Reviews
PR agency reviews in England: five named checks, from Companies House to the CMA's fake-review rules
How to review a PR agency in England: Companies House identity, the CIPR code, DMCC Act review rules, CMA guidance and a controlled buyer test with pass lines.
What to take away
- Check identity at the Companies House register, and keep it apart from any claim about capability.
- Ask which professional code binds the agency, and where a complaint would go.
- A review that is fake, or hides that it was commissioned, is a banned practice under Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
- Publish the reviewer's own policy on incentivised reviews.
- Settle the verdict with a controlled buyer test that has written pass and fail lines.
Check 1: identity at Companies House
Start with the legal entity, not the trading name. The Companies House service gives free details of a company, including its registered address, date of incorporation, current and resigned officers, document images, charges, previous names and insolvency information.
Copy those fields into the dossier with the date you looked. A register entry shows what was filed. It does not show that the agency is trading, solvent or any good at media relations. Keep identity and capability in separate columns, and set up an email alert so a change of director or address reaches the reviewer.
Check 2: the code that binds the agency
Ask each agency which professional body it joined, and read that body's code. Members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) are bound by its Code of Conduct, and any member of the public with concerns about a member's conduct may raise a complaint.
Record the membership claim as supplier evidence until the body confirms it. Note the complaints route in the dossier, so a buyer knows where to go if the work goes wrong. Use competitor research to log each claim, source and date in separate columns.
Check 3: the reviewer's own conduct under Schedule 20
A review method has to be lawful itself. Paragraph 13 of Schedule 20 to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 covers submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write, a fake consumer review. It also covers a review that conceals that it was incentivised.
The same paragraph covers publishing reviews in a misleading way, and publishing them without reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent fake or concealed-incentive reviews and to remove them. A fake review is one that purports to be, but is not, based on a person's genuine experience. Apply this to every testimonial a directory collects.
Check 4: the CMA's guidance and enforcement record
The CMA online reviews page records that new fake reviews guidance was published in April 2025. A later website review of more than 100 businesses found that more than half, 54 in total, could be failing to comply with it.
The page also records that on 26 March 2026 the CMA opened investigations into five businesses over their online review practices, using its new powers under the 2024 Act. For a reviewer, the lesson is practical: publish a clear policy that bans fake reviews and says how incentivised reviews are labelled, and make it easy to find.
Check 5: a controlled buyer test
Run the same brief through every candidate, using synthetic material only. Write the pass and fail lines before the first response arrives, so the result cannot be bent to fit a favourite. The table below is an illustrative script, not a standard.
| Test step | Pass line | Fail line |
|---|---|---|
| Send an identical brief to each agency | Reply names the legal entity and a contact | No legal entity named |
| Ask for a scope and a written quote | Quote shows unit, period and VAT basis | Single headline fee only |
| Ask who corrects a factual error | Named role and a written route | "We handle it" with no route |
| Ask for two permissioned references | Both answer the same questions | References supplied by the agency alone |
Score nothing until every row is filled. A candidate that fails the first row is on hold, whatever the portfolio shows.
Example: a dossier that stops at the first check
Hypothetical example: a dossier arrives with a trading name, a portfolio PDF and one unnamed referee. The reviewer searches the register and finds no matching company, so check 1 fails on the day.
Record the missing fields and the date of the request. The shortlist stays empty, and the verdict is HOLD, not zero points. Reopen the file only when a legal entity and a service version arrive. The selection checklist shows where those fields sit in the wider ten gates.
Compare on one grid
Once the five checks are done, put every candidate on one grid with identical rows. Leave weights blank until the decision owners approve them. The review methodology explains what each kind of evidence proves, and the cost guide lists the lines to price before quotes are requested.
Record conflicts before the verdict: funding, affiliate links, gifts and client ties. A declared conflict changes the weight of a claim, and an undeclared one voids the review. Use the disclosure policy as the single place those declarations live.
When no candidate passes
When no candidate meets the rule, leave the shortlist empty and record HOLD with the date. A hold is a result, not a failure. A strategy framework can then test the in-house route against a smaller trial.
- Register entry copied with the date of the search.
- Professional code and complaints route recorded.
- Reviewer's incentivised-review policy published.
- Buyer test rows filled in against the pass lines.
- Conflicts declared before the verdict.
Common questions
Can a Companies House record prove an agency is capable?
No. It supports identity and filing checks only. Capability needs first-party documents, references and a controlled test.
Do agency reviews fall under fake-review law?
A fake review, or one that hides that it was commissioned, is a banned practice under Schedule 20 of the 2024 Act. That applies to any review a directory publishes.
What if no agency passes the test?
Record HOLD with the date, leave the shortlist empty and reopen when new evidence arrives.
In this guide
- How to read a PR agency review in England: what each kind of evidence provesJudge a PR agency review methodology in England by its evidence: independent facts versus first-party claims, references, performed tests and expiry.
- A PR provider shortlist with a strict admission rule and, for now, no names on itA non-ranked England PR provider shortlist with a strict admission rule, source hierarchy and transparent empty result where evidence is incomplete.
- PR agency assessment framework against an in-house baselineNot a PR agencies product comparison: this framework sets a fixed brief, evidence fields and scoring gates for assessing candidates.
- How to review a PR agency in England: five buyer tests and the evidence file to requestA method for reviewing a PR agency in England: five controlled buyer tests with pass criteria, the evidence file to request, and why this guide scores no named agency.
- PR agencies selection checklist: ten gates from identity to exitUse a PR agencies selection checklist with ten assessable gates, from agency identity and service scope to security, crisis, costs, contract and exit.
