The notice that costs a trader a year

How we work

Why we hand it over unprompted

A contract for home improvement work signed in a customer's own home is an off-premises contract. The consumer has fourteen days to cancel without giving a reason, and the trader must supply the prescribed cancellation information in writing. That much is reasonably well known. The part that is not is the sanction: where the trader fails to provide that information, the cancellation period is extended by twelve months.

This matters because of the sector it applies to. Home improvement has a long history of pressure selling at the kitchen table, discounts that expire tonight, and deposits taken before anyone has read anything. The cancellation right exists precisely to let someone reconsider in daylight, and the twelve-month extension exists because traders who use those tactics were unlikely to volunteer the notice. The effect is that a trader who skips a single piece of paper gives the customer a year-long right to walk away from the whole contract.

So we hand it over with every quotation accepted away from our premises, before any money changes hands, and we explain the one part that catches people out: if you ask us in writing to start inside the fourteen days and the work is then completed, the right is spent for that work. If it has begun but is unfinished, you can still cancel and pay only for what was actually supplied. Setting that out in advance is less comfortable than a signature on the night and it is the version that holds up.