Industry Information and Regulations

Companies Act

From 1st January 2007 an update to the Companies Act legislation of 1985 came into force. All UK Limited companies are legally obliged to include certain information on their websites, email footers, order forms and electronic documentation. The penalty for non-compliance is a £1000 fine.

Please contact us if you would like to use our 'Companies Act Compliancy' service to ensure your website legal.

PCI-DSS Compliancy

Online shop customers will no doubt have heard of PCI-DSS compliancy. It is a standard that has been set to any business that takes online payments and holds their customers or credit card information. All online businesses and e-commerce need a bank account of some form, so the standard will likely be set by your supplier.

There are four levels of PCI-DSS and the requirement to adhere to varies depending on the size of online business and the volume of transactions that take place.

The good news is that if you use a online payment provider including SagePay, WorldPay or PayPal, they will be the ones that need to be PCI-DSS compliant and not the customer themselves. This can remove the headache of becoming complaint and ensuring that security is still paramount.

Level 4 – Any customer that processes less than 20,000 transactions per annum. Level 3 – Covers 20,000 transactions to 1 million per annum. Level 2 – Covering 1-6 million transactions per annum. Level 1 – The highest level of PCI-DSS and covers over 6 million transactions per annum.

Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)

On 1st October 2004 the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 changed significantly making it unlawful to provide a service that is not accessible to everybody. The legislation is clearly applicable to information and services supplied via the internet. Since this date we at Advanced Web Designs have been developing all of our websites to meet at least the minimum 'Priority 1' requirement of the legislation, and where possible attempt to meet the higher priorities.

Please contact us if you would like to use our 'DDA Compliancy' service to ensure your website legal.

Data Protection Act

The Data Protection Act requires anyone who handles personal information to comply with a number of important principles. It also gives individuals rights over their personal information.

If you handle personal information, you have a number of important legal obligations which we can advise you on.