UK makes progress on digital verification for alcohol sales

The United Kingdom Home Office has said it is “working at pace” with a view to implement changes that would allow digital verification services (DVS) to be used as proof of age for alcohol sales in England and Wales, despite falling short of its previously stated deadline of Christmas 2025.

“The Home Office is committed to making this change and is working on drafting the secondary legislation,” said the Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), in a blog post. “This is a complex area of law, and it has not been possible to change the MLCs [Mandatory Licence Conditions] last year as had been planned.”

In December 2024, the then Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, announced that changes would be made by Christmas of last year to the MLCs under the Licensing Act 2003—the law that regulates the sale and supply of alcohol in the U.K.—to allow digital verification to be used as proof of age for alcohol sales in England and Wales, instead of just physical ID, as is currently the case.

“By next Christmas, you won’t need to carry a wallet or risk losing important documents like your passport or driver’s license when heading out to celebrate,” said Kyle, at the time. “With a certified digital identity on your phone, you can raise a glass in your local pub without hassle – a merry step forward in making age verification safer, easier, and more convenient for everyone.”

However, the Home Office now states that since this announcement, it has been considering the requirements necessary and appropriate for enabling the use of a DVS for age verification and has concluded that “there is more to be done than simply changing the law.”

Specifically, alongside the OfDIA team the Home Office decided that the following conditions may need to be satisfied for digital age verification to go ahead: it must be created and shared by a service on the statutory DVS register; the digital ID must be “bound” to the user to ensure that it belongs to the person presenting it; the responsible person must appropriately validate it to ensure it has not been tampered with; it must confirm that the user meets the age requirement in the venue’s age verification policy; and it must come from an identity which has been verified to at least a ‘medium’ level of confidence.

For these various conditions to be met and for DVS to be widely adopted as proof of age in the U.K., several legal changes must be made and legislative hurdles overcome.

Firstly, a Statutory Instrument (SI) to amend the MLCs will be debated in both Houses of Parliament, and if passed, will receive Royal Assent and become law.

Then, the guidance published by Trading Standards for businesses will be updated, and licensed premises will need to find one or multiple DVSs to work with that meet their requirements and develop contractual arrangements. Licensed premises will also need to update their age verification policies and train staff to apply them.

Finally, individuals will need to understand where they can use their DVS and set one up in advance of trying to purchase alcohol.

In other words, the Home Office was essentially explaining that the process is a long and complex one, and that the goal of a December 2025 launch was overly ambitious.

For this reason, in its latest announcement, it did not provide a firm timeline for when the necessary legislation will be passed and the digital verification implemented. Instead, the Home Office just reiterated that “we remain committed to making those changes.”

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