Template · Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013

Cancelling inside the cooling-off period

Sign a contract at your kitchen table and you usually get fourteen days to change your mind, at no cost. Sign it in the builder’s office and you get none. This page asks where you signed, when, and whether they put the cancellation information in writing, then works out the date your right runs out and writes the letter that uses it.

1. Where the contract was made

This is the question that decides everything else. The cooling-off right exists for contracts made away from the trader’s premises and for contracts made at a distance. It does not exist for a contract you concluded in their showroom or office.

How the contract was concluded A quote written at your table and signed there is off-premises. A contract signed in their office right after they visited you at home can also be off-premises. Signing in the office after you walked in off the street is not. This contract is for building a new house, or for converting an existing building into what is essentially a new one Regulation 6(1)(e) takes contracts for the construction of new buildings, and the construction of substantially new buildings by the conversion of existing buildings, outside the Regulations entirely. An extension, a loft conversion, a rewire or a kitchen is normally still inside them. I specifically asked this trader to visit to carry out urgent repairs or maintenance, and this contract is for that urgent work Regulation 28(1)(e) removes the right to cancel from those contracts. Regulation 28(2) leaves it in place for any services beyond the urgent repair, and for goods other than the replacement parts needed to do it, agreed on the same visit.

2. Who, and what for

Your full name Trader’s name or company name Your address Trader’s address Your email or phone, optional Their quote or reference number, optional

What the contract was for Enough to identify the contract beyond argument. Their own quote number and date does most of the work.

3. Dates

Date the contract was entered into The day you signed, or accepted the quote, or paid the deposit, whichever made the contract. The fourteen days start the day after. Date you will send the cancellation Today, unless you are planning ahead. Sending on the last day still counts, under regulation 32(5).

Did they give you written information about the right to cancel? Paragraph (l) of Schedule 2 is the requirement: the conditions, time limit and procedures for cancelling. A line buried in terms you were never handed does not count. If you are not sure, say no, and the letter says only that you were not given it. Date you received that information

4. Work and money Has any work started? Regulation 36(1) is the rule they are supposed to follow: no starting before the period ends unless you expressly asked, and on an off-premises contract the request has to be on a durable medium, which means in writing.

They told me in writing, before the work began, that I would have to pay for work already done if I cancelled Paragraph (n) of Schedule 2. If they did not, regulation 36(6)(a) says you bear no cost for the work at all, however much of it got done. The work is now completely finished Not part-finished. Everything the contract covered.

Total price agreed, optional Amount you have paid them, optional

Roughly how much of the whole job has been done, optional A percentage, and your own estimate. The letter puts it forward as an estimate and asks them for an itemised account, because regulation 36(5) calculates the proportion on the total price agreed and neither of you gets to simply assert it. How you would like the refund, optional Leave it blank and the letter asks for the same means of payment you used, which is what regulation 34(7) requires anyway. Fill it in only if you would rather have it another way, because the same paragraph lets you agree to something else expressly. Either way regulation 34(8) stops them charging you a fee for making the refund. Send the statutory model cancellation form with the notice Regulation 32(3) gives you a choice: the model form in Part B of Schedule 3, or any other clear statement. The notice is already a clear statement, so the form is not needed. It is worth attaching anyway, because it costs nothing and it takes away an argument about form before anyone can start it. Untick this and the page builds the notice on its own and says nothing about a form. Finance, credit, insurance, a warranty or a service plan was arranged through this trader for this job Regulation 38 terminates those automatically when you cancel, at no cost to you, and regulation 38(2) makes it the trader’s job to tell the other company. This is the paragraph that stops a finance agreement carrying on after the building work has gone. What it was, and who with, if you know, optional

The rules this page applies

Reg 27

Where the right exists at all Part 3 of the Regulations, the part that carries the right to cancel, applies to distance and off-premises contracts. An off-premises contract is one concluded in the simultaneous physical presence of trader and consumer somewhere that is not the trader’s business premises: the kitchen table, in other words. A contract you signed in their office or showroom is an on-premises contract and carries no cooling-off right at all.

Reg 30(2)

Fourteen days For a service contract the cancellation period ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into. The day of signing is not counted; the clock starts the next day. Regulation 29(2) puts the start of the period at the moment the contract is entered into.

Reg 31

Extended when they did not tell you If the trader did not give you the information on the right to cancel required by paragraph (l) of Schedule 2, the period is extended. Give it late but within twelve months and the period ends 14 days after you receive it. Never give it and the period ends 12 months after the day it would otherwise have ended.

Reg 17(1)

They have to prove they told you In case of dispute about the trader’s compliance with any of regulations 10 to 16, it is for the trader to show that the provision was complied with. So you do not have to prove a negative. If they say the cancellation information was given, it is for them to produce it, with the date and the manner in which it was given.

Reg 36

Work already done A trader must not start before the cancellation period ends unless you expressly asked, in writing on an off-premises contract. If you did ask and they did tell you about the cost, you pay for what was actually supplied up to the moment you cancelled, in proportion to the whole contract. If either of those is missing, regulation 36(6) says you bear no cost at all.

Reg 34

Your money back in 14 days The trader must reimburse all payments received from you without undue delay, and in any event not later than the end of 14 days after the day they are told of your decision to cancel.

Reg 32

Any clear statement will do You may use the model form in Part B of Schedule 3, or make any other clear statement setting out the decision to cancel. A cancellation sent before the end of the period counts, even if it lands afterwards. But in a dispute it is for you to show it was sent in time, which is why proof of sending matters more than the wording.

Reg 38

The finance goes with it Cancel the main contract and any ancillary contract is automatically terminated, without any costs for you. An ancillary contract is one by which you acquire goods or services related to the main contract, provided either by the trader or by a third party on the basis of an arrangement between that third party and the trader: finance arranged at the table, an extended warranty, an insurance policy sold alongside. Regulation 38(2) puts the job of telling the other trader on your trader, not on you.

Before you send it

Send it in a way you can prove. Regulation 32(6) puts the burden on you to show the contract was cancelled inside the period. Email is the easiest proof. If you post it, use a service that records the posting, and keep the receipt with a copy of the letter.
Sending is what counts, not arriving. Under regulation 32(5) a cancellation sent before the end of the period is effective even if it reaches them later. That is the whole reason to send it on the last day rather than give up on it.
Tell them to stop. If anyone is due on site, say so in the covering email as well as the letter, and say it early. Work carried out after you have cancelled is not work you asked for.
Deposits are payments. Regulation 34(1) requires reimbursement of all payments received from you, so a deposit comes back like anything else. A contract term calling a deposit non-refundable does not survive a valid cancellation under the Regulations. The money has to come back the same way it went out, under regulation 34(7), unless you expressly agree otherwise, and regulation 34(8) forbids a fee for making the refund. A credit note is not a refund.
Chase the finance separately, even though you should not have to. Regulation 38 terminates an ancillary contract automatically and at no cost to you, and regulation 38(2) makes it the trader’s job to tell the finance or insurance company. In practice that call does not always get made, and the direct debit is what tells you. Send the finance company a copy of the cancellation yourself on the same day, and diary a check of the account a fortnight later.
Send the statutory model form as well. The letter this page builds is already a clear statement under regulation 32(3)(b), which is all the Regulations require. But some traders only recognise their own process, so unless you switch it off in the form above the page also fills in the model cancellation form from Part B of Schedule 3 for you to attach. It costs nothing to send both and it removes an argument about form before anyone can start it.
Card and finance routes exist too. If you paid by credit card and the price of the item was more than £100 and not more than £30,000, section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the card provider jointly liable with the trader for breach of contract or misrepresentation. Debit card payments have no equivalent statutory route, though chargeback may be available through your bank’s own scheme.
They may also have committed an offence. On an off-premises contract, failing to give the information in paragraphs (l), (m) or (n) of Schedule 2 is an offence under regulation 19, punishable on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale. Trading Standards act on those reports, and the route to them is the Citizens Advice consumer service.
If the right has gone, the job is not over. Losing the cooling-off right says nothing about whether the work was any good. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 still requires the service to be performed with reasonable care and skill, and that is a separate letter.
How the sale itself was made can be a separate route. Part 4A of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 gives a consumer rights of redress where a misleading action or an aggressive practice was a significant factor in the decision to enter into the contract. That Part was saved when the rest of those Regulations were revoked on 6 April 2025, and it still runs. The strongest of those rights, the right to unwind under regulation 27E, has to be exercised within 90 days beginning with the later of the day the contract was made and the day performance began, and only while the service has not been fully performed. Whether any of it fits turns entirely on what was said to you at the table, which no template can judge, so put it to the Citizens Advice consumer service rather than asserting it in a letter.

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 apply across the United Kingdom: England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland alike. They apply to contracts entered into on or after 13 June 2014. Where enforcement is concerned the local Trading Standards service differs by nation, and in Northern Ireland the Department for the Economy takes that role.

These are starting points, not legal advice. A template cannot read your contract, and it cannot tell whether what you signed at the table was the contract or an invitation to quote, whether the trader is a trader within the meaning of the Regulations, or whether the job is really a new building. Where a lot of money turns on the answer, take it to Citizens Advice or a solicitor before you send anything, and do not rely on the dates in this page as the only record of your position.

Cancelling inside the cooling-off period

Templates are switched off at the moment

The rules this page applies

Before you send it