Consumer Credit Act Commencement Plan

Minister Presses 'Go' on Consumer Credit Act 2006
DTI Press Release
25 May 2006
The Government today launched a timetable of plans to help boost
the rights of consumers and improve the regulation of businesses.
The new Act updates and augments the 1974 Consumer Credit Act. It
aims to create a fairer, clearer and more competitive consumer
credit market, by:
a) Improving consumer rights and redress:
by removing the extortionate credit test and replacing it with a
test concerned with unfairness, and by introducing an alternative
dispute resolution (ADR) scheme for consumer credit matters to be
run by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS);
b) Improving the regulation of consumer credit businesses: by
altering the powers of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to enable
it to take targeted action to drive out rogues, and by requiring
minimum standards of information provision to consumers throughout
the life of the loan; and
c) More appropriate regulation of consumer credit agreements:
by abolishing the £25,000 limit for regulation and making the
rules concerning enforceability consistent and proportionate.