For forums, review sites, directories and comment sections in England and Wales

Defamation notice of complaint form: your 48-hour section 5 deadline

Write to the poster by

Tuesday 29 September 2026, 16:00

A plain 48-hour count says Sunday 27 September 2026, 16:00. Regulation 1(3) skips the weekend.

One payment, no subscription. The free plugin below already takes and lists every notice.

Your notice

Notice received on

Hour received (0 to 23)

The notice contains

Can you contact the poster?

Same statement removed before after a notice?

Bank holidays built in: England and Wales, 2026 to 2028, plus Good Friday and Christmas Day as regulation 1(3) names them. The poster's 5th-day reply date counts every calendar day; regulation 1(3) applies only to the 48-hour steps.

What a valid notice must contain (9 items)

The complainant's name — s.5(6)(a)
The statement concerned — s.5(6)(b)
Why it is defamatory of the complainant — s.5(6)(b)
Where on the website it was posted — s.5(6)(c)
An email address for the complainant — reg. 2(a)
The meaning the complainant attributes to it — reg. 2(b)
Which parts are factually inaccurate or opinions not supported by fact — reg. 2(c)
Confirmation they lack enough information about the poster to sue them — reg. 2(d)
Whether they consent to their name and email going to the poster — reg. 2(e)

A notice missing any of these is not a notice of complaint. You still owe a reply within 48 hours saying it does not comply and what it must contain (reg. 4).

Free WordPress plugin: the form itself

One shortcode, [defamation-notice-of-complaint-form], puts all 9 fields on a page, each one required and labelled, with a spam trap and nonce check. Every notice is listed in WordPress admin, 50 per page. Install: Plugins ▸ Add New Plugin ▸ Upload Plugin ▸ choose the .zip ▸ Install Now ▸ Activate. Menu names can differ slightly by WordPress version and admin language; PHP 7.4 or newer is required.

Why not a contact form? It does not ask for the 9 items, so you cannot tell a valid notice from a defective one, and nothing records the hour your 48 hours started.

Paid, $60 once: an email to you the moment a notice arrives, a receipt to the complainant, every notice as CSV with date and time, search by page address to spot a reposted statement (Schedule para. 9), and a separate form per section of your site. Gravity Forms, a general form builder, costs $59 to $259 per year and has no section 5 fields.

Source: Defamation Act 2013 s.5; Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/3028), regs 1(3), 2, 4 and the Schedule, legislation.gov.uk. This page dates the steps; it is not legal advice on whether a statement is defamatory.