Credit car hire

Thew v Cole; King v Daltray CA TLR 15 January

For the purposes of regulation l(a)(i) of the Consumer Credit (Exempt Agreements) Order 1989 (SI 1989 No 869), a credit hire agreement is exempt from regulation under the Consumer Credit Act 1974 where the hire charges were ‘required to be made within a period not exceeding 12 months beginning with the date of the agreement’. The court rejected a submission that the words in the agreement ‘from the start of the agreement’ should be construed as to exclude the date of the agreement. The words ‘from the start’ carried the same meaning as the words ‘beginning with’ in the regulation. It was further submitted that a provision that payment was to be deferred for a period ‘of no more than 12 months’ meant that payment was not required until immediately after the period had ended or at the moment it ended, which in either event was too late. This submission also was rejected. The time by which the hirer was required to make payment coincided exactly with the end of the period in which the hirer was allowed to defer payment; the two events were contemporaneous. The moment the agreed period of deferral came to an end, the requirement to pay arose. No question of splitting seconds arose. Was a requirement to pay by the end of the period of deferral ‘within a period not exceeding 12 months’? As the agreement defined the period of deferral as ‘not more than 12 months’, the simple answer to that question was ‘Yes’. Accordingly, the agreements were exempt from regulation.