Consumer Credit Act 1974 - Implementation of The Act

Implementation of The Act

Some elements of the Act came into force on 31 July 1974, the day it was passed, but many were left to be brought in later at the discretion of the government. This process was "painfully slow", with almost nothing apart from the licensing system being active in 1979. Section 141, which requires enforcement actions of a regulated credit or linked transaction to be pursued in the county courts, came into force on 19 May 1985 through the Statutory Instrument "Consumer Credit Act 1974 (Commencement No. 8) Order 1983". The Act repealed the Hire-Purchase Act 1965, the Advertisements (Hire Purchase) Act 1967, the Moneylenders Act 1900, the Moneylenders Act 1927, the Pawnbrokers Act 1872 and the Pawnbrokers Act 1960. The Act was influential outside the United Kingdom, and was studied in both the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations. It formed the basis of a 1979 Directive on Consumer Credit of the European Union.

The Act did not go to the full extent suggested by the Crowther Committee's report, with protection only being available for consumers, not for the credit industry. The Act was widely supported by all sides of the political spectrum, and by academia. Arthur Rogerson compared it to the Law of Property Act 1925 in that, like the 1925 Act, it "represents fundamental rethinking of an area of great economic significance, which has resulted in the sweeping away of a chaos of obsolete rules, and the substitution for them of a simpler and better enforced body of law".