Signed at the Kitchen Table: The Cancellation Rule That Can Leave a Builder Unpaid

A builder prices a kitchen extension at the customer’s table, the customer signs, and the job starts the following Monday. Six weeks later the work is finished and the customer refuses to pay. If one piece of paper was missing from that first visit, the law may be on the customer’s side, and the builder may also have committed a criminal offence.

This is a practical account of the cancellation rules that apply when work is agreed in a customer’s home, which jobs fall outside them, and why the fix now lives in the quote system and the website rather than in a drawer of carbon-copy forms. It sits alongside our trades and construction page and the earlier post on CDM duties for domestic jobs. It is not legal advice.

Where the contract is agreed decides the rules

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 apply across the UK, Scotland included. They sort every consumer contract into one of three kinds, and the kind decides what you owe the customer before they are bound. The one that matters most to trades is defined in regulation 5:

In plain terms, three common ways of winning a job land in different places:

• Priced and signed on the visit. Agreed face to face, in the customer’s home. That is an off-premises contract under paragraph (a).
• Agreed entirely online or by phone. A quote request through the website, a price by email, and an acceptance by reply, with nobody meeting before the deal is done. That is a distance contract, which carries its own information duties and its own 14-day right to cancel.
• Surveyed in person, quoted and accepted by email afterwards. This is the grey one. Accepted immediately after the visit, it can still be off-premises under paragraph (c). Accepted a fortnight later, after the customer has compared three quotes, it may not be. Which side of the line a firm’s usual process falls on is exactly the question to put to an adviser once, rather than guessing on every job.

For both distance and off-premises service contracts, regulation 30 gives the customer 14 days from the day the contract is made to cancel without giving a reason.

Three consequences of leaving out the cancellation notice

Most trades know a 14-day right exists. Far fewer know what happens when the customer is never told about it.

It is a criminal offence for off-premises contracts

Paragraph (l) is the cancellation right itself: “the conditions, time limit and procedures for exercising that right”. Paragraph (n) is the customer’s liability to pay for work done if they cancel after asking you to start early. Regulation 10 also requires a cancellation form, and all of it must be given “on paper or, if the consumer agrees, on another durable medium”. The offence carries a fine at level 5 on the standard scale, the top band for a summary offence.

Fourteen days can become a year and fourteen days

Under regulation 31, if the cancellation information is never given, “the cancellation period ends at the end of 12 months after the day on which it would have ended”. A job finished in week six is still inside a cancellation window that the customer did not know they had, and that the firm did not know it had given them.

And the work already done may not have to be paid for

Read those three together and the opening scenario stops being hypothetical. No notice means an offence, a cancellation period still running when the job is finished, and work the customer may not owe a penny for.

Starting inside the fortnight

Customers routinely want work to start next week, and nothing in the rules stops that. Regulation 36(1) sets the condition: the trader “must not begin the supply of a service before the end of the cancellation period” unless the consumer “has made an express request, and… in the case of an off-premises contract, has made the request on a durable medium.”

That last clause catches firms out. “Aye, start Monday” across the kitchen table is an express request, but it is not on a durable medium. A signed line on the paperwork, or an email or message from the customer, is.

Done properly, the arithmetic is fair to both sides. If a customer who asked for an early start cancels part-way through, regulation 36(4) says they pay for what has been supplied, in proportion to the whole job. And if the service is fully performed after a proper request, with the customer’s acknowledgement that the right would then be lost, regulation 36(2) ends the right to cancel altogether.

Which jobs fall outside the rules

• New builds and full conversions. Regulation 6(1)(e) takes contracts “for the construction of new buildings, or the construction of substantially new buildings by the conversion of existing buildings” out of the Regulations entirely. Extensions, refurbishments, re-roofs, rewires and bathrooms are not new buildings.
• Genuine emergencies. Regulation 28(1)(e) removes the right to cancel where “the consumer has specifically requested a visit from the trader for the purpose of carrying out urgent repairs or maintenance”. Regulation 28(2) then claws it back for any extra services sold on that visit, and for goods beyond the parts needed for the repair. The burst pipe is exempt. The new boiler you quoted while you were there is not.
• Small jobs agreed at the door. Under regulation 7(4), the pre-contract information rules do not apply to off-premises contracts where the customer pays no more than £42.

Anything not on that list should be treated as covered until an adviser says otherwise. Bespoke goods, such as made-to-measure windows, raise their own questions under regulation 28(1)(b), and are worth settling in writing before they are tested.

Why this is a website question

Ten years ago the answer was a pad of forms in the van. Today most quotes are typed, emailed and accepted on a phone, and a builder’s website is often where the enquiry starts. That makes the quote system the natural place to get this right once, rather than relying on somebody remembering on every visit. On a trades site we build, that means:

• The cancellation notice and form travel with every quote. Part A of Schedule 3 to the Regulations provides model cancellation wording, and a trader who supplies it “correctly filled in” is treated as having given the required information. It can go on every quote PDF and every acceptance email, automatically.
• Acceptance asks the start-date question. If the customer wants work to begin inside the 14 days, the acceptance step collects that request in writing, with the acknowledgement that the right ends once the job is complete. It is one tick box and one sentence, and it produces the durable record regulation 36 asks for.
• A record of what was sent, and when. Every quote, notice and acceptance is kept against the job. If a payment is ever disputed, the date the customer received the notice is the whole argument.
• A plain-words terms page, linked from the quote, covering the cancellation right, payment stages, and what happens if either side pulls out.
• Urgent and planned work on separate routes. The emergency exemption only covers the emergency. Keeping the two enquiry types apart on the site, as our trades page argues for other reasons, also keeps the paperwork for each clean.

None of that slows down a job. It removes a failure that otherwise depends on the busiest person in the firm remembering a form on a wet Thursday.

What we would not put on a trade website

• “No cancellations once the quote is accepted.” For most home-improvement work it is not true, and saying it does not make it so.
• Cancellation terms we have written for you. The wording comes from the firm and its adviser, and goes up exactly as supplied. We build where it appears and make sure it is sent.
• Terms behind a link nobody opens. If the customer needs it before they are bound, it belongs in the quote and on the acceptance screen.
• A website tick box treated as cover for a contract signed in person. An off-premises contract needs its information on paper or a durable medium at the time. A checkbox on a form the customer filled in last month is not that.

Sources and method

• Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, regulation 5: definitions of distance, off-premises and on-premises contracts, and of durable medium.
• Regulation 6: paragraph (1)(e), new buildings and substantial conversions.
• Regulation 7: paragraph (4), the £42 threshold for off-premises contracts.
• Regulation 10: information and cancellation form before an off-premises contract, on paper or a durable medium.
• Regulation 19: the offence of failing to give notice of the right to cancel.
• Regulation 28: paragraphs (1)(b), (1)(e) and (2), the exclusions relevant to trades.
• Regulations 30 and 31: the 14-day period and its 12-month extension.
• Regulation 36: starting work inside the cancellation period, payment for work done, and paragraph (6).
• Schedule 2, paragraphs (l), (n) and (o), and Schedule 3: the model cancellation instructions and form.

What this post does not do. Central Systems builds websites. We are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice. It does not tell any firm whether a particular contract is off-premises, distance or on-premises, whether a job counts as urgent, or what its terms should say. It does not cover commercial clients, who are not consumers under these Regulations, or the separate rules on unfair terms, deposits and building warrants. Legislation changes: the linked text is authoritative and this page is not.

Questions builders ask us

Does this apply to commercial work?

No. The Regulations protect consumers, meaning individuals acting outside their trade or business. A contract with a company or a landlord letting as a business is outside them, though other rules apply.

We always email the quote after the survey. Are we off-premises?

It depends on how soon, and how, the customer accepts. Accepted on the spot or straight after the visit, possibly yes. Accepted days later after comparing quotes, possibly not. Ask an adviser to look at your actual process once, then build the paperwork around the answer.

Can we take a deposit for materials inside the 14 days?

Deposits are not prohibited, but they sit inside the cancellation rules and the fairness rules at the same time. If the customer cancels lawfully, what can be kept depends on what was supplied and what was agreed. Settle the wording with an adviser before it goes on a quote.

The customer told us to crack on. Is that not enough?

For an off-premises contract, regulation 36(1)(b) says the request has to be on a durable medium. A reply to your quote email saying “please start on the 20th” is; a handshake is not.

Does any of this help with search?

Indirectly. A quote process that sends clear terms produces fewer disputes and better reviews, and pages that answer real questions plainly are the ones search engines and assistants quote. The bigger effect is getting paid.

Our quoting software already has terms. Is that enough?

Read them. Generic templates often say nothing about the 14-day right, or say it in a way that does not match how you actually start jobs. The customer is contracting with you, not the software.