Legal Requirements for Website

[Kent Accountant]

I believe that there are some legal requirements for a website e.g.
Disability
Disclosure of Company Registration Details
and probably others......

Could some helpful person list what the legal requirements are?

Many thanks in advance

Bob

[ewan]

There are no properly enforced legal requirements for websites ('cept a company address, VAT no. and owner names - if sole trader or partnership - otherwise reg company no. are the norm), but it's best take some time to read through some of what the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org) has to say, which will could help improve usability as well as comply to .

(I am led to believe that different rules apply to websites where you can buy goods online than to plain 'ol company sites)

[The Resolver]

There are indeed many legally enforceable requirements over website content. Some are not only enforceable by the regulators-trading standards ,who have the power to obtain 'stop' orders to close down sites (never happened to my knowledge because funding issues mean that they are not encouraged to focus much on this area of reponsibility -although it would be interesting to see how they respond to a formal complaint by a competitor) but also some are enforceable directly by the public in the sense of being able to avoid contractual liability otherwise incurred online.

First two ports of call are the Electronic Commerce (European Directive) Regulations 2002 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2002/20022013.htm) which require, amongst other matters, if its a site for yoursel,for you to have to set out your applicable professional association and the Consumer Protection (DistanceSelling) Regulations 2000 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2002/20022013.htm). Then there are the disability rules and like any service you now have a statutory requirement to make your sites accessible. Most sites are not but there have been warnings of tighter enforcement particularly to lawyers and accountants.

Remeber it is not just about the bottom line requiremenst over contentm ist also about ensuring your content does not have unintended legal consequences. For instance selling products or services to a business user can acquire greater liablity if the customer is able to buy on the site as a 'consumer' (not relevant to an accountancy only service if that is the subject of your enquiry) . Content is important to protect you here.

I am running out of time right now but I have covered some of the aspects in my previous post (click my name) and can also assist with an audit and T&Cs. PM me if you wish to talk further.

[Richard Conyard]

Bob,
As TDR says there are many regulations involved, some of these stem from what you're doing on the site itself; i.e. an e-commerce site will need to comply with distance selling regulations (in the same way a mail order company will).

In regards to vanilla company websites the only regulation I am aware of is the DDA (disability discrimination act), although there hasn't been any prosecution in the UK yet (the RNIB I believe has nudged a few companies who have sorted things outside of court).

It's not really my specialism, however depending on what you want you could do worse to give our sister company a call http://www.redantdesign.com after all it would only be a local call ;-)

[Kent Accountant]

Thank you all for your help