Schedule 3: Timing of providers’ assessments Search services likely to be accessed by children Section 29: Safety duties protecting children
This section sets out the duties on providers of regulated search services with regard to content that is harmful to children but is not illegal. All providers of regulated search services that are likely to be accessed by children must comply with these duties.
	Subsection (2) requires service providers to take proportionate steps relating to the design or operation of the service. These service providers must mitigate and manage the risks and impact of harm to children in different age groups, which they have identified in their most recent children’s risk assessment of the service under section 28.
	Subsection (3) requires service providers to ensure they have proportionate systems and processes to minimise the risk of children encountering primary priority content that is harmful to children or other content that is harmful to children in certain age groups. These systems and processes could include, for example: down-ranking content that is harmful to children in search results displayed to child users; ensuring predictive searches do not drive children towards harmful content; and signposting children who search for harmful content towards resources and support.
	Subsection (4) provides that these duties apply to the way the service is designed, operated and used, as well as to the content that may be accessed via search results. This subsection also lists areas in which the service provider is required to use measures to comply with its child safety duties, if it is proportionate for them to do so.
	Subsections (5), (6) and (8) require service providers to set out their policies and procedures for protecting children from harmful content in a clear, accessible publicly available statement, and apply them consistently.
	Subsection (7) specifies that the service provider must include information in a publicly available statement about any proactive technology that it uses to comply with its safety duties for children.
	Subsection (9) imposes a duty on Category 2A services to summarise the findings of its most recent children’s risk assessment in a publicly available statement.