A look into the legal status of sex work in the UK and why criminalising customers doesn’t protect workers
Throughout my work as a sex and relationships journalist, I have spoken to countless women and LGBTQIA+ people active in the UK sex industry: from sugar babies, to dominatrixes, to escorts. Every single person I have spoken to has replied with the same response when I have asked how to support them and make their lives easier: full decriminalisation.
Currently, sex work in the UK exists in a legal grey zone. It is, in and of itself, legal, but there are certain activities within the sector that are criminalised. Lawmakers often argue that these laws exist in order to prevent ‘female exploitation’ but the reality is often the opposite – with any form of criminalisation leading to worsened conditions and a constant threat of police harassment.
While the current system is by no means perfect, sex workers are alarmed by the increased popularity of the Nordic Model, a legal model which criminalises clients but not workers, among politicians. After being implemented in countries such as France, Northern Ireland and Ireland, the model has been linked to a rise in violence against sex workers.
Often, individuals who advocate for the Nordic Model aim to ‘end the demand’ for sex work, without considering how this would impact sex workers’ livelihoods. Attempting to drive down the number of clients in the market can have a grave impact on sex workers’ quality of life, in more ways than one. As sex workers and writers Juno Mac and Molly Smith wrote in their 2018 book Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights:
Any campaign or policy that aims to reduce business for sex workers will force them to absorb the deficit, whether in their wallets or in their working conditions.
Below we explore the current legal status of sex work in the UK, speaking to dominatrix and sex worker Pamela Blonde about the potential dangers of the Nordic Model and why individuals active in the industry want full decriminalisation.
What is the current legal status of sex work in the UK – and what are the pitfalls?
Pamela Blonde is a sex worker and dominatrix who has also worked in other avenues of the sex industry as an OnlyFans content creator and a stripper. Based in Scotland, she is involved in sex work activism through her personal channels and also via Scotland For Decrim: a grassroots campaign fighting for the full decriminalisation of sex work in Scotland.
As Pamela explains, sex work is legal in the UK: both for the worker and the client. However, various activities associated with the profession are criminalised, meaning that sex workers assume social and legal risk. She says:
With the law, as it stands, it's legal to buy sex and sell sex, but there are some rules around selling and buying: for example, you cannot do street sex work. You also can’t work together, as that’s seen as brothel-keeping, which is illegal.
Below, we go into detail about the legal status of sex work in key areas such as soliciting and brothel-keeping.
Soliciting
For example, there are various legal constraints against soliciting – approaching someone to ask for, or offer, sexual services in exchange for payment – for both the worker and client.
For clients, soliciting in a public place or via a car (known as ‘kerb crawling’) is an offence, regardless of whether the activity is seen to be ‘persistent’ or a ‘nuisance’. However, this is a summary-only offence, leading to either a fine or a maximum of six months in prison.
It is also illegal for sex workers to ‘persistently’ solicit or loiter in a public place. ‘Persistent’ in this instance is defined as two or more times within the space of two months. This places street-based sex workers at considerable risk of police harassment.
Prostitute’s Cautions
For sex workers over the age of 18, ‘loitering’ or soliciting in a public place – regardless of whether it is considered persistent or not – may lead to them being issued with a ‘Prostitute’s Caution’.
This is a type of police caution which may prevent workers from assuming paid employment outside the industry, can impact the custody of their children, and can lead to deportation for those who are migrants. For reference, most cautions expire after two-and-a-half years, whereas a Prostitute's Caution will remain on your record until the age of 100.
In an open letter to the UK Parliament, the English Collective of Prostitutes has asked for Prostitute’s Cautions to be abolished, noting the severity of the measure.
Unlike other criminal cautions sex workers don’t have to admit guilt and may not even be informed that they have received one - the letter read - They are used against street sex workers who face the greatest need, the most dangerous working conditions and the harshest and most punitive policing.
Brothel-keeping
Brothel-keeping, the act of managing, owning, or assisting in the management of an establishment where individuals provide paid-for sexual services, is a crime in the UK.
Often, the criminalisation of brothel-keeping is weaponised against sex workers, preventing individuals from working together for their safety.
In her work within sex work activism, Pamela has seen how brothel-keeping charges are used against sex workers.
I saw someone get charged with brothel-keeping because she was allowing other sex workers to work from her premises for safety - Pamela explains - Luckily, the charges were dropped, but the way she was treated by the police was horrible.
What is the Nordic Model?
The Nordic Model is a framework which makes it illegal for clients to pay someone for sexual services. It’s also known by other names, including: the Swedish Model, ‘end demand’ and neo-abolitionism.
The model first emerged in Sweden in 1998 with the Kvinnofridslagen bill, which came into effect in 1999. In 2009, Norway and Iceland followed. As of 2025, the Nordic Model is in place in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Northern Ireland, France, Ireland, Israel and the state of Maine in the US.
The aim of this model is to effectively abolish the sex industry by penalising clients and therefore reducing the demand for sex work. However, this does not work in practice. As Juno Mac and Molly Smith have written, all criminal models of abolishing sex work – whether targeting sex workers or their clients – will not end the industry :
It is very difficult to prevent anyone from selling sex through criminal law. Criminalisation can make it more dangerous, but there is little the state can do to physically curtail a person's capacity to sell or trade sex.
Indeed, as the writing duo have emphasised, survival street sex work will continue to be the refuge of anyone who is struggling with extreme hardship within a capitalist society which offers little support for those in need.
Survival sex work may be dangerous, cold, and frightening – but for people whose other options are worse (hunger, homelessness, drug withdrawal) it's there as a last resort: the ‘safety net’ onto which almost any destitute person can fall. This explains the indomitable resilience of sex work.
With this in mind, it’s worth stating that the Nordic Model will not abolish the sex industry and neither will it get rid of sex workers or their clients. What it will do instead is put workers in greater danger as it makes sex work a buyers’ market. With buyers criminalised, they will be more likely to push for lower rates, and push to set the terms of interactions. Sex workers, with less work available to them, will have to lower their standards in terms of vetting and may be more likely to be placed in dangerous situations.
What are the dangers of the Nordic Model?
There is a large gap between the ideology which supposedly motivates political campaigning for the Nordic Model and the real-life impact on sex workers.
Often, proponents of the model frame it as a push for female equality. In actuality, the model has been shown to worsen the financial and physical safety of women (and people of other genders) who work in the industry. While the framework is intended to punish a presumed male client, the individuals who most feel the impact are the workers.
In 2022, Dr Niina Vuolajärvi, Assistant Professor in International Migration in the European Institute at LSE, prepared a briefing paper ahead of debates surrounding the implementation of the Nordic Model in EU states. In it, she spoke to individuals in Sweden, Norway and Finland, and found that 96% of those surveyed believe that the criminalisation of clients has made workers in the industry less safe and more vulnerable to exploitation.
When France implemented the model in 2019, activists tied the legislation to the death of ten sex workers over a 6-month period. The most high profile of these was Vanessa Campos, a migrant trans sex worker who was murdered after several months of escalating violence between sex workers forced to operate in a secluded woodland area and a local gang who had been racketeering sex workers and their clients.
Pamela first became involved with Scotland For Decrim after becoming aware that Ash Regan, a Scottish politician, was a vocal supporter of the Nordic Model and was campaigning to bring the legal framework to Scotland. She doesn’t mince her words when it comes to the dangers of the Nordic Model.
Street sex workers will have less time to check potential clients, they won’t be able to take down license plates. They'll make a very rash decision about the client and work in more secluded areas - she explains - Clients won't want to give personal details about themselves, like names or numbers. Personally, I ask for ID. Under the Nordic Model I wouldn’t be able to do that because a client would then put themself at risk of arrest.
All of this means that the client – rather than the worker – has more power.
Dangerous clients can haggle rates, they can push boundaries, and they'll know that sex workers are making less money. It actually emboldens dangerous clients - she adds.
What the framework does is make conditions worse, while failing to support workers.
The intention of the Nordic model is to get sex workers out of sex work, and we've seen that the demand for sex work doesn't drop. All it does is make it more dangerous to be a sex worker. And actually, a lot of countries haven't offered the right support for sex workers that want to leave the industry.
What are the hazards of a legalisation model?
As well as the current framework in the UK, which forces workers to operate in a legal grey zone, there are other legalisation methods in place across the world. This includes the more formal legalisation models (also referred to as ‘regulationist models’) in place in countries such as Austria, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Peru, Switzerland, and Turkey.
In these countries, sex work is permitted under specific circumstances and requires sex workers to register with the government, submit to STI testing in government facilities, and only work from licensed premises. The government also tends to restrict the number of venues or establishments which workers are permitted to operate from, and dictate where they can be located.
The Global Network of Sex Work Projects, a sex worker advocacy charity, is highly critical of this model, writing:
These regulations undermine sex workers’ human rights by restricting where sex workers can live and work, violating their privacy and bodily autonomy, and placing extra burdens on them which do not apply to other workers. In this way, legalisation does not treat sex work as a form of work like any other, but as a special form of work that needs to be heavily controlled and monitored by the state.
Pamela also notes that the model creates a two-tier system, whereby sex workers from lower income backgrounds may not have the time or finances to undertake the various checks and admin required to offer services legally. This then may lead to some workers breaking the law and once again being at risk of police intimidation and legal precarity.
If you’re living in poverty, you’re likely to break the law still under legalisation – you have to go for regular health checks, you have to have a license to be a sex worker. If you’re someone who instantly needs money, you’re going to break the law - she explains - It still gives police power over sex workers which ultimately we do not want at all. We don’t believe the police are safe people for sex workers at all.
Why is decriminalisation the best model for sex workers?
Decriminalisation is a legal framework for sex work which removes all laws governing sex work, removing legal barriers and police powers over sex workers and the advertisement of their services. It’s worth noting that this framework only applies to consenting adults over the age of 18.
New Zealand was the first country in the world to decriminalise sex work with the New Zealand Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) in 2003, a move that was motivated by the persistent lobbying of New Zealand Prostitutes Collective on human rights and harm reduction grounds. Belgium, as well as several states in Australia have since followed suit.
As highlighted by Open Democracy, five years after the PRA was implemented, the Prostitution Law Review Committee made the following summary:
The sex industry has not increased in size, and many of the social evils predicted by some who opposed the decriminalisation of the sex industry have not been experienced. On the whole, the PRA has been effective in achieving its purpose, and the Committee is confident that the vast majority of people involved in the sex industry are better off under the PRA than they were previously.
Many sex workers’ unions and advocacy groups advocate for a decriminalisation model as an option that would materially improve the lives of sex workers and make their work safer, while reducing social stigma. For Pamela, then benefits are many and multifaceted.
Decriminalisation would mean that sex workers can work together for safety without fear of arrest, it would mean that street sex workers would be left alone by the police - she explains.
A decriminalisation model would also allow sex workers to unionise, as well as being more ready to report wrongdoing done against them to the police.
I’d like to see sex workers have workers’ rights and they could do that under decriminalisation. If sex work is taken seriously as work, they can unionise, they can fight for better working condition - she says - Under decriminalisation, sex workers can feel free to go to the police as they’re not seen as doing anything wrong. It also helps destigmatise sex work which is key to making it safer and improving the lives of sex workers.
For further information, head to the English Collective of Prostitutes’ website.