Has the Supreme Court closed the s 18 door? asks Paul Heeley
When is an unregulated agreement not an unregulated agreement? Answer: when it is really a number of smaller (regulated) agreements rolled into one. And so says s 18 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (‘the Act’) which concerns Multiple Agreements. But while this is no new principle of consumer credit, lenders made aware by their advisers of the recent potentially cataclysmic Heath consumer credit case can relax now that the Supreme Court has refused permission to appeal to a borrower who sought to avoid her loan by arguing that one of the most common types of credit arrangement, a re-mortgage, was in fact a Multiple Agreement. Why the relief? Well, had the Court of Appeal’s decision been overturned it is anyone’s guess how many lenders would have suffered a major financial loss overnight.
The 1974 Act has had its fair share of criticism over the years for its drafting. Thirty-five years after receiving Royal Assent it is quite astonishing that the interpretation of some of its provisions still results in
