143 8â Recommended reading

Q11 Analyse whether the remedies available to the seller and buyer provide appropriate protection for both parties in the event of a breach of contract.

8â Recommended reading

Atiyah, P.S., Adams, J.N. and MacQueen, H. The Sale of Goods (11th edn, Pearson Education Ltd, Harlow, 2005)

Bradgate, R. Commercial Law (3rd edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000) Bridge, M. The Sale of Goods (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997)

European Commission Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council on consumer rights COM(2008)614 final (Brussels, 2008)

Dobson, P. and Stokes, R. Commercial Law (7th edn, Sweet & Maxwell, London, 2008) Griffiths, M. and Griffiths, I. Law for Purchasing and Supply (3rd edn, Pearson Education

Ltd, Harlow, 2002)

Macleod, J. Consumer Sales Law (2nd edn, Routledge-Cavendish, Abingdon, 2007) Mark, M. Chalmers Sale of Goods (18th edn, Butterworths, London, 1981)

Sealy, L.S. and Hooley, R.J.A. Commercial Law: Text, Cases and Materials (4th edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009)

The passage of title, together with delivery and payment, are central to smooth progress of sale of goods contracts. All major textbooks that include sections on the sale of goods will discuss this topic and readers can gain a broader understanding of the issue by reading the relevant section from a selection of the standard texts listed above.

Part 2 Chapter 4

The Supply of Goods and Services

Contents

1â Introduction

This chapter considers the provision of services by traders to both businesses and consumers. It looks at the information that must be provided to potential recipients of services and also the current statutory controls over the quality and fitness for purpose of services provided under a contract.

Section 2 looks at the background to the provision of services and the ambit and limitations to contracts for services.

Section 3 looks in detail at the Provision of Services Regulations 2009 which stipulate what information must be provided to potential recipients of services and the requirement for a suitable complaints system to be established, including authorisation schemes; the provision of information to service recipients; the definition of ‘service’; the definition of ‘provider’ and ‘recipient’; Part 2 of the 2009 Regulations; the information that must be provided under regulation 8; information to be provided on request; information regarding dispute resolution; complaints; and enforcement.

Section 4 looks in detail at the provisions of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 incorporating the current implied conditions and terms relating to the provision of contracts for goods and services, including implied conditions under Part I of the 1982 Act; the common law approach; the implied terms regarding care and skill, time for performance and consideration; exclusion of liability; and Codes of Practice.

2â Background

By comparison with contracts for the sale of goods, statutory controls over contracts for the provision of services are a relatively recent phenomenon. The statutory implied terms and conditions date from the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, passed some ninety years after those relating to goods entered the statute book. More recently, the Provision of Services Regulations 20091 were enacted, giving effect to the EU Services Directive.2 This requires the providers of services to provide specified information, including contact details, to prospective purchasers prior to the provision of the services. Further, they must provide a suitable complaints system through which purchasers can make legitimate complaints.

Contracts for services include a wide variety of potential services both for business purchasers and consumer purchasers. On the commercial front, this would, for example, include contracts for the provision and maintenance of IT services or the provision of ongoing legal services or commercial insurance. By contrast, for a consumer purchaser, it would include tourist services, hairdressing and estate agents. Naturally, there is potential overlap in the type of services provided to both business purchasers and consumers, e.g, insurance, legal services and transport, with the distinction being not the type of service provided but the scale of it.

One of the essential difficulties in legislating for the provision of services is the wide variety of contracts that might legitimately be termed contracts for the supply of a service. Contracts may be for services in which there are no tangible goods involved, or, alternatively, they can relate to the provision of a service where some goods will change hands as a result of the contract. Thus, the former includes services such as medical services, legal services, financial services and insurance. The latter includes those contracts for works and materials where there is a predominant service element but where the consumer also acquires some goods. This would include, for example, an artist painting a portrait, a double glazing contract and a garage repairing a car. In all of these contracts the consumer acquires goods: the portrait, the central heating system and the car parts used to repair the vehicle. Nonetheless, these contracts are essentially about the provision of the service element of the contract by the supplier. There is no hard and fast rule about when such a contract will be classed as a service contract or merely one for the supply of goods. It depends on the facts of the case and the substance of the contract as to which is the dominant aspect of the agreement.3

1SI 2009/2999.

2Directive 2006/123 EEC of the European Parliament and the Council of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market.

3See Robinson v. Graves [1935] 1 KB 579, CA, in which the painting of a picture was held to be a service and not a sale of goods; contra Lee v. Griffin (1861) 1 B & S 272, where the supply of false teeth was held to be a sale of goods.