If you agreed to work in your home rather than at the trader’s premises, you normally have 14 days to cancel without giving any reason. For services the clock starts the day after the contract is made. If the trader never told you in writing about the right, it can last up to a year longer.
Where does this right come from?
Part 3 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013. Regulation 29 states the right in the broadest terms: "The consumer may cancel a distance or off-premises contract at any time in the cancellation period without giving any reason."
No reason. Not a fault, not a defect, not a change in your circumstances that you have to justify. Buyer’s remorse is a complete answer.
Which contracts qualify?
An off-premises contract is one agreed away from the trader’s business premises — which for domestic work usually means agreed in your home. It covers the doorstep sale and the free-survey-then-sign-here visit, and it equally covers the reputable builder you invited round, because the test is where the contract was made, not how it came about.
It does not cover work you agreed by going to the trader’s own shop or office. That is an on-premises contract and carries no automatic cancellation right at all.
Regulation 27 also carves out some contract types entirely, and excludes off-premises contracts where the payment is not more than £42.
How long exactly, and when does the clock start?
Regulation 30 sets the period at 14 days, and the starting point depends on what you bought.
- For a service — most trade work — the period ends 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into.
- For goods, it ends 14 days after the day the goods come into the physical possession of you or someone you nominated.
Note the wording: 14 days after the day. The day you agreed is not day one.
What if nobody told you about the right?
Then it does not expire on schedule. Regulation 31 handles this, and the effect is substantial.
If the trader did not give you the cancellation information required by Schedule 2 but later provides it within 12 months, the cancellation period ends 14 days after you receive that information. If they never provide it at all, the period ends 12 months after the day on which it would otherwise have ended under regulation 30.
That is the practical answer to a common situation: work agreed on the doorstep months ago, no paperwork ever given, a bad feeling since. The right may well still be alive.
The trader has already started. Now what?
This is the part that catches people out, and it works in your favour more often than traders imply.
Regulation 36 begins from a default: "The trader must not begin the supply of a service before the end of the cancellation period." Work is not supposed to start inside the 14 days at all.
There is an exception, and it has conditions. The trader may start early if you make an express request — and for an off-premises contract, that request must be made in writing on a durable medium.
If you did make that request and then cancel part-way through, you must pay the trader an amount proportionate to what has been supplied up to the point of cancellation. That is fair, and it is the trade-off for getting the work started sooner.
But regulation 36 also provides that the consumer bears no cost where there was no express request, or where the trader failed to provide the required cancellation information. In other words: a trader who started work inside the cancellation window without a written request from you, or who never told you the right existed, cannot then charge you for what they did.
Which jobs are excluded from the cancellation right?
Regulation 28 lists them. The exclusions most likely to come up on domestic work are:
- Urgent repairs or maintenance where you specifically requested a visit for that purpose. Calling out an emergency plumber at midnight is the textbook case, and you should not expect a cancellation right on the call-out itself.
- Goods made to your specification or clearly personalised — bespoke joinery, made-to-measure blinds, a kitchen cut to your dimensions.
- Goods liable to deteriorate or expire rapidly.
- Accommodation, transport, vehicle hire, catering or leisure services where the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance.
Two cautions. A trader cannot convert an ordinary job into an urgent repair by describing it as one, and the exclusion for personalised goods covers goods genuinely made to your specification, not standard stock in a colour you picked.
How do you actually cancel?
In writing, and keep proof. The Regulations require a cancellation form to be provided as part of the Schedule 2 information, but you are not obliged to use it — any clear statement that you are cancelling will do.
- Email, so there is a timestamp and a copy in your sent folder. Say clearly that you are cancelling the contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013.
- Identify the contract: date agreed, address, what the work was.
- Send it inside the period. What matters is that you sent the notice in time, not that the trader had read it.
- If you paid a deposit, ask for it back in the same message.
- Keep everything — the original paperwork, your notice, and any reply.
If the trader disputes it, Citizens Advice runs the consumer service that can advise on your position and refer matters to Trading Standards.
What to do next
If you agreed to something on your doorstep in the last few weeks and are having second thoughts, check the date, check whether you were ever given written cancellation information, and send the notice today rather than tomorrow.
If you are at the earlier stage and simply choosing who to ask, our guide to what a trader must give you in writing sets out exactly what should be in your hands before you are bound by anything. The category pages here also state what the law requires of each trade and how to verify it — a cheaper check than a cancellation.