Carrington Carr Limited v Leicestershire County Council
High Court 28 May 1993 (ITSA CB 896 Code 5)

The appeal arose from convictions at Leicester Magistrates' Court in August 1991, and an unsuccessful appeal to Leicester Crown Court in February 1992. The most significant issue concerned the interpretation of Regulation 7(b) of the Consumer Credit (Advertisements) Regulations 1989. Carrington Carr Limited are a company of mortgage brokers based in Leicester but have many branches throughout England. In 1990, they published a series of advertisements which included a number of 'comparative' statements about their mortgage offers, including

• WHY PAY £500 A MONTH ON YOUR MORTGAGE WHEN YOU COULD CUT IT BY ALMOST £160?
• IT CAN DRASTICALLY CUT THE AMOUNT YOU'RE PAYING OUT EACH MONTH ON YOUR MORTGAGE; and
• BEFORE WE CALLED IN CARRINGTON CARR OUR MORTGAGE REPAYMENTS HAD SHOT UP TO £372 PER MONTH, THEY HELPED US TO CHANGE OUR MORTGAGE AND NOW WE PAY OUT £108 LESS.

The appellants contended that Regulation 7(b) only applied if there was an identifiable person or persons with whose products the advertiser was seeking to compare his own. Their advertisements did not nominate another person, and neither did they fully comply with the requirements for a Full Credit Advertisement.

In their judgement, Neill LJ and Mantell J found on two points of law, namely that :

1. because the advertisement failed to include all of the information set out in Part III to Schedule 1, they were not full credit advertisements... "meaning that no comparative reference at all was permitted"; and
2. the advertisement held out a promise that anyone who took advantage of the appellant's scheme was likely to be better off than under his or her previous arrangements. That was such a reference as the Regulations sought to proscribe.

The Scottish case of Jessop v First National Securities Limited (1988) SCCR was referred to, and the Court agreed with the Sheriff's judgement that "the Regulation would be rendered inoperable if any advertiser who wished to evade its provisions could take refuge in the very vagueness which the Regulation sought to prohibit". The appeals were, therefore, dismissed.

Other issues dealt with, and dismissed on appeal, included the following:

1. the construction of paragraph 13(1) of Part III to Schedule 1 of the Regulations (non-quantification of surveyors' and legal fees); and
2. whether informations alleging single breaches (of Section 46 and of Regulations 2(1)(c) and 7(b)) were each bad for duplicity in that the particulars of each offence disclosed that each provision had been breached in a number of ways.