Publishing customer reviews? What the UK rules ask of businesses

A star rating is a claim too

In March 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority opened five investigations into online review practices. Opening an investigation does not establish wrongdoing. For a business displaying feedback on its own website, the practical question is how it decides which reviews reach the page.

The rules introduced in April 2025 cover fake reviews and reviews that conceal an incentive. They also cover information derived from reviews, such as a star rating. Businesses publishing reviews must take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove banned material.

What happens when someone flags a review?

Suppose a customer contacts a café to say a review describes a meal it has never served. Who receives that message? Who can investigate it and, if necessary, remove the review? Work through that example with whoever supplies the reviews and whoever looks after the website.

The CMA asks publishers to make their review policy easy to find and explain their approach to incentives. If you give someone a free product to review, readers need to know about the arrangement. A genuine opinion can still leave a misleading impression if that detail is hidden.

Find out who supplies the stars

A café might quote a customer on its menu page, display a star rating beside its booking button and link to a separate review site. Start by listing what the café itself publishes. The CMA’s guidance includes ratings and reviews collected by someone else and then displayed by the business. Buying a review service still leaves the café responsible for the material it publishes.

Ask the supplier what happens after it removes a review. Does the star rating on the booking page update automatically? What about the quotation someone copied onto the menu page last year? Those may need separate attention. Put a name against each place a correction would have to be made, including any page that only the website partner can change.

Match the checks to the way feedback arrives

Consider two different arrangements. In one, a member of staff chooses a few comments from customer emails. In the other, anyone can post directly to a public page overnight. The opportunities for a fake review to appear are different. The CMA asks businesses to assess those risks and revisit them when the way they collect or display feedback changes.

Before inviting reviews through a new channel, give the person handling them a sample complaint to follow through. Can they find the original comment, see where it appears and reach the supplier if a decision needs checking? Keeping a brief record of what happened gives the next person on shift something more useful than a verbal assurance that somebody has dealt with it.