ALERTER
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Part 4

Click here to download this Alerter by Lucy McCormick, George Mallet & Vishnu Patel.

Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (the “Act” or “DMCCA”) covers consumer rights and dispute resolution. It primarily collates existing legislation regulating unfair business-to-consumer practices by repealing and restating the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (“CPUT”). It also provides both a strengthened and new dual enforcement mechanism whereby both regulators (primarily, the Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”)) and private individuals can bring actions following infringements (replacing Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002). The new enforcement scheme under Part 3 was considered by Chambers’ previous Alerter here. 

As well as being utilised in criminal prosecutions usually brought by Trading Standards, CPUT gave rise to private law rights of action. A recent example of high-profile claims relying on breaches of CPUT’s has been as a cause of action for ‘greenwashing’ allegations in the various pieces of Dieselgate litigation. As such, the successor to CPUT is of interest to many lawyers.

Part 4 of the Act is divided into four chapters: (1) Protection from unfair trading; (2) Subscription contacts; (3) Consumer Savings Schemes; and (4) Alternative dispute resolution for consumer contracts. Chapters 1,2 and 4 contain the most significant changes to the consumer law. Chapter 1 came into force on 6 April 2025. Chapter 3 will come into force on 1 January 2026.[1] The dates for Chapters 2 and 4 will be confirmed in due course.

PART 4: CONSUMER RIGHTS AND DISPUTES

Whilst a great deal of the law on consumer rights remains the same, the DMCCA does extend protections for consumers by amending definitions and introducing new prohibitions and offences. A summary of these key changes and new provisions is set out below.

Chapter 1: Protection from Unfair Trading

The primary protections for consumers against unfair commercial practices are set out in Chapter 1 (which, as mentioned, replaces CPUT). A ‘commercial practice’ is an act or omission by a trader, regardless of when it takes place, that relates to the promotion or supply of the trader’s product to a consumer, another trader’s product to a consumer, or a consumer’s product to the trader or another person (s.225(3) and (5)). The definition of a consumer mirrors existing legislation and so is “an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside that individual’s business”. The definition of trader has been slightly broadened but primarily concerns a person (P) acting for purposes relating to P’s business. Business-to-business actions are therefore out of scope.

Unfair commercial practices are prohibited (s.225(4)). A commercial practice is unfair if it falls into any one of the following criteria:

1. Banned Practices: It falls within the familiar list of banned practices at Schedule 20 (which are defined as being “in all circumstances considered unfair” (s225(4)) and cover, for example, the unauthorised use of trust marks and pyramid schemes.
2. General Prohibition: They would likely cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision that they would not otherwise have taken as a result of a misleading action, misleading omission, aggressive practice, or a breach of the requirements of professional diligence.
3. Omission of material information: The practice comprises invitations to purchase (ITPs) but fails to include material information.

The key new provisions are:

1. Fake Reviews: Paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 adds four new practices all directed at outlawing the use of fake reviews. These include the submitting or commissioning of fake reviews or concealed incentivised reviews, publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way or without implementing appropriate procedures, or offering services in connection with publishing fake reviews. The CMA has published guidance on fake reviews.
2. Drip Pricing: Section 230 of the Act prohibits “drip pricing” whereby traders add non-optional charges (such as delivery or booking fees) only at the ‘checkout stage’. Now traders must show the total price of the purchase when providing an invitation to purchase. If this cannot be calculated in advance, traders must provide information on the non-optional charge, and how it will be calculated, displaying this with equal prominence to the total price.
3. Changes to the blacklisted commercial practices: Section 242 provides the Secretary of State the power to add new or remove current commercial practices which are considered unfair in all circumstances (i.e. make changes to the banned list at Schedule 20).

This Chapter also expands and re-defines terms in order to increase consumer protection. The key changes to CPUT regime are:

1. Vulnerability: Under both the DMCCA and CPUT, where a consumer is particularly vulnerable to a commercial practice in a way that a trader can reasonably be expected to foresee, references the concept of an ‘average consumer’ in the general prohibition is altered to being a member of that vulnerable group. Section 247 provides more guidance on the concept of ‘vulnerability’, indicating that a group of consumers may be vulnerable as a result of (among other things), their age, their physical or mental health, their credulity, or “the circumstances they are in”. The CMA’s guidance indicates that this may include “being in mourning, going through a divorce, or losing a job”.
2. Professional Diligence: Section 229 creates a standalone offence of contravening the requirements of professional diligence. Professional diligence used to form part of the definition of an unfair commercial practice (Reg. 3(3)(a) CPUT), but now it is its own offence. A trader will be liable if they fall short of a standard of skill and care which may be reasonably expected. This is commensurate with an honest market practice, or the “general principle of good faith”. The Explanatory Notes to the Act at 1242 explain that just because a practice is widespread, does not make it honest, and so traders will need to carefully consider whether their practice, even if an industry standard, is honest or in line with the general principle of good faith.

In April 2025, the CMA published guidance in support of the DMCCA’s unfair practice rules, including “Unfair commercial practices: CMA207 (which replaces the former OFT 2008 guidance on CPUT), which is key reading on this area. For instance, drip pricing, addressed above, is considered at paragraph 4.18 of CMA 207.

Chapter 2: Subscription Contracts

The then Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy identified in a study spanning April 2020 to April 2021, that 55% of consumers who purchased a subscription service or product in the UK experience some form of detriment.[2] Detriment includes unintentional renewals (e.g. by failing to cancel a free trial) and difficulty in exiting subscriptions. Chapter 2 of Part 4 of the Act, when it comes into force circa Spring 2026, will provide the first regulation of these contracts.

The key provisions of this new regime centre around what a trader must now do and what information they must provide to customers of subscription services or products, set out in Sections 256 to 261 of the Act. Traders must:

1. Provide the prescribed key pre-contractual information and provide (or make available) the prescribed full pre-contractual information about the subscription to the consumer (Section 256).
2. Provide the consumer with renewal reminders at specified intervals (Sections 258 to 259).
3. Provide a “straightforward” mechanism for termination of the contract (Section 260), upon which termination the trader must provide the consumer with acknowledgement of that fact, and a refund of any associated overpayment (Section 261).

In addition to the requirements placed upon traders, consumers also have the specific right to cancel their subscription contract during an initial or renewal cooling off period (being 14 days from the day after the contract was entered into or renewed or the goods were supplied) (Sections 264 to 266).

It is worth noting that several large platforms, which provide subscription services or products, such as Google, Microsoft, and Disney, criticised this new regime on the basis that they believed these changes were an attempt at ‘micro-managing’, and would result in too much contact with the consumer, thereby overwhelming them.[3] Of course, there is still some time before these provisions come into force, with no specific date set as yet.

Chapter 4: Alternative Dispute Resolution for Contract Disputes

Chapter 4 of Part 4 of the Act will revoke and replace the Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015, when secondary legislation brings this into Chapter into law. As with Chapter 2 of Part 4 of the Act, there has been no specific date for this set yet.

Whilst the bulk of ADR provisions remain the same, there are two key changes to those previous regulations:

1. Accreditation is now mandatory in order to offer ADR services (see Sections 296 to 298). Section 298 provides an exception to the requirement to be accredited: there can be a special ADR arrangement, where case handlers, adjudicators or ombudsmen, who are employed, engaged or act on behalf of an ADR provider who runs an accredited ADR scheme, or are one of the entities such as the Financial Ombudsman Service, listed in Part 1 of Schedule 25 of the Act. As with the previous ADR regulations, if a dispute cannot be resolved internally a trader must tell the consumer about ADR. However, the trader must now also tell the consumer about any other arrangement available (see Section 308), which encompasses the accredited and non-accredited schemes allowed, as above.
2. Section 302 creates new enforcement powers for the Secretary of State, who may now submit enforcement notices for failure to comply with accreditation, pay fees, provide information, or for being breach of the DMCCA Sections 293 or 294. Enforcement has historically been challenging with ADR regimes, with no specific method of enforcement, and Section 302 provides a clear power to ensure compliance with the regime.

NOTABLE OMISSIONS IN THE ACT

Consumers currently have private rights of redress for certain infringements of the CPUT. The DMCCA provides for these to be replaced by new arrangements that will be detailed in a new statutory instrument. Until that new statutory instrument becomes law, consumers will continue to have the rights of redress set out in CPUT. It is clear from §232 that the broad scheme of private law rights will be carried over from CPUT to the DMCCA, but much remains up in the air about the forms of redress available and exactly how financial sums due under them will be calculated. Lawyers and their clients (particularly in sectors susceptible to ‘greenwashing’ claims) will be anxious to see the detail on this.

Another notable omission is in relation to automated vehicles. As part of the Law Commissions’ Automated Vehicles project which ran from 2018-2021, there was a review of existing laws on misleading marketing and product safety, including the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. The Law Commissions took the view that the application of these laws to self-driving technologies left uncertainty and the potential for gaps in protection. As such they made recommendations for specific additional marketing offences, aimed at practices likely to confuse any driver, including drivers who use vehicles owned by others (i.e. not limited to practices aimed at incentivising a vehicle purchase). The recommendations included two new criminal offences:

• engaging in a commercial practice which uses certain terms ( such as ‘self-drive’, ‘self-driving’, drive itself’, ‘driverless’ and ‘automated vehicle’) or symbols approved by the authorisation authority (e.g. a kitemark) in connection with driving automation technology which is not authorised under an autonomous vehicle authorisation scheme but is designed for use on roads or in public places, and
• engaging in a commercial practice which creates a likelihood of confusion among the public over whether the driving automation technology needs to be monitored when used on a road or in a public place.

There was at one stage speculation that these new AV-specific marketing offences might find their home in the new DMCCA, but it now appears from the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 that we will need to wait for new specific regulations for these.

CONCLUSION

Whilst not all of Part 4 of the DMCCA is currently in effect, even when all Chapters come into force, this Part does not overhaul the landscape for consumer protection. The Act incrementally strengthens protection in relation to the previously unregulated subscription contracts; as well as by providing further prohibitions on drip pricing, fake or misleading reviews, and contravening the standards of professional diligence. However, in respect of consumer protections, practitioners should find the current framework of the DMCCA, a familiar one. That said, the fact that many of the existing rules are being restated should not lead to complacency. It will soon be easier for the CMA to take action against businesses engaging in unfair commercial practices, and it should be anticipated that this will result in an increase in enforcement activity for matters which previously flew below the radar.

Lucy McCormick
George Mallet
Vishnu Patel
30 May 2025

Our full DMCCA Alerter series is available below. 

[1] Chapter 3, Part 4 is due to come into force on 1st January 2026 by Reg.3 of The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (Commencement No.2) Regulations.

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e2c07374e40de685195b55/consumer-detriment-survey-2024.pdf

[3] For example, see in relation to Disney+: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65973101

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