UK Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 is an act of parliament within the United Kingdom aimed at enhancing the welfare and education standards for children in the United Kingdom. It also amends the controversial Online Safety Act 2023 with further regulatory powers for the government.

How it works

The act is split into 4 parts:

1. Children's Social Care
2. Schools
3. Online safety etc [sic]
4. General

Part 3 of the act specifically amends the controversial Online Safety Act 2023 by granting various additional powers to the Secretary of State . These include but are not limited to:

• the ability to impose restrictions or outright bans to specified internet services, functionalities or features to children under a specified age,
• impose curfews or duration limits for use of services, functionality or features,

There are many other (and positive) parts of the act such as powers to limit how users meeting the criteria may interact with strangers. These have been omitted only as they are not relevant to the problem discussion below.

Why it is a problem

Reduced Time to Implementation

As noted by a BBC article regarding the planned social media ban in the UK, this act allows the government to introduce regulations which will not require a full act of parliament. This would mean that restrictions or outright bans to internet services can be implemented more quickly, with some MPs expressing a desire to have such bans imposed with "the first couple of months of 2027" (written June 2026).

Age Verification

As part of the Online Safety Act, affected services were required to age verify users. There are known flaws with this currently such as using a VPN to appear outside of the UK to circumvent the checks, or using basic mechanisms such as a fake mustache to appear older for the analysis (See UK Online Safety Act#Consumer response).

The act allows specifying "the steps that must or may be taken by a provider for the purposes of complying with a requirement imposed by the regulations". This would theoretically allow the government to require mandatory age verification of all users, to ensure that under-16s are treated appropriately by the service.

Additional Service Inclusion (VPNs)

The regulations allow for restrictions to be imposed on any services deemed harmful to children. Some services have been listed in a planned social media ban, but a specific list has not been provided. BBC News reported minister Josh MacAlister stating that "options there about whether we could age-gate VPN use, which would be really welcome".

Examples

Some examples of UK Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 include:

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