Advertising watchdog moves against rehab “patient brokers” following two-year campaign

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has today issued a sector-wide Enforcement Notice covering advertisements for drug and alcohol rehabilitation services by clinic referral companies.

Prepared jointly with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the notice follows a two-year campaign by EMCAT, the Ethical Marketing Campaign for Addiction Treatment, and nine upheld ASA rulings against referral companies since December 2024.

The websites covered by the notice often present themselves as free, impartial helplines and treatment guides. In reality, many are commercial referral businesses paid undisclosed commissions of between 25 and 40 per cent of treatment fees. On a £10,000 residential placement, as much as £4,000 can go to the referrer without the patient ever knowing - a model the ASA has already found unlawful to conceal.

In December 2024, the ASA ruled against Addiction Recovery Systems Ltd, trading as Rehab Guide, and Help 4 Addiction Ltd for advertising "free advice" and "free support" without disclosing that both operated on commission. In one of those rulings, Help 4 Addiction was found to be advertising coverage across 58 towns and 46 counties while working with roughly 20 treatment centres nationwide.

Advertisers have until 21 September 2026 to bring their advertising into line with the rules. After that date, the ASA has said it will begin targeted monitoring and enforcement. Advertisers that are unwilling or unable to comply may be referred to the Care Quality Commission, equivalent regional regulators or, where relevant, Trading Standards.

The practice, known as patient brokering, was condemned in the House of Commons in January 2025, when the then Public Health Minister described it as “reprehensible” and “this outrageous activity” (Hansard, HC Deb 7 January 2025).

EMCAT’s monitoring has identified around one hundred suspected broker or fake “guide” websites currently targeting UK treatment-seekers, including a single operator’s network of 45 differently branded sites, each posing as an independent local clinic or helpline while funnelling callers to one commercial phone line.

A Sunday Times undercover investigation in January 2018 found brokers secretly reaping millions of pounds from people seeking treatment. The investigation prompted Google to suspend addiction treatment advertising worldwide.

Google has since restored addiction advertising in the United States, Australia, Ireland, France, Canada and New Zealand. It remains withheld in the UK, where the practices that prompted the suspension have been neither resolved nor regulated.

The then chair of the Commons Health Select Committee said she would bring the matter to the committee’s attention, while leading figures in the sector called for the practice to be made illegal. Eight years later, it remains legal in the UK.

Evelyn McKechnie, EMCAT Campaign Director, said: “This notice is a necessary first step and we welcome it. People searching for addiction treatment are often at the lowest point of their lives. They deserve to know whether the friendly voice on the phone is a clinician or a commission-based salesperson. For two years we have put the evidence in front of every regulator with the power to act. Today one of them has.”

She added: “But advertising is only the shop window. The business model behind it remains untouched. When financial incentives influence where people are referred for treatment, it creates a conflict of interest that can compromise care and public trust, and no advertising rule on its own removes that incentive. Rulings against these companies have so far been treated as a cost of doing business.”

“We repeat the call we made with the Local Government Association and Collective Voice a year ago: legislation banning patient brokering with penalties for those who engage in or facilitate it, and a single registered online gateway the public can turn to with confidence. The Competition and Markets Authority should also use the powers it gained in April 2025 under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. Parliament banned referral fees in personal injury claims in 2012 for exactly this reason. Addiction treatment still has no such protection.”

An independent evaluation completed in July 2026 found that, of the websites covered by the original ASA rulings, one had been taken down and all the others remained non-compliant with the advertising code.

Notes to editors

• EMCAT’s full evidence pack - including test-call transcripts, the July 2026 compliance evaluation, regulatory submissions and the list of monitored websites - is available to journalists on request.

• EMCAT monitoring has identified around one hundred suspected broker or fake “guide” websites currently targeting UK treatment-seekers, in addition to a single operator’s network of 45 differently branded sites.

• Interviews: Evelyn McKechnie, Campaign Director, is available for interview. Contact emcat@emcat.org

• A plain-English guide to the Enforcement Notice for treatment providers and people seeking treatment is published at Rehab-Online.org.uk

  
  

About EMCAT

EMCAT, the Ethical Marketing Campaign for Addiction Treatment, is a UK coalition of addiction professionals, campaigners and sector stakeholders. It was founded in June 2024 by advocates, volunteers and supporters of the sector.

Its work includes test-call research, regulatory submissions, legal analysis and engagement with the CQC, the ASA, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, government and the media. To preserve its neutrality, founding members with commercial interests in the sector stepped back from its strategy group in 2024.

EMCAT is operated by CR Pathways CIC, registered in England and Wales (Reg. No. 16426629), which also operates Rehab-Online.org.uk, a transparent, non-brokered directory of rehabilitation services originally established by Public Health England.