Customer charter
The BBFC is independent and not-for-profit, and we’re here to help everyone in the UK choose age-appropriate films, videos and websites, wherever and however they watch or use them.
We also aim to help you reach the widest appropriate audience by making sure that your customers can choose well.
In this charter, we set out the standards of service we’re committed to providing for you and your business, and what we need from you in return. It outlines our standards of service, but does not create any new contractual or legally binding relationship.
We are committed to:
- Helping you reach the widest appropriate audience in ways that are legally, reputationally and commercially sustainable, while safeguarding your customers’ experience
- Being a responsive, transparent and impartial partner, trusted for our expertise
- Helping children and families choose content that’s right for them and avoid what’s not
- Promoting and protecting the creative industries by supporting law enforcement agencies, providing our education programme of seminars and resources about classification, and choosing content which promotes IP awareness
Our services
The BBFC offers a suite of media regulation services. In this section you will find details of the services that relate to statutory regulation and those that relate to self-regulation. We also detail additional services that may be of interest to you.
Our customer service aims
The BBFC aims to provide the highest standard of customer service at all times.
What we need from you
How to contact us
We are here to help you, and we like to hear from you. If you need to get in touch, or if you’d like to let us know how we’re doing, please access our contact details here.
We aim to respond to queries with a preliminary course of action within one working day, and to resolve any concerns fully in five working days.
Your Feedback
We value your comments as they help us improve our services as well as meet the aims set out in our customer charter.
How we will maintain our customer charter
We commit to keeping this customer charter relevant and up to date by reviewing it on an annual basis and publishing any changes on this website.
Customer Charter - in detail
Our services
The BBFC offers a range of statutory and self-regulatory services. These are as follows:
Statutory services
- We provide age ratings and content advice for cinema releases under the Licensing Act 2003
- Age ratings and content advice for Blu-ray and DVD releases under the Video Recordings Act 1984
- We also provide Certificates of Evidence to law enforcement officers under the Video Recordings Act 1984
Self-regulatory services
- We offer age ratings and content advice for use on digital services
- We license age ratings, symbols, content advice and other data for digital video on demand services (VoD) and other uses including virtual reality films and theme park experiences
- We use our expertise to provide bespoke white label services and to deliver training in compliance procedures
- We offer consultancy services on compliance and content labelling issues, best practice age labelling and effective parental controls
- And we review video packaging under the voluntary Video Packaging Review Committee (VPRC) system
Additional services
- Our education programme offers a range of presentations on the BBFC’s work, delivered either in-house or at your chosen venue
- We provide access to our historic paper file archive and welcome enquiries from researchers
- We hire out our meeting rooms and screening theatre (equipped with digital 3D projection) at competitive rates
Our service aims include
We aim to provide the highest standard of customer service at all times.
Our service aims include:
- Offering age ratings and content advice for non-express Blu-ray/DVD and Watch & Rate submissions within eight days*
- Offering age ratings and content advice for cinema submissions within five working days of it being available for viewing*
- Communicating the age rating and related information within 15 minutes of the decision
- Providing a decision on express bookings on the day of viewing*
- Responding to queries within one working day and resolving concerns fully within five working days
- Responding to email requests within one working day
- Answering telephone calls within 15 seconds
*Achieving these aims depends on your cooperation – see ‘What we need from you’.
What we need from you
To help us make sure that we continue to provide an efficient service, we would ask you to do the following:
- Please submit content in the version intended for release, in accordance with our published submission criteria;
Please provide us with accurate information regarding your submission
Please note we operate a prepayment system unless otherwise stated
And finally, please help us resolve unforeseen issues which may arise from time to time in relation to individual submissions
Your feedback
We value your comments They help us improve our services as well as meet the aims set out in our customer charter.
Here is how to feed back to us:
- Via the extranet: ‘BBFC Performance Feedback’ button (extranet users only)
- By email: helpline@bbfc.co.uk
- By phone: 020 7440 0299
- By post: 3 Soho Square, London W1D 3HD
Our opening hours are 09:00-18:00 Monday-Friday.
How we will maintain our customer charter
At the BBFC, we keep our customer charter relevant and up-to-date by reviewing it annually. We value your feedback and use it to help us improve our services and meet the aims of the charter.
We also publish an Annual Report, which gives a detailed account of our performance over the year. Downloads of current and previous Annual Reports are available here or printed copies are available on request from the press office.
Please note: we maintain the confidentiality of customers’ personal information or data in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
See out Terms & Conditions here.
Customer charter date: January 2019
