Consumer Rights Act 2015: Critical Analysis of UK Business Law Changes

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, examining its key provisions, including those related to digital content, remedies for defective goods, and unfair contract terms. It critically assesses the policies behind the act, highlighting the legal developments that drove changes in UK businesses, such as the consolidation of previous consumer laws and the influence of European directives. The essay further analyzes the significance of the act for British businesses, emphasizing the need for compliance, transparency, and fair competition, while also acknowledging the initial challenges of implementation. It underscores the act's importance in clarifying consumer rights and obligations, promoting consumer protection, and streamlining dispute resolution processes. The essay draws on a range of sources to support its arguments and provides a detailed analysis of the act's impact on the legal and business landscape in the UK.

Consumer Rights Act, 2015

Table of Contents
Outline of the key provisions of the Act....................................................................................3
Critical assessment of the policies behind the act that drove legal developments in UK
businesses...................................................................................................................................4
How important the act will be for British businesses................................................................6
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................8

Outline of the key provisions of the Act
The Consumer Rights Act came into being on October 1st 2015. The aim of this act was to
make the provisions of the act more clear and simple to understand (Read, 2015).The act
deals with the redressal of disputes taking place between the consumer and the businesses.
With the help of this act, the dispute settlement has become easy as well as cheap and speedy
solutions are offered. The act has adopted many new changes that are relevant to the
consumers as well as to the businesses, who undertake direct selling of products and services
(Citizens Advice, 2019). It has provided alternative dispute resolution facility to the
consumers in order to avoid court proceedings. Though, the act has also mentioned that if the
court proceedings are important, then the act will automatically increase the ability of the
court to intervene in the contact. One of the most important changes that have been adopted
in this act is in the Part 1, which deals with the digital content (Field Fisher, 2015). Earlier to
this act, the intangible digital property was not considered as goods by this act. In this act, the
CRA has included a new chapter that specifically deals with the digital content in order to
protect the rights of the consumer, when it comes to digital goods. For the successful
implementation of this, the act has introduced implied terms according to which, the digital
content should offer satisfactory quality which is appropriate for a particular purpose or is
according to the description. If any of these conditions are not met, then the consumer has the
right to replace or return the product, or ask to repair the product or a reduction in the price of
the goods. Apart from this, the consumer can also claim compensation if their electronic
device is damaged due to the digital content. Also if the trader is not able to supply the
content, then the consumer has the right to receive the full refund (Hughes Paddison, 2015).
Apart from this, new remedies for defective or faulty goods have also been included in the
CRA, 2015. This offers a tiered system of remedies to the consumer, according to which, a
short-term rejection period is offered to the consumer, which is of 30 days, which can be

extended by the businesses but, it cannot be shortened. Apart from this, partial rejection is
also offered along with repair or replacement choice and right to price reduction (Herbert
Smith Freehills, 2015).
The CRA has also included the rules related to the unfair contract terms, which was hitherto
found in Unfair Contract Terms Act, 1977 as well as in the Unfair Terms of Consumer
contracts Regulations 1999. This inclusion has focused majorly on the transparency as well as
on the prominence of the terms of contract. According to this, the terms of contract must be
transparent. Along with it, the act has also included a “grey list” which was found in the
Consumer Contracts Regulations. This addition is in the favour of the businesses, as it gives
the trader the discretion to dissolve any contract unilaterally (Herbert Smith Freehills, 2015).
It can be said that many important and necessary changes has been implemented through this
Consumer Rights Act 2015. This marks as a significant development in the consumer
contracts regulation. Also, this act has taken an initiative to consolidate and bring a
consistency by bringing together the provisions of many different acts and regulations,
majorly emphasising on the digital content, new remedies to the consumers as well as unfair
contract terms.
Critical assessment of the policies behind the act that
drove legal developments in UK businesses
This act has marked itself as a landmark act in the consumer rights law that has been
generated over years depending upon the changes and developments in the businesses of the
country. This law has taken the initiative to consolidate different acts that has been guiding
the businesses of the country till now and that hold relevance to the consumer rights. Earlier
to this act, the consumer law of UK was complex as well as was present in fragments and
also lacked clarity of the provisions. Hence, this law was important to develop the consumer
law of the country. One of the main reasons behind this complexity was the adoption of UK

law, which was influenced by the policies and directives of the Europe. Some of the policies
that were adopted along with the business development of the country were Consumer Sales
Directive as well as the Unfair Terms Directive. The main aim of these polices were to
introduce changes to the sale of goods and supply of services along with the general
contracting regime. But, the implementation of these laws in the UK law was proved to be
less smooth. This policy was criticized by the Davidson Review in the year 2006, which
explored the implementation of European Directives within the local laws of the land and
concluded that the laws are complex in nature. On the other hand, criticisms of the Unfair
Terms policy were also being carried on by experts with respect to its overlapping regime.
Along with the development of the business, the country tried to supplement the already
existing law that is Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 with the adoption of new regulations via
Unfair Terms Directive, 1993. Hence, in the year 2005, the Law Commission recommended
to adopt a unified regime in order to reduce the complexity ass well as uncertainty of the
present policies guiding the consumer law. The main issues were that the European laws were
just introduced in the domestic law and no efforts were taken towards integrating these laws
with the UK national laws (Giliker, 2017). Also as many policies were available a common
problem that was being faced was that a specific regulation was not there and as a result, a
huge chaos and confusion was made when it came to dispute settlement between the
consumer and the businesses. Hence, because of this, a common frame of reference was not
available to the consumers. Also, the process of getting justice was delayed due to confusion
caused by so many acts and policies guiding the consumer law of the land. One thing that
needs special mention here is that the earlier polices included European Directives which
may be good for the states of EU but, improvisation was required depending upon the
conditions and availability of the local law (Howells & Twigg-Flesner, 2010).

According to the Briefing Paper provided by the House of Commons, this act has been
developed as a fragment over a period of thirty years. In order to offer a high degree of
consumer protection, the law of the land ended up developing unnecessarily complex and
unclear policies, which failed to keep up with the technological advancements taking place.
The consumers of UK spent nearly £90 billion in a month, yet, they found difficulty in
understanding their legal rights and obligations. Apart from this, the changes in the unfair
terms were required as UTCA 1977 contained some terms in contract that were automatically
non-binding. On the other hand, the UTCCRs gave the powers to consumer to challenge
majority of the non-negotiated terms of the contract, if they considered them to be unfair.
Hence, the UCTA 1977 and the UTCRRs were inconsistent and overlapping in nature and
hence, it created uncertainty for the consumers and the businesses (Conway, 2017).
How important the act will be for British businesses
It is important to know that this act is not applicable to business to business (B2B) sales, it is
applicable to only those business activities that includes business to consumer sales (Burton,
2015). The act is very important for the businesses, as they need to know what changes they
are supposed to adopt in order to oblige with the new law. Also, this act is important as they
still continue to use the warranties that were implied in the contract by the Sale of Goods Act
1979 (Coffin Mew, 2015). Many changes need to be adopted by the businesses, like for
example, updating the sales team as well as after sales team. This is necessary to make the
sales team aware about the promises that they are making and the quality of the product and
services that the organization is offering are in alignment. Also, this is important to the
businesses as now they will adopt transparency in their activities and no fake promises will
be encouraged now that were used to rule the market. Though, it is believed that the
compliance with this act will increase the burden on the businesses for a limited span as,
proper awareness creation is required in the business so that the employees ensure that there

is not any breach of the act (Muckle, 2015). I believe that one of the most important benefits
of this act to the British businesses is that a fair competition will be practiced in the market
now and also, the confusions that were caused earlier due to overlapping of different acts and
policies can also be avoided now giving a relief to the businesses.

Bibliography
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