The UK government announced a new blueprint to regulate Artificial Intelligence aimed at accelerating innovation and economic growth while maintaining strong safeguards. Central to the plan is an Artificial Intelligence Growth Lab that will create supervised regulatory sandboxes, allowing companies to test Artificial Intelligence products in real-world conditions with specific rules temporarily relaxed. Initial focus areas include healthcare, professional services, transport, and robotics in advanced manufacturing. The announcement coincides with broader pro-growth regulatory reforms, including a plan the Chancellor says could save businesses nearly £6 billion a year by 2029 by reducing administrative burdens under the Regulation Action Plan.
Sandboxes would be tightly controlled and time limited, with a licensing scheme and robust oversight to define which regulatory hurdles can be modified. Breaches or the emergence of unacceptable risks would halt tests and could lead to fines. Crucially, exclusions would keep key protections intact, including consumer protection and safety provisions, fundamental rights, workers’ protections, and intellectual property rights. The government also set aside £1 million for the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to pilot Artificial Intelligence assisted tools that support scientific expertise, speed drug discovery and clinical trial assessments, and improve licensing efficiency, with all final decisions remaining with humans.
Officials highlighted potential public service benefits. In healthcare, a sandbox for building Artificial Intelligence tools could help clinicians deliver better patient care faster, potentially reducing NHS waiting lists and easing pressure on frontline staff. In planning, a typical housing development application can reach 4,000 pages and take up to 18 months from submission to approval. By reviewing regulations to explore how Artificial Intelligence could support officials, the government argues approval times could be cut, supporting its goal to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current Parliament.
The blueprint builds on existing regulatory experimentation. An Information Commissioner’s Office sandbox has helped Yoti refine age estimation technology to keep young people safer online and supported FlyingBinary in developing services for mental health patients. The Digital Securities Sandbox is enabling tests of distributed ledger technology to improve financial system efficiency and tackle fraud. Internationally, jurisdictions including the EU, USA, Japan, Estonia and Singapore have announced or implemented Artificial Intelligence sandboxes. The UK pioneered the model with the Financial Conduct Authority’s 2016 fintech sandbox and now intends to keep pace through the Artificial Intelligence Growth Lab.
To shape the programme, the government will launch a public call for views, including whether the Growth Lab should be run by government or led by regulators. Ministers frame Artificial Intelligence adoption as a defining economic opportunity, noting only 21 percent of UK firms currently use the technology. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Artificial Intelligence could lift UK productivity by up to 1.3 percentage points annually, worth about £140 billion. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the aim is to remove needless red tape without cutting corners, fast-tracking responsible innovations that improve lives. Industry groups and investors broadly welcomed the proposals, describing them as a pro-innovation step that could strengthen the UK’s global competitiveness.
