Rejected petition A petition for a national referendum on the reduction of the voting age to 16

People younger than 18 years of age are consider by law to be children.

This petition calls for a referendum of the current UK electorate on whether the voting age should be reduced from 18 to 16 years of age.

More details

In the UK a person below the age of 18 is not allowed to make decisions on consuming alcohol or cigarettes and are banned from proscribed establishments such as sexually explicit entertainment venues. People under 18 years of age are not considered adult in many sectors of the law, including employment and criminality.

The law implies that a person younger than 18 has not reached maturity and requires state protection and guidance. This is incompatible with the proposed age reduction.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

You may wish to sign the following petition, which calls for similar action:

We call for a referendum before extending voting rights to 16 & 17-year-olds: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/733679

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 21 July 2025
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.