Expensive to get wrongUnited Kingdom

Answering the regulator badly is its own offence

Separately from any product breach, the 2013 Regulations make it an offence to intentionally obstruct an enforcement officer, to fail without reasonable cause to give assistance or information reasonably required, to furnish information knowing it to be false or misleading in a material particular, or to fail to produce a document or record when required.

Once an enquiry has started, the way a brand handles the correspondence becomes a second exposure that does not depend on whether the original product complaint was well founded, and the people writing those replies are usually not the people who were told there was a legal issue.

93 of a possible 97Tier A, primary document or measured outcome. Nothing at this tier is allowed past 97, however good it looks.

Verified August 6, 2026Rechecked every 365 days, next by August 6, 2027.

Constraint

Held since July 11, 2013A rule, law or policy that limits what you may do or say. The earliest date we are willing to say this held. It may well have been true before that; we do not backdate a record past the evidence we have read. Supported, version 1.

This entry is wrong if

Regulation 12(2) is repealed, or its limbs are narrowed so that only intentional obstruction remains an offence.

Written before the record was published, not after. If you can show this, send it to hello@tryorbt.com and the correction goes on the record with the entry.

Evidence

Tier Aregulation
The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk): The Cosmetic Products Enforcement Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/1478), as revised to 31 December 2020
2 It is an offence— a intentionally to obstruct any person acting in the execution or enforcement of the EU Cosmetics Regulation; b without reasonable cause, to fail to give to any such person any assistance or information which that person may reasonably require for those purposes; c knowingly or recklessly to furnish to any such person any information knowing it to be false or misleading in a material particular; or d to fail to produce a document or record to any such person when required to do so.
Read 2026-08-06 · Open government · page hash 072367bc011d
Tier Aregulation
The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk): The Cosmetic Products Enforcement Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/1478), as revised to 31 December 2020
3 A person guilty of an offence under regulation 12(2) shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.
The penalty is lower than the product offences and there is no custodial option, which is the part that distinguishes this from regulation 12(1).
Read 2026-08-06 · Open government · page hash 072367bc011d

History

v1createdAugust 5, 2026
Initial entry from primary legislation, read 2026-08-06. Located through the legislation.gov.uk Atom search feed and read from the site's documented XML data view at the dated revision, rather than from the styled page.

Append-only. Nothing in this list is edited or removed once written, including the entries that record our own mistakes. Every change to every record is on the corrections page, and the same log is in entries.json under revisions.

gb
uk
enforcement
inspection
compliance
operations

Cite this entry

“Answering the regulator badly is its own offence”, The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, entry omr:gb:obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences, retrieved September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/gb--obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129

Orbt, "Answering the regulator badly is its own offence," Orbt Market Index, entry omr:gb:obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences, verified August 6, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/gb--obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences.

@misc{orbt-gb-obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences,
  title        = {Answering the regulator badly is its own offence},
  author       = {{Orbt}},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.22679129},
  note         = {The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0 (dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22679129), entry omr:gb:obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences. Verified 2026-08-06},
  howpublished = {\url{https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/gb--obstruction-and-bad-information-are-separate-offences}},
  license      = {Orbt Index Public Licence. Free to quote and cite; not to redistribute}
}

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