Summary and Background
227.Chapter 4 concerns contracts where a trader supplies a service to a consumer. It sets out:
the rights a consumer has when a trader provides a service to them under contract; these are, in effect, contractual rights and if they are breached it is therefore a breach of contract;
what the consumer is entitled to request (and the trader must offer) if these rights are breached: that the trader re-performs the service or where that is not possible or feasible provides a reduction in the price paid for the service (we refer to these as “statutory remedies”);
that the statutory remedies do not prevent the consumer claiming other actions from the trader where they are available according to general contract law (e.g. a claim for damages, termination of the contract); and
that the trader cannot, in effect, limit its liability for less than the contract price.
228.Chapter 4 applies to all service sectors except where they are expressly excluded from one or all of its provisions. The provisions in this Chapter do not cover contracts of employment or apprenticeships and, where there is legislation that gives more detailed provision about rights or duties of particular services, that legislation will take precedence over the provisions in this Chapter. This Chapter also partially implements Articles 5 and 6 of the CRD; however certain sectors such as financial and gambling services are exempt from those provisions.
229.Currently (that is, until Chapter 4 comes into force) the SGSA provides some protection for recipients of services (whether they are consumers or not) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (its provisions on services do not extend to Scotland). It sets out that a business supplier of a service must provide that service with ‘reasonable care and skill’ and, if the time and charge have not been agreed, the service must be provided within a ‘reasonable time’ and at a ‘reasonable charge’. The way it does this is by saying that these matters are “implied terms” of a contract. Implied terms are terms that are not expressly set out in a contract (those expressly set out in a contract are called “express terms”). The effect of this is that, even if these matters are not expressly set out in the contract, these implied terms will still form part of the contract and a business supplier of a service must comply with them, unless they are excluded.
230.At the moment, there are no statutory remedies for breach of the SGSA in respect of its provisions relating solely to services.
231.Section 60 and Schedule 1 make provision for how this new legislation impacts on existing legislation. The SGSA will continue to apply to contracts between businesses.
232.Chapter 4 does not cover all legal rights and obligations surrounding the provision of services, for example there is a large amount of sector specific legislation that will affect contracts between traders and consumers.
233.In addition, the 2013 Regulations provide that, for all types of consumer contracts within scope, including most service contracts, a trader must provide certain information to the consumer before the contract is entered into.
234.In 2010, BIS commissioned a report, entitled ‘Consolidation and Simplification of UK Consumer Law(28)’ to examine how existing consumer law might be consolidated and simplified to make it more accessible to consumers, business and their advisers. That report recommended that consumer contract law would be improved if many of the provisions could be brought together into a single consumer contract law that, so far as appropriate, subjected all consumer supply contracts to the same rights and remedies. The report recommended that this be done using simpler language, such as avoiding specialist legal language including references to ‘implied terms’. The report suggested that remedies for services should be made clearer and more accessible by incorporating them into the legislation.
235.Following the 2010 report, BIS carried out a consultation, from 13 July to 5 October 2012, into proposals for reform of the law regarding contractual supplies to consumers of services, as well as of goods and digital content. This consultation covered most of the recommendations of the 2010 Report, including how to present ‘implied terms’ in easier and more accessible language, whether to introduce statutory remedies and whether to introduce a new ‘satisfactory quality’ standard for all or certain types of services.
236.Following the consultation, BIS published a government response. Most responses to the consultation supported simplification and removal of difficult to understand phrases, and the introduction of statutory remedies for when things go wrong in the provision of services. A draft Bill was published in June 2013(29) and scrutinised by the House of Commons Business Innovation and Skills Committee. The Committee published its report in December 2013(30).
The report was authored by Professor Geraint Howells and Professor Christian Twigg-Flesner available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31838/10-1255-consolidation-simplification-uk-consumer-law.pdfBack [1]
Draft Consumer Rights Bill (URN: BIS/13/925)
Draft Consumer Rights Bill; sixth report of session 2013-2014
