CMA Consumer Enforcement Powers: What the DMCC Act Changed for UK Businesses

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act gave the Competition and Markets Authority a much stronger route for enforcing consumer protection law. The direct enforcement regime allows the CMA to investigate suspected breaches, reach infringement decisions and impose remedies without having to rely exclusively on court proceedings.

For businesses, that changes the risk calculation around consumer-law compliance. Rules on misleading practices, pricing, reviews and other consumer-facing conduct are no longer backed only by the possibility of a slower court process. The CMA has an administrative enforcement route of its own.

The CMA can investigate and decide cases directly

CMA guidance explains that the authority can investigate suspected breaches, accept undertakings, reach settlements, order remedies and make infringement decisions. The process includes procedural safeguards and opportunities for businesses to respond to the case against them.

The direct regime sits alongside court-based enforcement by public enforcers. It does not turn every consumer complaint into a CMA case, but it gives the authority a more direct tool for conduct that harms the collective interests of consumers.

Financial penalties make compliance materially more important

The DMCC framework allows substantial civil penalties for infringements and separate penalties for failures to comply with information requests or enforcement requirements. The CMA's April 2025 launch materials highlighted potential fines linked to global turnover, bringing consumer-law exposure closer to the scale businesses associate with competition and data-protection enforcement.

That makes governance important. Consumer compliance can no longer sit only with a marketing or customer-service team. Pricing architecture, checkout design, review systems and cancellation journeys may warrant legal and senior-management oversight.

The highest-risk areas are often ordinary customer journeys

The regime matters to online retailers, subscription businesses, marketplaces and other companies with large consumer volumes because the potential problem is often embedded in routine design choices: how a price is displayed, whether material information is omitted, how reviews are presented, or whether a cancellation process is unnecessarily difficult.

A useful compliance approach is to test customer journeys from the consumer's perspective rather than reviewing terms and conditions alone. The legal issue may arise from what a customer sees and experiences, not only from what the contract says.