The April 2025 change to UK review law
On 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 brought in banned practices about consumer reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority published guidance for businesses, CMA208, on 4 April 2025. According to that guidance, the banned practices include:
- Submitting or commissioning fake reviews. A fake review is one that claims to be based on a person's genuine experience but is not.
- Concealed incentivised reviews. Reviews where the reviewer was paid or rewarded, and the incentive is not made clear.
- Publishing reviews in a misleading way. The guidance gives examples such as suppressing genuine negative reviews and cherry picking.
- Offering services to procure or facilitate banned reviews for traders.
What it means if you publish reviews
The CMA's guidance says businesses that publish consumer reviews must take steps that are reasonable and proportionate to stop banned reviews and misleading review information from appearing, and to take them down. It says there is unlikely to be a one size fits all approach, and that limited resources are not a reason to skip effective steps.
For a small business website, reasonable steps might include:
- a short published policy on how reviews are collected and shown
- showing reviews from a source you can check, with dates
- not removing negative reviews simply because they are negative
- saying clearly when a reviewer received anything in return
- keeping a record of where each review came from
These examples are a starting point. Read CMA208 for the full picture, and take advice if reviews are central to how you sell.
Testimonials you collect yourself
A testimonial is a review you have asked for and chosen to show. The same principles apply: it must be genuine, and the way you present it must not mislead. Practical habits:
- Ask the customer for permission to publish their words and name, and keep the reply.
- Quote them accurately. If you shorten a quote, do not change its meaning.
- Do not offer a discount or gift in return for a positive testimonial. If you give anything in return for a review of any kind, say so next to it.
- Do not present a hand picked selection as a representative picture of all feedback.
- Remove a testimonial if the customer asks.
The customer's name and words are personal data, so mention testimonials in your privacy notice.
Reviews pulled from other platforms
Some sites show reviews from an outside platform. The CMA's guidance says businesses showing reviews from third party platforms should check that those platforms have adequate arrangements, and may need to take more steps themselves if they cannot. Showing only the best reviews from a platform where the average is lower can mislead.
Star ratings and structured data
If you show star ratings, show where they come from and how many reviews they reflect. Avoid adding review markup to your own pages for reviews you selected yourself. If in doubt, leave ratings off the site and link to the platform where customers can read every review.
A sample review policy
A review policy can be short. This sample shows the shape; adapt it to what you actually do, and do not publish anything you do not follow.
Keep a simple record next to it: who gave each review, when, and how it was collected.
Responding to negative reviews
A negative review on your own site or a platform is not something to hide. Reply once, calmly and briefly: thank the person, address the specific problem, and offer a way to continue the conversation privately. Do not reveal personal details about the customer in a public reply. If a review is clearly not genuine, for example it describes a service you do not offer, report it to the platform or remove it under your published policy, and record why. Removing reviews only because they are critical is the kind of selective publishing the CMA's guidance treats as misleading.
If you have no reviews yet
A new business without reviews has nothing to fix. Describe your services, qualifications and process plainly, and add reviews later, once customers have given them freely. Inventing a few to fill the space is exactly what the law now bans.
What to do next
If your plan includes reviews, mark them in the feature selector and write a one paragraph review policy before launch. The launch checklist asks whether any reviews shown are genuine and shown fairly.
Sources checked for this page