DMCCA Part 3 enforcement: the CMA’s first consumer reviews investigations and their implications for transactions
In short: DMCCA Part 3 enforcement is the CMA’s new direct route to consumer protection penalties. Five investigations opened on 27 March 2026 target different points in the consumer reviews supply chain. Section 182(6) caps penalties at £300,000 or 10% of global turnover. For acquirers, consumer review compliance is now a discrete deal due diligence item.
The CMA’s first coordinated round of consumer reviews investigations applies the new direct enforcement powers in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 to the consumer reviews supply chain. Five cases opened on 27 March 2026 reach across that supply chain at once: a reviews intermediary, a marketplace aggregator, a brand seller and a services operator. For acquirers, lenders and private equity investors in e-commerce, marketplace and consumer-facing digital businesses, consumer review practices have moved from a compliance footnote to a board-level transactional risk item. DMCCA Part 3 enforcement is the route the regulator takes.
The DMCCA Part 3 enforcement framework
Part 3 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA 2024) places consumer protection enforcement directly with the CMA. Under the prior model, set out in Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002, the CMA had to apply for a court order to stop an infringing practice. Under section 180 of the DMCCA 2024, the CMA can open its own investigation. It can issue a provisional infringement notice under section 181, accept undertakings under section 185, or issue a final infringement notice under section 182 imposing a monetary penalty.
Section 182(6) caps the monetary penalty at the higher of £300,000 or 10% of the trader’s total global turnover. The substantive obligations sit in Part 4 Chapter 1. Section 225 prohibits unfair commercial practices, including any practice listed in Schedule 20 as unfair in all circumstances. Schedule 20 paragraph 13 captures fake consumer reviews, reviews that conceal incentivisation, publishing reviews in a misleading way, and publishing reviews without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent or remove fake or undisclosed-incentivised reviews.
Why the CMA chose five DMCCA Part 3 enforcement targets
The five businesses opened for investigation on 27 March 2026 sit at different points in the consumer reviews supply chain. Feefo Holdings Limited is a reviews intermediary that moderates and publishes reviews on behalf of merchant customers. The CMA is investigating, in parallel with its Autotrader case, whether one-star reviews moderated by Feefo were not published on Autotrader’s platform and were not counted toward star ratings. Just Eat.co.uk Limited is a marketplace aggregator: the CMA is investigating whether its ratings system has inflated certain restaurants’ and grocers’ star ratings. Pasta Evangelists Limited is a brand seller: the CMA is looking at whether customers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for five-star reviews on delivery apps, without disclosure. Dignity, the funeral services group, is being investigated for asking staff to write positive reviews of its crematoria services.
The case selection is the substantive point. The CMA has chosen the reviews intermediary, the platform that displays the ratings, the marketplace aggregator, the direct brand seller and the operator of physical services in parallel. Section 148 defines a relevant infringement broadly enough to capture each of these layers, including acts and omissions of those promoting another trader’s product. Schedule 20 paragraph 13(3) reaches the publisher of reviews who fails to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent fake or undisclosed-incentivised reviews. That is the statutory basis on which a platform can be liable for the conduct of merchants and reviewers further up the chain. The conclusion is that DMCCA Part 3 enforcement reaches the entire reviews supply chain, not only the trader who commissioned a misleading review.
DMCCA Part 3 enforcement and deal due diligence
For corporate buyers and private equity investors in e-commerce, marketplace, hospitality and consumer-facing digital targets, consumer review practices now belong on the regulatory due diligence checklist alongside data protection, payments authorisation and online safety. The 10% global turnover penalty cap under section 182(6) is the same order of magnitude as a competition law fine. A target with material non-compliance under Schedule 20, in particular undisclosed-incentivised reviews, carries direct quantifiable downside risk that did not exist at this scale under the Part 8 regime. Regulatory due diligence on a consumer-facing digital target now extends to a discrete consumer protection workstream, distinct from the Part 1 digital markets work covered in our note on the first DMCCA Part 1 commitments.
Specific deal items to address in SPAs and investment agreements: warranties on Schedule 20 compliance, including the absence of fake or undisclosed-incentivised reviews and adequate review-moderation processes; an indemnity for any pre-completion CMA notice or open investigation; an information covenant around any CMA information notice received between exchange and completion; and a price adjustment mechanism if a final infringement notice is issued before completion. For review sites, the practical compliance agenda is short. Audit the review pipeline end to end: solicitation copy, incentive language, intermediary contracts, moderation policies, and the algorithm by which reviews are aggregated into star ratings. Map responsibilities under the Online Safety Act 2023 in parallel; the OSA duties for user-to-user services overlap with Schedule 20 obligations on review-hosting platforms but do not displace them.
Viewpoint
The supply-chain coordination is the principal point for investors. The CMA could have brought a single case; it has opened five in parallel. I read this as a deliberate choice to set the template for the new regime through a single coordinated round, with the template covering platform, aggregator, seller and operator-of-services. The 10% global turnover cap under section 182(6) reframes consumer protection as a board-level governance issue, in line with the CMA’s published consumer protection priorities under the DMCCA. For private equity investors and trade buyers, DMCCA Part 3 enforcement means the CMA can move from investigation to monetary penalty without recourse to the courts. That compresses the timeline and changes the commercial risk profile of any compliance gap inherited at completion.
For advice on consumer protection compliance, regulatory due diligence on consumer-facing digital targets, or the response to a CMA Part 3 notice, contact Rob Bratby at Bratby Law.
