Certain agreements are exempt from the provisions of the CCA 1974 by virtue of s
16 of that Act and the Consumer Credit (Exempt Agreements) Order 1989 (SI 1989/
869) (as amended by SI 1999/1956).
The exemptions cover situations where it is probably unnecessary to provide
protection for debtors and, accordingly, though the 1989 Order exempts debtor-creditor supplier
agreements where there are no more than four payments in a 12 month period,
this exemption does not apply to any hire purchase or conditional sale agreement. (One
of the purposes of the CCA 1974 was to protect consumers in relation to hire purchase
agreements.) Everyday examples of exempt agreements are milk and newspaper bills,
which are usually paid in arrears, so credit is given. In Dimond v Lovell (see 18.1.3) in the
House of Lords, Lord Hoffman indicated that the hire car company could have made
the agreement ‘exempt’, and therefore enforceable, by stating in the agreement that the
hire charge had to be paid within 12 months.