The Government has announced yet a further delay to the introduction of new rules restricting the advertising of ‘less healthy’ food and drinks products.

We’ve commented previously on the new rules – set out in the ‘Advertising (Less Healthy Food Definitions and Exemptions) Regulations 2024’ – here. They prohibited (i) the advertising of so-called ‘less healthy’ food and drink products on Ofcom-licensed TV services and Ofcom-regulated on-demand programme services between 17:30 and 21:00; and (ii) paid-for advertising for less healthy products aimed at UK consumers from being placed on online media at any time.

Earlier this year, a consultation was launched in response to concerns that the new guidance on the Regulations required revision (which we discussed here). In particular, questions were raised about the extent to which advertisements for brands which did not identify a specific less healthy product were caught by the new Regulations.

On 7 April 2025, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Public Health and Prevention made a statement to Parliament confirming that “the Government’s view remains that pure brand advertising is not in scope of this policy. This is because the legislation only restricts adverts that could reasonably be considered to be for identifiable less healthy products, and not adverts that could be reasonably understood to be advertising brands… We therefore expect that businesses will still have opportunities to promote their brands, provided that their adverts do not identify a less healthy product(s)”.

A further statement was made on 22 May 2025, setting out that the Government intends to make and lay a Statutory Instrument (SI) which will explicitly exempt ‘brand advertising’ from the Regulations.

In order to allow time to consult on the SI, the Government has also confirmed that the new rules will not come into force until 5 January 2026. However, a large number of industry organisations have separately signed a voluntary commitment to act as though the rules will be coming into place on 1 October 2025 and, for its part, the Government has stated that “from 1 October 2025, and in line with Government’s policy intentions, we would expect adverts for specific identifiable less healthy products not to be shown on TV between 5:30am and 9pm or at any time online, and there will be legal clarification on ‘brand advertising’ before the restrictions come into force legally on 5 January 2026, subject to Parliamentary approval”.