South Ayrshire Council News

South Ayrshire Council’s Trading Standards Service this week praised local care homes following a review of the contracts they offer their residents. The project, which examined the agreements care homes offer elderly residents to sign, arose following a review by the Office of Fair Trading which suggested care home contracts often contained unfair terms, restrictive clauses and convoluted legal language.

The OFT’s main concerns with care home contracts was that they were often unclear about the resident’s ongoing financial liabilities, with complicated clauses which led to unexpectedly high bills when the contract was ended, for example on the death of the resident. Further concerns related to terms that excluded or limited the care home’s legal duty to carry out its service with reasonable skill and care. Particular objection was made to terms that may cause serious detriment to residents who were deteriorating mentally and eventually may not have had the capacity to understand the agreement.

However South Ayrshire Trading Standards Service found that the local care homes whose contracts they reviewed were balanced, fair, easily read and understood and contained none of the legal jargon which can lead to disputes and disagreements.

A spokesperson said, “The care home contracts we examined stuck closely to the National Care Home Contract agreed by Cosla and recommended by South Ayrshire Council to local care homes. The obligations on the part of the home and the resident are balanced and clearly set out with full information about the accommodation standards; the care to be provided; the payment of fees; and the procedures for ending the agreement or making a complaint. Clear and balanced care home contracts mean that elderly residents and their relatives can have confidence that there is nothing in small print or jargon which will find them disadvantaged or facing surprise financial penalties.”

The spokesperson continued, ”Despite some sectors offering fair contracts to their customers, there are still many traders who urge them to sign complicated and heavily skewed deals where everything is on the trader’s side, leaving the consumer with very few rights and most of the responsibilities and risk. Sometimes these terms & conditions are presented in miniscule writing, which blends in with its background on the rear of an agreement. Often a customer is asked to sign such a contract on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. Rarely will consumers read the full contract and they probably wouldn’t understand all of it if they did.

“However, consumers should be aware that just because they’ve signed a consumer contract doesn’t always mean that they are bound by all the terms. If a term is in complicated legal jargon, imbalanced or unfair, and it’s likely to cause significant detriment to the consumer, then the law intervenes and renders the term ineffective. We would urge consumers who believe they have being disadvantaged by an unfair contract to get in touch with us.”

South Ayrshire Trading Standards ask that consumers or businesses seeking advice on consumer contracts should to call in to the Trading Standards Consumer & Business Advice Centre at 5/7 River Terrace, Ayr or call 01292 616060