What is a letter before action?

A letter before action (LBA) is a formal notice sent before starting court proceedings. It sets out your claim, the legal basis (e.g. Consumer Rights Act 2015, Housing Act 1988), the remedy you seek, and a deadline to respond — typically 14 days. Civil Procedure Rules require this step before most court claims, and courts take a dim view of parties who skip it.

Can I write my own legal letter?

Yes. You do not need a solicitor to write a legal letter. What matters is citing the correct legislation, stating your claim with precise dates and amounts, and giving a clear deadline. A well-drafted letter citing the right Act and section often resolves disputes without court proceedings — and costs nothing extra to send.

Does a legal letter actually work?

In many cases, yes. Most businesses, landlords, and employers respond when they receive a formally worded letter that cites specific legislation and mentions court or tribunal proceedings as the next step. It signals you know your rights and are prepared to escalate — which is often enough to get a resolution.

What UK legislation covers consumer complaints and refunds?

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 is the primary law. Section 9 requires goods to be of satisfactory quality; section 20 gives you the right to a full refund within 30 days if goods are faulty. For services, section 49 requires reasonable care and skill. For distance/online purchases, the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 give you a 14-day cooling-off period.

13 September 2026

Builder Took Your Deposit and Never Did the Work? How to Get Your Money Back (UK)

You paid a builder, plumber, kitchen fitter or other tradesperson a deposit — maybe a few hundred pounds to “secure the slot”, maybe a large stage payment for materials — and then nothing happened. The start date came and went. Calls go to voicemail. The job was begun and then abandoned half-finished, or the trader has simply gone quiet and disappeared. It is one of the most common and infuriating consumer problems in the UK, and the good news is that the law treats it very differently from a job that was done badly. When a trader takes your money and then never does the work, that is a broken contract — and you have a clear right to get your money back.

General information for the UK. This guide is about non-performance — a trader who took your money and then never started, walked off the job, or vanished. It is different from a job that was done but done badly (defective or poor workmanship), which is covered in a separate guide and turns on different rules.

First, be clear which problem you actually have — it changes the law that helps you.

If the work was carried out but is faulty, unfinished-but-charged, or below standard, that is a quality claim under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (the trader must redo it or reduce the price). But if the trader never did the work at all — took the deposit and didn’t turn up, or downed tools and abandoned the job partway — that is a non-performance claim, and your strongest argument is that the trader has broken the contract so fundamentally that you are entitled to treat it as over and get your money back. This guide is about the second situation.

Why you are entitled to your money back

When you agreed a price and paid a deposit, you and the trader made a contract — it does not have to be a formal signed document; a verbal agreement, a quote you accepted by text, or an email exchange all count. In return for your money, the trader promised to do the work. If they never do it, they have failed to deliver their entire side of the bargain. In law this is called a total failure of consideration: you paid for something and received nothing in return. Where that happens, you are entitled to restitution — the return of the money you handed over.

Walking off a job or refusing to carry it out is also a repudiatory breach of contract — a breach so serious it goes to the heart of the agreement. When a trader does that, you are entitled to accept the breach, treat the contract as at an end, and claim your money back, along with damages for any extra cost you are put to. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 sits behind this too: it requires services to be carried out with reasonable care and skill (section 49) and, where a service falls short, gives you a right to a repeat performance or a price reduction of up to 100% (sections 55–56), with any refund due paid within 14 days. But for a trader who simply never performs, the common-law breach-of-contract route above is usually the cleaner and stronger argument.

You can usually claim two things, not one.

First, the return of everything you paid for work that was never done. Second, if you have to bring in another trader to do the job and they charge more than the original agreed price, you can claim that extra cost as damages — the law aims to put you back in the position you would have been in if the contract had been honoured. So get a couple of written quotes from replacement tradespeople; the difference is part of your claim.

If the trader started but then abandoned the job

Half-finished work is a grey area, but the principle is the same. You are entitled to a refund of the money that relates to the work that was not done, and to the cost of putting right anything that was done badly before they left. In practice this means valuing what (if anything) of use was actually delivered, deducting that, and claiming the rest back plus the extra cost of completion. If the abandoned work is unusable or has to be ripped out and redone, the trader gets no credit for it. Keep photographs of the state they left the job in — dated pictures are powerful evidence.

Don’t assume a trade-body “guarantee” protects your lost deposit — most don’t. There is no statutory deposit-protection scheme for building work in the UK (unlike tenancy deposits, which are a completely separate regime). What protection exists is patchy and voluntary. It is also easy to misread: the well-known trade-body schemes — the Federation of Master Builders insurance-backed guarantee, the Checkatrade guarantee — are generally aimed at defective work discovered after a job is completed, not at a trader who takes a deposit and never starts or walks off. They typically do not cover a lost deposit. Read the small print before relying on one.

The exception worth checking is a genuine prepayment-protection arrangement — for example TrustMark (the government-endorsed scheme) requires its registered businesses to offer some form of financial protection, and its new “Trusted Payments” escrow-style service (launched September 2026) is designed to hold your stage payments and cover a trader who walks off or ceases trading. It is voluntary, brand new and unproven, and cash payments are excluded — so check directly with the scheme exactly what applies to your job rather than trusting a logo.

How to get your money back when the trader has vanished

A refund demand is worthless if the trader has disappeared or won’t engage. This is where how you paid becomes the most important fact in the whole dispute — because two payment routes let you recover money without ever needing the trader to co-operate.

Chargeback is a scheme run by the card networks (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) and works on debit and credit cards alike, for any amount. If you paid a deposit by card and received no service in return, “services not received” is a valid reason to ask your own bank (not the trader’s) to reverse the payment. It is not a legal right and the money is not guaranteed, but it is quick and free to try. The catch is the time limit: chargeback claims generally have to be raised within roughly 120 days (subject to the card scheme’s rules — check with your bank), so don’t sit on it.

If you paid the deposit on a credit card, Section 75 is your strongest weapon

Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, where you pay for something on a credit card the card provider is equally liable with the trader for a breach of contract. If the trader takes your money and does nothing, you can claim the loss directly from your credit card company — even if the trader has gone bust or disappeared.

Two things make this powerful. It applies where the cash price of the item or service is over £100 and no more than £30,000. And crucially, you only need to have put part of the price on the credit card — even just the deposit — for the card provider to be on the hook for the whole contract price within that band. Unlike chargeback, Section 75 is a statutory legal right, not a scheme courtesy.

Small claims: the backstop that makes a demand bite

If the trader is contactable but simply refuses to refund you, and the card routes don’t apply, the enforcement backstop is the small claims court. Before you issue a claim you should send a letter before action — a formal written demand setting out what you paid, what was promised, that the trader has breached the contract, and giving them a short deadline (usually 14 days) to refund you before you go to court. This is a required step, and it is often the point at which a trader who has been ignoring you suddenly pays up.

If they still don’t, you can start a claim online through the government’s “Make a money claim” service. In England and Wales the small claims track handles claims up to £10,000, the process is designed to be used without a solicitor, and you generally can’t be made to pay the other side’s legal costs if you lose.

Winning is not the same as getting paid. A court judgment (a CCJ) is an order to pay — but if the trader has no money, has vanished, or the business was a limited company that has folded, you may struggle to enforce it. This is exactly why the card routes above are worth trying first: they get your money from a bank, not from a trader who may be broke. Before suing, it is also worth checking whether you are dealing with a sole trader (personally liable) or a limited company (which can be dissolved, leaving nothing to claim against).

If you are in Scotland

The contract principles are the same, but the court route differs. Claims of up to £5,000 are dealt with under the Simple Procedure in the sheriff court rather than the small claims track. And the deadline to bring a claim is shorter: under the law of prescription, you generally have five years from the breach to raise a court action, compared with six years in England and Wales. Section 75, chargeback and the consumer-rights protections all still apply, as they are UK-wide.

What to do right now

Gather the paper trail. The quote or agreement, proof of what you paid and how (card, bank transfer, cash), every message, and dated photos of any abandoned work.
Check how you paid. Credit card over £100 → Section 75. Debit or credit card → chargeback (mind the ~120-day window). Bank transfer → the demand-and-small-claims route, plus report it if you were deceived.
Check for a protection scheme. If the trader is registered with TrustMark or a trade body, contact the scheme about deposit or completion protection.
Send a clear written demand. State that the trader has breached the contract by failing to carry out the work, that you are treating the contract as at an end, and that you require a full refund of £X within 14 days, failing which you will pursue a chargeback / Section 75 claim / court action.
Get replacement quotes so you can put a figure on the extra cost of completion — that forms part of your claim.

Generate Your Refund Demand Letter in Seconds

WriteMyLegalLetter drafts a firm, clear letter to the trader — setting out the contract, stating that their failure to do the work is a breach entitling you to treat it as ended, and demanding a full refund of your deposit and payments within a set deadline before you escalate to chargeback, Section 75 or the small claims court. Answer a few questions and your letter is ready to send.

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General information for the UK, not legal advice. This covers a trader’s failure to perform (non-performance / abandonment), which is distinct from a claim about poor or defective workmanship. Your rights arise under the ordinary law of contract (breach and restitution for total failure of consideration) with the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (sections 49, 55–56) in support; recovery routes include chargeback (card scheme rules, typically ~120 days), Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (credit card, cash price over £100 and up to £30,000), and the small claims track (up to £10,000 in England and Wales; Simple Procedure up to £5,000 in the Scottish sheriff court, with a five-year prescription period). Protection-scheme cover (e.g. TrustMark, trade-body guarantees) varies — check directly with the scheme. Correct as at September 2026.