Summary

  • Ofcom wants market input by 29 October on how to group, contract and pay for skilled-person reports under the Online Safety Act.
  • Section 104 lets Ofcom appoint an expert or require a provider to appoint one subject to Ofcom’s nomination or approval. The provider must pay the skilled person’s remuneration and report expenses directly.

The regulator picks the expert. The company being examined may pick up the bill. That is the Online Safety Act’s unusual arrangement for skilled-person reports, and Ofcom is now asking the market how to make it work without turning an expert appointment into an argument over the invoice.

Ofcom’s October industry bulletin invited organisations and experts with technical, risk, regulatory and assurance skills to answer a Preliminary Market Engagement questionnaire. The full notice sets noon on 29 October as the response deadline. Ofcom wants advice on which work areas belong together, what contracting models could fit, how payments should work and how a report should be priced. The exercise will shape a future procurement approach; it has not appointed an expert or awarded a contract.

The legal machinery is more specific than the phrase “independent report” suggests. Under section 104, Ofcom may appoint a skilled person and tell the provider which matters the report will examine. Alternatively, Ofcom may require the provider to appoint someone in a specified form. In that route, Ofcom must nominate or approve the expert. The provider and other specified parties must give the expert reasonable assistance. The provider is liable to pay the skilled person directly for remuneration and report-related expenses.

The power has a defined job: helping Ofcom identify or assess a failure, or—where it considers a provider may be at risk—understand that risk and ways to reduce it. A report’s brief is meant to follow those relevant matters, not wander into a regulatory sightseeing tour.

Section 122 makes the appointment line especially clear in one enforcement pathway. Before Ofcom gives a provider a notice under section 121(1), it must obtain a report from a skilled person appointed by Ofcom under section 104(4). The report helps Ofcom decide whether to issue that notice and advises on possible requirements. The person whose service is under scrutiny supplies assistance and carries the direct payment obligation; Ofcom controls this appointment.

That split is the story. Independence is not created by putting “skilled” in a job title. It depends on who defines the question, who chooses the expert, who controls access to evidence, who determines the fee and what happens when the parties disagree about scope, expenses or timing. Ofcom says its future process should support independent, high-quality assessments. Its market questionnaire asks about the commercial plumbing that can either support that claim or leave it hanging above the payment page.

The procurement notice lists an estimated value of £2 million including VAT and a prospective service window from 31 August 2027 to 30 August 2031. It also estimates publication of a tender notice on 1 April 2027. The £2 million is the notice’s estimated value for the future service; it is not a published price per report or a bill for any named provider. Ofcom is still asking suppliers how the service should be priced and paid for.

This leaves a design problem with real consequences. A report that supports an enforcement decision has to arrive while the evidence is useful, not after a dispute about day rates, travel, specialists or the scope of work has eaten the timetable. A provider should not be able to stall an expert by contesting every line of an invoice. An expert should not have to guess whether the regulator or the regulated company is the practical client. And Ofcom needs a way to obtain expertise across different technical and risk questions without pretending one price model fits every case.

The market exercise is therefore more than a supplier survey. It is a test of how Ofcom will operationalise a statutory power whose authority and payment travel in different directions. Its deadline is 29 October. The next procurement documents should show whether the regulator has built a clean route from appointment to evidence—or left independence to fend for itself in the accounts department.

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