The government today announced an overhaul of the UK’s designs system, including new powers for the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) to check whether a design is genuinely new before it is registered and, for the first time, a small claims court route for registered design disputes.
The package is the government’s formal response to an IPO-led consultation that closed in November 2025. According to the government, the UK has about 80,000 design businesses, an estimated 92 per cent of which are lone designers or microbusinesses. It said the sector contributed close to £137bn to the economy in 2023 and supports more than 2m jobs.
The government will introduce legislation, when parliamentary time allows, to implement the changes that require it.
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