Most of the consumer law provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025. The CMA has now published its Approach to Consumer Protection - setting out its stall and explaining how it will enforce the Act.
The CMA says it will promote consumer protection by promoting consumer trust and confidence and deterring poor corporate practices. It reflects the Strategic Steer from the UK government - aiming to safeguard consumer interests while supporting economic growth.
In particular, the CMA has set out its priorities for the first 12 months of the regime, and its ambitions for consumer protection more broadly.
In line with its 'prioritisation principles', the CMA will:
- target conduct which is more harmful to consumers, and which represents clear infringements of the law;
- prioritise areas of essential spend, to help people struggling with pressure on household budgets; and
- engage with businesses and develop further accessible materials to help businesses to comply with the law - it recognises there is limited case law in some areas of consumer law and that the consequences for infringements are now greater under the new consumer regime.
It will focus its early action on more egregious practices where the law is clear, including:
- aggressive sales practices that prey on consumers in vulnerable positions;
- providing information to consumers that is objectively false;
- banned practices including the new banned practice relating to fake reviews;
- fees that are hidden until late in the purchase process (ie drip pricing) - harming consumers and fair-dealing businesses, by hindering effective price competition; and
- contract terms that are clearly imbalanced and unfair, including those that impose unfair exit charges on consumers.
It will take a light-touch with businesses that want to do the right thing and engage with them constructively.
Fake reviews
With regard to fake reviews, it will focus on supporting businesses during the first three months before it starts its enforcement.
Drip pricing
As it has already said, the CMA will consult again on certain aspects of its guidance on drip pricing which have elicited a lot of feedback. It says that its current guidance provides a clear framework for complying with the parts of the law which are already clear and largely unchanged –the prohibition of unexpected mandatory charges added during or at the end of a purchasing journey. It says businesses should already be aware of these rules.
However, for those aspects of the drip pricing guidance that have created more uncertainty - including fixed-term periodic contracts, it will consult on revised draft guidance in the summer, and will produce finalised guidance in this area in the autumn. It will not take any enforcement cases on issues to be covered in this later guidance until it is published in its finalised form.
Penalties
The CMA cannot impose penalties retrospectively and can only impose a monetary penalty where infringing conduct takes place after the Act's commencement date. This means that fines are likely to be lower in the initial period of the new regime. However, significantly, it says that it will take conduct before commencement into consideration where this is relevant to any monetary penalty, such as aggravating factors (eg previous failure to comply following enforcement action by the CMA or another enforcer such as the ASA) or mitigating factors (eg actions already taken to correct the infringing conduct).
The document also sets out how the CMA will incorporate the "four Ps" - ie pace, predictability, proportionality and process - into its consumer enforcement work, as well as how it will work with other enforcers and international regulators.
Other useful guidance
Better late than never, on 4 April 2025 (the Friday before the Act came into effect!), the CMA published an updated version of its Guidance on Unfair Commercial Practices. The previous version of the guidance had been heavily criticised for causing more confusion than clarity, and raising more questions than it answered. The guidance has now been trimmed-down, and the 'illustrative examples' that had been proffered in the previous version have now been removed.
Next steps
In the next few months, the CMA intends to work with businesses and the government to discover where consumer law advice would be most valuable to remove barriers to growth, for example, in innovative, fast-moving sectors. It will also set out how businesses can bring to its attention evidence of other businesses gaining an unfair advantage by not complying with consumer law. In addition, in areas where there is no legal precedent and where possible regulatory uncertainty is holding back innovation, it will explore providing new ways for businesses to seek advice about conduct they are considering introducing. And last but not least, it will open the first cases under the new regime.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
