Starting from Juli 8th, 2019 all still free short .uk domains can be registered freely, without restrictions whether one already possessed the longer version under .co.uk or .org.uk. Any domain names that did not exist under .co.uk or .org.uk could be registered at any time during the last five years.

The approval process has one small inconvenience, however: Domain registrars receive lists with the third-level domain names from Nominet, the official .uk registry, which have not yet registered a second-level domain name. This allows the registrars to easily grab the domains. The larger a registrar, the more domains they are allowed to register per second. This special «release process» is seen very critically in the English domain community, so now smaller registrars have launched an online petition at 3million.uk/open-letter/ to protest against it.

Other country domain administrations are now planning similar steps as in Great Britain, e.g. in Australia at .au short domain names will now be possible and in Thailand at .th as well. In both countries it was previously, as in Great Britain, only possible to register domains under third level domains such as name.co.au or name.co.th.