Scotland has made a targeted set of amendments to its tobacco control secondary legislation, with separate commencement dates in late 2026 and early 2027. According to Scottish Statutory Instrument 2026/278, made on 30 September 2026 and laid before the Scottish Parliament on 2 October 2026, the changes focus on retailer notices, warning statements and a consequential correction to fixed penalty regulations. The instrument is titled the Sale of Tobacco (Miscellaneous and Consequential Amendment) (Scotland) Regulations 2026. Regulations 1, 2 and 4 take effect on 27 November 2026, while regulation 3 takes effect on 1 January 2027.
The most immediate operational change falls on premises that must display a banning order notice under section 19 of the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010. The legislation.gov.uk text shows that the prescribed notice size will increase from 297 millimetres by 420 millimetres to 420 millimetres by 594 millimetres, and the regulations now add a definition of the word character. The same amendment also resets the minimum size of the wording on the notice. The heading must use characters at least 18 millimetres high, and the rest of the statement must use characters at least 10 millimetres high. In practice, this means affected retailers will need larger and more legible signage from 27 November 2026.
This is not a new duty to display a notice; it is a change to the prescribed format used to meet an existing one. Under the 2010 Act, a person in retail premises covered by a banning order must display the notice in those premises, and the 2026 regulations adjust the physical specifications rather than the underlying obligation. The explanatory note is particularly important on transition. It states that the new size requirements apply to all notices from 27 November 2026, including notices linked to tobacco and vaping product banning orders made under section 15 of the 2010 Act before 29 October 2026. Retailers already operating under an order should therefore not assume that older signage can remain in place unchanged.
A second change, commencing on 1 January 2027, affects the warning statement that must be displayed in premises where a tobacco business is carried on. Regulation 3 amends the Sale of Tobacco (Display of Warning Statements) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 by substituting 21 for 36 in regulation 2(3), changing the prescribed text size for the statement while leaving the dimensions of the notice itself unchanged. The explanatory material states that, from 1 January 2027, the notice must contain the statement that it is illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009. For retailers, the practical point is that the wording and presentation of the in-store warning notice will need to match the revised legal specification from that date.
Regulation 4 is narrower but still relevant for enforcement teams and compliance officers. It amends the heading of regulation 7 in the Sale of Tobacco (Registration of Moveable Structures and Fixed Penalty Notices) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 by removing the words 'all other'. That change follows wider amendments already made under the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 and the associated Scottish consequential regulations. As the explanatory note sets out, sections 54 and 55 of the 2026 Act repealed the offences of a person under 18 purchasing tobacco products and of a person under 18 failing to comply with a confiscation request. The heading change is therefore a consequential drafting amendment so that the regulation title matches the offences that remain; it does not introduce a fresh penalty level in its own right.
The legal basis for the instrument sits across both the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 and the Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026. The Scottish Ministers cite sections 8(5) and 19(5) of the 2010 Act and section 169(1)(a) of the 2026 Act, with the explanatory note recording that section 57(1) of the 2026 Act came into force for regulation-making purposes on 29 April 2026 and for other purposes on 29 October 2026. Maree Todd signed the instrument on behalf of the Scottish Ministers at St Andrew’s House on 30 September 2026. For policy readers, that timing matters because it shows the amendments are part of the implementation work now taking place ahead of the later 2026 and 2027 tobacco control changes.
For businesses, the compliance impact is practical rather than conceptual. Scottish tobacco retailers, including any premises subject to banning orders, will need to check whether their current notices still meet the prescribed dimensions and character heights from 27 November 2026, and whether their standard warning statement materials are ready for the separate 1 January 2027 change. For regulators and local enforcement officers, the instrument removes avoidable ambiguity. Notice formats are clearer, the transition position for existing banning order notices is stated expressly, and the fixed penalty regulations are brought into line with repealed offences. The overall effect is a limited but operationally important update to Scotland’s tobacco sales framework rather than a broad new policy scheme.