Terms of business
DRAFT — must not be published or relied on in this form.
These terms must be drafted by a solicitor, not adapted from a template. £2,000 is budgeted for exactly this. What follows is a specification of the points the drafted terms must cover, so the solicitor is pricing and drafting against a clear brief.
The commercial risk here is real: if we file late and a customer loses their licence, they lose their income and we caused it.
Points the drafted terms must cover
Liability
- Liability capped at the greater of the fees paid or £25,000.
- Consequential loss excluded — including lost bookings and lost income.
- Professional indemnity cover of £2,000,000 is carried and stated.
Conditions on the guarantee
The money-back guarantee — Filed before your deadline, or your money back. — must be drafted so that it is a commercial remedy and not an admission of liability. Its two conditions:
- the customer engages us at least 35 days before the licence expiry date; and
- the customer provides access for certificate appointments within 14 days of an appointment being offered.
Breach of either voids the guarantee.
What the customer is responsible for
- The accuracy of everything they tell us — occupancy, property details, ownership, and any previous enforcement history.
- Access to the property for engineers.
- Paying the council fee and the engineers directly, on time.
The disclosed-agent structure
The terms must make explicit that when we arrange a certificate we act as a disclosed agent: the contract for the certificate is between the customer and the trade, the customer pays the trade directly, and we charge only a coordination fee. This governs both the VAT treatment and where liability for a defective certificate sits.
Dependency: the disclosed-agent VAT treatment needs the accountant's written confirmation before the first certificate is booked. Getting it wrong means the VAT is ours retrospectively.
Scope boundary
The terms must state plainly that we complete and file forms and assemble evidence, and that we do not give legal advice and do not appear at licensing board hearings. The solicitor should confirm this boundary at the same time as drafting.
Also required
- Cancellation and refund terms.
- What happens if a council rejects a pack we filed.
- Subcontractor accreditation requirements and the annual re-verification.
- Governing law: Scotland.