Are electronic signatures legal in the UK?
Yes. UK law has recognised electronic signatures for over twenty years, and they can be used for almost every business document. The questions that matter in practice are what the document needs and what evidence you keep.
The short answer
An electronic signature is legally valid in England and Wales for most documents: contracts, engagement letters, client care letters, tenancy agreements, consent forms and many more. Three sources say so:
- The Electronic Communications Act 2000 (section 7) makes an electronic signature admissible in evidence on whether a document is authentic and has kept its integrity.
- UK eIDAS, the retained version of EU Regulation 910/2014, says an electronic signature cannot be denied legal effect or admissibility as evidence just because it is electronic (Article 25).
- The Law Commission’s 2019 report on the electronic execution of documents (Law Com No 386) concluded that an electronic signature can validly execute a document, deeds included, provided the signer intends to authenticate it and any formalities are met. The government has accepted that conclusion.
What the courts have accepted
English courts look at whether the person intended to authenticate the document, not at the technology. Typed names, clicked “I accept” buttons and signatures drawn on a screen have all been treated as signatures. Two examples:
- Bassano v Toft [2014] EWHC 377 (QB): clicking an “I accept” button was a valid signature on a regulated consumer credit agreement.
- Neocleous v Rees [2019] EWHC 2462 (Ch): a name in an automatically generated email footer signed a contract for the sale of land, which has stricter formality rules than most contracts.
The other side of the coin: in J Pereira Fernandes v Mehta [2006] EWHC 813 (Ch), an email address that the email system inserted automatically was not a signature, because nothing showed the sender meant it to authenticate the message. Intention is the test.
Documents with their own rules
A few kinds of document carry formalities an ordinary e-signature may not meet:
- Wills. The Wills Act 1837 requires the will-maker to sign in the presence of two witnesses. Electronic signatures are not currently accepted for wills.
- Deeds. A deed can be signed electronically, but it must still be witnessed, and the Law Commission’s view is that the witness must be physically present.
- Documents registered at HM Land Registry. The Registry accepts electronically signed deeds only through the process in its Practice Guide 82.
- Lasting powers of attorney and other documents lodged with a registry follow that registry’s own process.
This guide covers England and Wales. Scotland has its own rules on the formal validity of documents, under which some documents need an advanced electronic signature.
Valid is not the same as provable
Validity is rarely the problem. When a signature is challenged, the dispute is about evidence: was it really this person, and is this exactly the document they signed? That is where electronic signing can be stronger than ink, if the evidence is kept properly:
- who the document was sent to, and how they proved it was them (for example a one-time passcode sent to their email);
- a record of every step (sent, opened, verified, signed) with times, which cannot be edited afterwards;
- a fingerprint of the document as signed, so any later change is visible.
Pactivo provides a Simple Electronic Signature (SES) under UK eIDAS. Every signer clears a one-time passcode sent to their email, every event goes into a hash-chained audit trail, and the finished PDF is sealed with a PAdES digital signature and an RFC 3161 timestamp. Our guide on proving a document has not been changed explains each of those, and the SES, AES and QES guide covers when a higher tier is needed.
This page explains the general position in plain English. It is not legal advice; for a decision about a specific document, take advice from a solicitor.