Here is a rule that catches out more trades and home-improvement businesses than any other, and almost nobody hears about it until it costs them. If you agree a job with a consumer somewhere other than your own business premises — their kitchen, their driveway, a video call, over the phone — they have 14 days to cancel for any reason at all. No fault required. No dispute needed. They can simply change their mind.
Most owners' first reaction is that this cannot be right, because they have been quoting at kitchen tables for fifteen years and it has never come up. It has never come up because most customers do not change their minds. The rule only surfaces on the one job in two hundred where they do — and by then the position is already decided by paperwork you either produced at the time or did not.
Where the rule comes from
The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 govern this. They split contracts into three kinds: on-premises, distance, and off-premises. An off-premises contract is one agreed in the simultaneous physical presence of both parties somewhere that is not the trader's business premises — which describes essentially every job signed at a customer's home. Distance contracts, agreed entirely by phone, email or web form, carry the same 14-day right.
Contracts of £42 or less are outside the cancellation regime. Above that, if your customer is a consumer rather than a business, it applies.
The 14 days run from the day after the contract is made for a service, and from the day after the goods are delivered where goods are involved. The customer does not have to give a reason, and you cannot contract out of it — a clause in your own terms saying deposits are non-refundable does not override the regulations.
What actually goes wrong
The cancellation right by itself is manageable. The penalty for not disclosing it is not.
If you fail to give the customer proper written notice of their right to cancel, the cancellation period extends by a further 12 months. A customer can then cancel a year and 14 days after the contract was made, with the work long finished. And where you did not give that notice, you are not entitled to charge for the services you supplied during the cancellation period. Money already paid has to come back.
There is a criminal dimension too. Under the regulations, a trader who enters into an off-premises contract and fails to give the consumer the required cancellation information commits an offence, punishable on summary conviction by a fine up to level 5 on the standard scale. This is Trading Standards territory, not just a civil dispute.
The 14-day right is a minor inconvenience. Failing to write it down converts it into a twelve-month liability on work you have already paid your suppliers and your staff to complete.
The two versions of the same job
Take an illustrative bathroom refit agreed at the customer's house: £9,400 all in, £2,800 deposit, work starting on day four because the customer wants it done before family arrive. On day nine, the customer's circumstances change and they cancel. By then £3,100 of materials have been bought and three days of labour are in.
Version one, done properly. The written contract includes notice of the right to cancel and a model cancellation form. Because the customer wanted work to start inside the 14 days, they made an express written request for it to begin early and acknowledged they would pay for what was supplied if they cancelled. The cancellation stands, but the customer pays a proportionate amount for the services supplied up to the moment of cancellation. The fitter is out of pocket on scheduling, not on the work.
Version two, the common one. The quote was a one-page price with a start date. There is no cancellation notice, no model form, and nothing in writing about starting early. The customer cancels. Because the required information was never given, the trader is not entitled to be paid for the services supplied in the cancellation period, and the £2,800 deposit goes back. The £3,100 of materials and three days of labour come out of the business.
The gap between those two outcomes is two paragraphs and a form. That is the entire lesson.
The carve-outs, and how narrow they are
Some contracts sit outside the cancellation right, and it is worth knowing exactly which, because owners routinely assume they are covered when they are not.
Goods made to the consumer's specification or clearly personalised are excluded. Made-to-measure blinds, a bespoke kitchen carcass cut to a specific run, custom joinery — genuinely excluded. Something ordered from a supplier's standard range in a colour the customer picked usually is not, because choosing from options is not the same as manufacturing to specification.
Urgent repairs and maintenance are excluded where the consumer has specifically requested a visit for that purpose. The emergency call-out — burst pipe, no heating, roof leaking — falls outside the cancellation right. But the exclusion is narrow. It covers the urgent work requested. If you are at the property for a leak and end up agreeing to replace the whole bathroom, that second contract is an ordinary off-premises contract with a full 14-day right attached.
And the whole regime only applies to consumers. Work for a limited company or for a business customer is outside it — though a sole trader having work done at home is a consumer for that job, whatever it says on their van.
The five-minute fix
Add three things to whatever you already send out, and this stops being a risk.
One: a cancellation notice in the written contract or acceptance email. Plain wording is fine — that the customer has the right to cancel within 14 days of the day after the agreement, without giving a reason, and how to do it. Include your business name, address and email for the cancellation to be sent to.
Two: the model cancellation form. The regulations set out a template. Attach it as a second page or a PDF. Almost nobody ever uses it; its entire value is that you supplied it.
Three: an early-start clause. Where the customer wants work to begin inside the 14 days, get their express request in writing — a signed line on the acceptance, or a reply to your email confirming it — together with an acknowledgement that they will pay a proportionate amount for work supplied if they cancel. Without that request in writing, starting early is you taking the risk, not them.
Do it once, put it in the template, and it applies to every job from then on. It sits alongside the other terms worth having on every quote — see the contract clause I add to every quote now and how to write a quote that wins the job. If a job has already gone wrong, what happens if a customer takes you to small claims court covers where it goes next.
The uncomfortable truth is that the businesses which get hurt by this are not the careless ones. They are the ones who moved fast to help a customer who was in a hurry — started on Monday, sorted the paperwork later, and never got to it. The regulations do not have a category for good intentions.
Common questions
Does this apply if the customer came to my showroom?
Not to a contract concluded on your own business premises — that is an on-premises contract with no automatic cancellation right. But the distinction is about where the contract was actually made, not where the conversation started. If they visited your showroom, took a quote away, and you then signed it off at their house or agreed it by phone or email afterwards, that is an off-premises or distance contract and the 14-day right applies in full. The safest position for any business that quotes at customers' homes is to include the cancellation wording on every consumer job, because deciding case by case is exactly how one gets missed.
Can I still take a deposit?
Yes. Taking a deposit is perfectly lawful and sensible. What you cannot do is keep it if the customer cancels within the cancellation period and you did not give them the required information, and you cannot override the right with a non-refundable deposit clause in your own terms — the regulations take priority over your paperwork. Where you have given proper notice and the customer made an express written request for work to start inside the 14 days, you are entitled to a proportionate payment for what you actually supplied before cancellation, which the deposit can be set against. Refunds are due within 14 days of the cancellation.
What about emergency call-outs?
Urgent repairs and maintenance are excluded from the cancellation right where the consumer has specifically requested a visit for that purpose. A burst pipe, a failed boiler in January, a roof leaking into a bedroom — the call-out and the urgent work itself sit outside the regime. The exclusion is narrower than most people assume, though. It covers the urgent work that was requested, not everything agreed while you happen to be on site. If the emergency visit turns into a quote for a full replacement, that second agreement is an ordinary off-premises contract and carries its own 14-day cancellation right, so it needs the notice.
Does it apply to business customers?
No. The Consumer Contracts Regulations protect consumers — individuals acting for purposes outside their trade, business, craft or profession. Work for a limited company, a partnership or a business customer falls outside the cancellation regime entirely, and your own contract terms govern instead. The trap is the middle ground: a sole trader or a landlord having work done at their own home is acting as a consumer for that job regardless of what they do for a living, and a home office does not make a household job a business contract. Where the customer is an individual and the work is at their home, assume the regulations apply.
