Why was the ‘12’ category introduced?

The ‘12’ category was introduced in 1989 for film and 1994 for video because the Board felt that there was too much of a gap between ‘PG’ and ‘15’. The first film to receive the new ‘12’ rating nationally was Batman. In addition the American classification system had introduced a PG13 category which, without the ‘12’ category, would have meant that a number of popular films aimed at the young teenage audience would have been unavailable to anyone under 15 years of age.