Since the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 gained Royal Assent, offering or advertising a contract cheating service to a UK student carries a criminal fine — on top of whatever a university's own disciplinary process does separately.
What the Law Actually Criminalizes
The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022, creating two new criminal offences in England specifically targeting "essay mills" — commercial services that write academic work for students to submit as their own, commonly called contract cheating. The first offence is providing, or arranging for another person to provide, a contract cheating service for financial gain to a student taking a qualification at a post-16 institution, sixth form, or higher education provider in England. The second offence is advertising such a service, or advertising oneself as available or competent to provide one — and notably, this offence applies even if the advertisement is never actually seen by its intended student audience.
Both offences are summary-only, meaning they're tried in a magistrates' court and punishable by a fine — not imprisonment. The law does not criminalize the student who uses such a service; it targets the providers and advertisers of the service itself.
What Isn't Covered
The Act includes a specific carve-out for "material published generally" — freely available study aids, revision guides, and general educational material aren't caught by the offence, even if a student uses them inappropriately. The distinction the law draws is between genuinely general educational resources and a bespoke, paid-for piece of work produced specifically to be passed off as a particular student's own.
The Separate University Disciplinary Track
Criminal liability under the Act applies to the essay mill provider or advertiser — it does not replace or limit a university's own academic misconduct process against a student found to have used such a service. A student caught submitting contract-cheated work still faces the full range of internal disciplinary consequences under their institution's own academic integrity policy, potentially including failing the assessment, the module, or in serious or repeated cases, expulsion. The criminal law and the university disciplinary process operate entirely independently of each other.
Where AI Tools Fit
The 2022 Act predates the mainstream availability of generative AI tools, and the law wasn't specifically drafted with them in mind. Whether a given AI-assisted service could fall within the Act's definition of a "cheating service" is a genuinely contested and unsettled legal question, distinct from the university-level academic integrity question of whether using AI on a specific assessment violates that institution's own policy. Don't assume either way — treat AI-related academic integrity questions as governed primarily by your specific institution's own policy, not by the essay mills law.
Practical Guidance
- Treat any paid, bespoke academic writing service — however it's marketed — as both a potential criminal exposure for the provider and a near-certain academic misconduct issue for a student who uses it.
- If you're asked to write, or advertise the writing of, custom academic work for a fee, understand this may constitute a criminal offence, not just a policy violation.
- If you're a student facing academic integrity questions around AI tool use specifically, check your institution's own current AI policy rather than assuming the essay mills law resolves the question either way.
- Report suspected essay mill advertising you encounter (e.g. on social media or search ads) to your institution or directly to trading standards.
Related Kibbo Tools
Sources
- UK Government — Essay mills are now illegal – Skills Minister calls on internet service platforms to crack down on advertising. educationhub.blog.gov.uk
- Legislation.gov.uk — Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022, Explanatory Notes. legislation.gov.uk