safety requirements (such as testing or conformity assessment) is provided.

Clear reporting channels: including designated points of contact for consumers and authorities to raise product safety concerns rapidly.

Escalation and enforcement mechanisms: at listing and seller‑account level, including suspension or delisting where appropriate.

Documented product safety governance: including a platform‑level product safety plan capable of demonstrating that effective compliance measures are in place.

This represents a shift away from policing individual listings to holding platforms accountable for having appropriate systems and processes in place.

Traceability, product information and lifecycle compliance

The proposals also strengthen expectations around traceability and recall support across the product lifecycle. Producers, onward suppliers and online marketplaces would face clearer duties to retain and share product origin and seller information, handle and escalate safety complaints, and support withdrawals and recalls.

For marketplaces that are not also acting as onward suppliers, duties may be limited to retaining transactional data (such as seller and purchaser details). Even so, this raises practical questions around data retention and the long‑term storage of safety‑relevant records.

A related theme is product safety information at the point of sale. The consultation adopts a “digital by default” approach, proposing that marketplaces design interfaces to enable third‑party sellers to provide required safety information clearly before purchase, with an emphasis on accessibility rather than mandating rigid presentation formats.

The consultation also contemplates requiring overseas sellers of higher‑risk products to appoint a UK‑based responsible person. While the obligation would sit primarily with sellers, marketplaces are likely to play a practical role in enforcing compliance through onboarding and listing controls.

Digital risk is now a product risk

The proposals recognise that product safety risk is no longer limited to traditional physical hazards. Future safety assessments may extend to cybersecurity risks and risks arising from software, AI or machine‑learning functionality embedded in products, particularly where systems evolve over time in ways not fully foreseeable at the point of sale.

While no immediate AI‑specific duties are proposed, digital functionality is clearly situated within the product safety risk landscape, signalling that further obligations are likely to follow. This raises practical questions as to the extent to which marketplaces can reasonably be expected to identify software‑driven safety risks where such marketplaces have limited visibility over product design or manufacture.

Enforcement with teeth and regulator engagement as a core capability

The second consultation focuses on market surveillance and enforcement, proposing a consolidated enforcement toolkit to replace the current fragmented regime and enable faster, clearer and more proportionate intervention, particularly in online and cross‑border supply chains. Key features include broader investigatory powers, enhanced cooperation and information‑sharing between authorities, and a shift away from criminal prosecution towards civil enforcement tools, including monetary penalties and enforcement undertakings. This approach brings product safety enforcement closer to other modern regulatory regimes, including the CMA's use of civil, regulator-led enforcement tools for consumer protection under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, albeit without establishing a fully comparable direct enforcement model. Penalty structures would be set out in secondary legislation under the PRMA.

For online marketplaces, this materially increases both regulatory exposure and reputational risk. A more flexible civil enforcement model is likely to lead to more frequent and visible intervention, with direct regulatory engagement – requests for information, suspensions, withdrawals or recalls - without the delay associated with criminal proceedings. Product safety regulator engagement is therefore likely to become a routine compliance function, with marketplaces positioned as core enforcement touchpoints rather than incidental targets.

The UK reforms sit alongside significant EU developments, most notably the General Product Safety Regulation (EU GPSR), which similarly embeds online marketplaces as regulated actors within the product safety regime. The UK consultation expressly references the EU GPSR and signals an intention to "broadly mirror" key safety assessment concepts while retaining flexibility to diverge.

The consultation does not reference the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). While there is overlap in practice (seller traceability and cooperation with authorities), the UK proposals are framed firmly as product safety regulation rather than platform governance or content moderation. Enforcement is expected to sit with product safety regulators (including OPSS and trading standards), rather than digital regulators such as Ofcom.

For multi‑national platforms, fragmented compliance creates inefficiency and risk. Existing EU GPSR (and, where relevant, DSA) compliance frameworks are therefore likely to provide a useful starting point for UK readiness. Any divergence in practice will depend on how the PRMA’s principles‑based duties are developed through secondary legislation, guidance and enforcement.

What early enforcement is likely to target

Early EU GPSR enforcement signals suggest regulators will focus less on isolated defects and more on whether marketplaces can demonstrate effective systems and processes that reduce product safety risk in practice. Areas likely to attract early attention include: unsafe products remaining available (including failure to act once risks are known); rapid re‑listing following removal; inadequate product information; slow or unresponsive engagement with authorities; and failures of traceability or responsible‑person identification.

The road ahead: what marketplaces should be doing now

The consultations close on 23 June 2026, after which the Government is expected to confirm policy direction, introduce secondary legislation and issue guidance. Implementation is likely to be phased, with online marketplaces a particular early focus for both new obligations and enforcement. While further detail remains to come, marketplaces should not wait for final legislation before acting.

Platforms should respond to the consultations and review their existing product governance arrangements against the proposed proactive duties. This includes mapping current controls against risk‑management expectations, reassessing seller onboarding and monitoring on a risk‑based basis, ensuring internal teams have the authority and expertise to respond quickly to safety incidents and recalls, and reviewing how product, seller and enforcement‑related data is retained and retrieved.

The consultation recognises the operational challenges this creates and points towards proportionate, scalable solutions. In practice, this is likely to mean building on existing trust and safety infrastructure, focusing enhanced controls on higher‑risk product categories, documenting risk‑based decisions, aligning seller verification and escalation processes with observable risk signals, and considering contractual protections and information rights in arrangements with sellers.

Taken together, the consultations mark a clear recalibration of responsibility in the digital economy. Just as UK online safety law reframed platforms as accountable for proactive systems to mitigate online harms, product safety regulation now appears poised to adopt a similar approach.

The Government’s preference for a principles‑based framework, supplemented through secondary legislation, guidance and enforcement rather than static product‑specific rules, aligns with its established regulatory approach (for example under the Online Safety Act 2023). While this model allows flexibility and responsiveness to evolving risk, much of the practical impact will be determined in implementation.

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