Subscription-trap rules moved forward to January 2027

Rules forcing businesses to make subscriptions easier to cancel will now be in force by January 2027. They had been expected to arrive next spring.

The change was announced by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who is touring the UK during the parliamentary recess with a series of cost-of-living measures.

The substance of the package is not new. It was announced in April under Sir Keir Starmer, and rests on the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act passed in 2024.

What has changed is the deadline. Founders selling anything on auto-renew have roughly three months less to rebuild their sign-up and cancellation flows.

The government's description of what businesses must do is short: clearer up-front information, regular reminders, and a much easier exit from contracts.

That means the trial-to-paid handover is the pressure point. According to figures the Department for Business and Trade published in April, more than 3.5 million people are quietly rolled from free or discounted trials onto full-price contracts.

A further 1.3 million are caught out by unexpected auto-renewals, on the same department's figures. It put the total number of unwanted, active subscriptions in the UK at 10 million.

The government said in April the measures would save consumers £400m a year, or up to £170 per person. Those are its own numbers, and the saving to consumers is the revenue coming off someone's subscriber list.

The detail founders actually need is not settled. The government will launch a consultation this autumn on how the measures should be implemented, which leaves the practical questions — how often a reminder must be sent, what counts as an easy exit — open until then.

Burnham is also promising to end so-called pretend prices: "was" prices, invented discounts and misleading RRPs used to make a deal look better than it is. False "was" prices are already unlawful, but they do not sit on the Competition and Markets Authority's list of automatically banned practices, where no consumer harm has to be proved.

Adding them to that list would remove a defence. Anyone running "was £99, now £49" promotions should be able to show the £99 was real.

Not everyone is impressed by the timing. Shadow chancellor Mel Stride called the measures "reheated" and said the government had taken too long to enact legislation passed by the previous administration.

The consumer group Which? welcomed the announcement, and its head of consumer rights policy, Sue Davies, asked the government to bring the rules in "swiftly".

For a founder, the near-term work is unglamorous: audit what a customer is told before they are charged, build the reminder, and make the cancel button as findable as the sign-up button.

One BBC reader's account of what happens when you do not shows the risk. Chris Fell, a 71-year-old photographer from Wiltshire, told the broadcaster he cancelled his debit card to escape a subscription to the portfolio service Viewbug, whose cost he said doubled over three years. Viewbug was asked to comment.