If you fail to report

What happens if you fail to meet your legal obligations.

It is against the law to fail to report your fuel prices and forecourt details.

We recognise that the registration system has taken time to set up and that the new scheme may require changes to your systems and compliance processes. Until the beginning of May 2026, the focus will be on supporting businesses to comply with the new regime rather than enforcement action.

Non-compliance

Non-compliance can occur when you:

  • do not report accurate and timely fuel price data within 30 minutes of a change
  • fail to keep registration details up to date, including site changes or closures

If you use a third-party or technical service (such as EPOS) to update your details, you remain legally responsible for ensuring all reporting obligations are met. Any failure by a third-party or service will be treated as a failure by the motor fuel trader and may lead to enforcement action.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) may take enforcement action if you persistently fail to report on time, or report inaccurate data.

Our role

The Fuel Finder Team will:

  • assess the completeness and quality of the information it gets from you
  • investigate complaints from motorists and others about inaccurate price information
  • work with third-party consumer-facing services to gather information on complaints

Reporting a breach

If you think you may have made a breach, contact the Fuel Finder Team as soon as possible.

It’s really important to engage with us at the earliest opportunity to resolve issues and avoid escalation to the CMA.

Our role is to support you in meeting your obligations and to help address potential problems before they become formal enforcement matters.

What we will do

Once we become aware of a breach, we will email the primary and alternate points of contact for the affected forecourt, copying in the motor fuel trader point of contact.

Where actual or suspected non-compliance is identified, we will determine the appropriate course of action. This may include:

  • continuing to monitor the incident
  • carrying out an investigation
  • escalating the matter to the CMA

In making this decision, we will consider:

  • the seriousness of the issue
  • if it has been resolved quickly (for example, where caused by a one-off or temporary technical issue)
  • if there is a pattern of repeated non-compliance
  • whether there has been a failure to respond to communications

The CMA will be setting out the thresholds at which escalation is expected.

Penalties

The CMA may take enforcement action if you do not report on time, or report inaccurate data.

This may lead to:

  • a compliance notice: formal instructions requiring corrective action to be taken
  • a financial penalty: a fine based on the severity and frequency of non-compliance (up to 1% of your global annual turnover)

See the CMA guidance for more information.

Appeals process

If you’re fined, you have the right to appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal within 28 days.

Appeals can challenge:

  • the decision to impose the penalty
  • the amount or nature of the penalty
  • payment deadlines

The Tribunal can cancel, reduce, or amend penalties.