After the quote

You started on the Tuesday. He can still cancel on the Friday.

Published 2026-08-22 6 min read

The short answer

For work agreed in the customer’s home, the contract can be cancelled within 14 days. Begin before that without a written request from him, and he owes nothing for what you have done.

You looked at the job, talked it through at his kitchen table, shook hands and started the following week. That is an off-premises contract, and the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 attach a fourteen-day cancellation right to it.

Regulation 30(2) is plain about when the clock runs out: for a service contract the period ends “at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into”. Not after the work starts. After the handshake.

Most tradespeople hear this and file it under paperwork. It is not paperwork. It is the difference between being paid for a week’s work and not being paid for it.

The two things that have to happen first

Regulation 36(1) says you must not begin the service before the cancellation period ends “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”. A text message or an email counts. A conversation on the driveway does not.

And regulation 36(6) sets out what happens if either piece is missing: “The consumer bears no cost for supply of the service, in full or in part, in the cancellation period, if (a) the trader has failed to provide the consumer with the information on the right to cancel … or (b) the service is not supplied in response to a request in accordance with paragraph (1).” Not a reduced amount. No cost.

Both gates or neither. Work done in the fourteen days is chargeable only if you gave the notice and he asked in writing.

The twelve-month tail

There is a second consequence to not giving the notice, and it is the one that catches people out long after the job is finished. Regulation 31(3) extends the cancellation period to “the end of 12 months after the day on which it would have ended under regulation 30”. Give the information late, and regulation 31(2) restarts a fourteen-day window from the day he receives it.

So a job from last spring can still be cancellable this spring, purely because nobody handed over a sheet of paper. Regulation 36(2) closes it the honest way: once the work is fully performed, begun on his request and with his acknowledgement that he would lose the right, the right is gone.

Two jobs this does not touch

Be accurate about the limits, because overstating them makes the rest look like scaremongering. Regulation 6(1)(e) takes the whole instrument off “the construction of new buildings, or the construction of substantially new buildings by the conversion of existing buildings”. New build is outside it. Repairs, alterations and installations are not.

And regulation 28(1)(e) removes the cancellation part where the consumer “has specifically requested a visit from the trader for the purpose of carrying out urgent repairs or maintenance”. The emergency call-out is free of it. But regulation 28(2) puts back “services in addition to the urgent repairs or maintenance requested” — so the leak is one thing, and the bathroom you were asked about while you were there is quite another.

Five sections and what each prevents. Our own reasoning, from what the Regulations put on the trader rather than the customer.
What your site says	What it prevents
That a job agreed at his home carries a 14-day right	The customer who thinks you invented the form you are handing him.
How he asks you to start early, and in what form	A driveway conversation standing in for a durable medium.
That you give the cancellation notice as standard	The twelve-month tail on a job you finished last year.
Which of your jobs are emergency call-outs and which are not	The assumption that turning up urgently exempts everything that followed.
What happens if he cancels midway	An argument about a pro-rata figure that neither of you discussed beforehand.

The block for your site — copy it and fill the brackets with how you actually work

Heading, in his words: “Can I change my mind?”
The right, stated first: “If we agree the work at your home rather than at our premises, you have 14 days from the day we agree it to cancel. We will give you that in writing before anything starts.”
Starting sooner: “Most people want us to start before those 14 days are up. That is fine — we just need you to ask in writing. A text or an email to [your number or address] is enough.”
What that means for you both: “If you then cancel partway through, you pay for the part we have done, in proportion to the job. If we never gave you the notice, or you never asked in writing, you pay nothing at all.”
When the right ends: “Once the job is finished — started on your request, with you knowing the right ends when it is done — the cancellation right has run its course.”
The exceptions, named honestly: “This does not apply to [new build, if you do it] or to an emergency call-out you asked for. If we do extra work while we are there for an emergency, that extra work does carry the right.”
Where the paperwork is: “The cancellation form is [attached to every quote / handed over on the day]. You do not have to ask for it.”

The fourth point is the one worth writing out in full. Telling a customer, in public, the exact circumstances in which he would owe you nothing is not a risk — it is the clearest possible signal that you intend to be in the circumstances where he owes you something.

What this is not

It is not legal advice, and the wording of your own notice matters more than any paragraph here — Schedule 3 of the Regulations sets out a model form for a reason. What it is, is the reason to stop treating that form as an annoyance. It is the piece of paper that turns a week of your labour into a debt somebody owes you.