Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I read more about the future state of the .UK registry?

• Registrar Resources contains a range of information on the future state of the .UK registry including the draft policies & agreements, information on the Testbed & data sets and information on the legacy .UK to new .UK transitions. EPP documentation can also be found on Registrar Resources here. 

Where can I read more about the open policy consultation?

• You can read about the latest policy consultation here or watch our Policy Manager and Head of Proposition discuss the key policy changes at Nominet’s member conference. 

Where can I submit feedback on the consultation? 

• Feedback can be submitted via this survey. All responses must be submitted before the 12^th November 2025.

How is the new Nominet Registry-Registrar Base Agreement related to the rest of the policies within the policy framework?

• The .UK Registry-Registrar Agreement (.UK RRA) is the contract Nominet has in place with a Registrar. The .UK RAA binds registrars to the Nominet Registry-Registrar Base Agreement (RRBA) (which contains common clauses that apply to multiple Nominet registries) and the full suite of.UK specific policies. This can be seen in the diagram below:

Is Nominet intending to remove the three-way contractual relationship between Nominet, a registrar and registrant?

• No, Nominet does not intend to remove the three-way contractual relationship. It will continue to have a contract with the registrar via the .UK Registry-Registrar Agreement and the registrant via the .UK Registrant Terms and Conditions. This is the current arrangement and will remain in place.

What is Nominet’s approach to de-accreditation?

• Once the final changes to the policies and agreements currently in consultation have been agreed, Nominet will have a comprehensive understanding of the landscape in which a de-accreditation could occur. This will enable the subsequent updating of internal processes.

What is happening to non-member tags?

• As per the draft .UK Registry-Registrar Agreement there is a new requirement for all registrars to be members of Nominet with the limited exception of a small number of schools and local authorities who only manage .sch.uk domains. The adoption of this requirement is subject to the completion of the policy consultation and the feedback received.

• If the requirement is adopted, registrars that are not currently members can either sign up to be a member or transfer their domains to a registrar who is a member.

Are Nominet going to continue to accept direct registrations?

• No, Nominet will stop accepting direct registrations per the 2024 consultations. The transition to the future .UK registry state shall enable registrars to provide a full-service to registrants (unlike today where policy restricts certain actions). Nominet will however act as an escalation point for registrants should a registrar fail to comply with the relevant registry policies.

How will Nominet measure compliance with the new RRA?

• Nominet is conducting a complete review of its compliance process in conjunction with the draft policies and agreements to understand where the compliance process should be updated. Nominet will also look at the available data to understand overall compliance outside of the formal compliance process to inform future policy development and ensure the compliance process is effective. At a later date Nominet will communicate more details on the new compliance process.

When will DAC be decommissioned?

• The retirement of DAC had previously been communicated as being in Q4 2025. This has now been delayed to the point of transition following registrar feedback.

Why is DAC being decommissioned?

• Nominet are transitioning to an industry standard implementation of EPP which will provide the equivalent data currently provided by DAC. An Unavailable names report is published daily containing domains within the .UK domain family along with the status of the domains. Further details on the Unavailable names report can be read here. Additional ways to check the availability of a domain can be found here.

How will a registrant that has used a proxy service log into the Nominet system?

• Registrants who have opted to use a proxy service are not able to log into Nominet’s systems. Nominet does not have any contact details that can be used to create an account. This is the same behaviour as of today and will remain post-transition.  

How can I test renewing a domain or cancelling a renewal in the Testbed?

• The Testbed contains a variety of test data to cover scenarios a registrar will need to test with. Manual and unrenewals can be tested through your own direct usage of those operations auto renew is catered for by the dataset which can be here.  

Do we plan to make Nominet a thin registry?

• No, we retain a direct contract with the registrant and this matches our commitment to maintaining a secure, trusted, and locally relevant namespace with the authoritative data for the geographic TLDs held within the same legal jurisdiction.

Where can I read more about the future state of the .UK registry?

• Registrar Resources contains a range of information on the future state of the .UK registry including the draft policies & agreements, information on the Testbed & data sets and information on the legacy .UK to new .UK transitions.

What other operations changes may occur with this transition?

• We have now published the complete set of proposed .UK RRA and policies, combined with the initial technical documentation for consultation. We will continue to update based on feedback.

Are there any plans to introduce a redemption fee in the future?

• No, the intent remains the registrant has the rights to restore a domain that is in redemption period.

Add, Renew, Auto-Renew period are aligning with gTLDs – is there a planned change to invoicing – e.g. will there be pre-payment of registry funds. Will domains auto-renew (bill) on day one or day 45 of the auto-renews?

• Credit limits will still be available to registrars per our payment and credit terms.
• Auto-renew domains will bill on the invoice after day 45.
• Registrars can convert auto-renews to manual renews through the EPP renew command using the appropriate expiry date.

Will the transfer process require an authorisation code in the future and tags disappear; will a 1 year renewal become standard on transfer?

• We will no longer use the TAG terminology to refer to an accreditation.
• Transfer Authorisation Codes (TACs) will be utilised for .UK domains.
• A 1-year renewal will be optional for any domains that are not in an auto-renew grace period.
• Registrars are not compelled to offer zero year transfers to themselves and must ensure they bind the registrant to a contract at the time of transfer.

Will accreditations still have their own bespoke contacts that TAGs had?

• No, all accreditations within the same account are for the same legal entity and will share the same account level contacts including the published abuse contact and we will cease to utilise existing TAG level contacts.

Will I continue to get an invoice per accreditation per transaction type after transition?

• No, with the move from the legacy .UK platform to the Dragon RSP platform registrars will obtain consolidated billing per registrar account simplifying everyone’s monthly paperwork. This means that all registry related transactions for the same registrar legal entity in the calendar month will appear on the same consolidated invoice whether they are for new creates, renews or locks and include all accreditations on a single invoice.

When I query a domain on RDAP, will the response provide TAG level information about the registrar?

• No, RDAP will confirm the legal entity or account holder as the registrar. Registrars wishing to brand their sales channel with varying landing pages should utilise the reseller information to publish alternative brands.