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.

10 September 2026

Charged for Damage or Excess Mileage When You Handed Back Your Lease or PCP Car? How to Dispute It (UK)

You hand the keys back at the end of a PCP or a lease (PCH) agreement, expecting that to be the end of it. Weeks later an invoice turns up: £600 for scuffed alloys, £450 for a dent on the door, £380 for miles over your contracted allowance. It can feel like the finance company is inventing charges now that you no longer need the car. Some of it might be exactly that — unfair or inflated. But some end-of-contract charges are genuinely legitimate. The way to tell the difference is to test each charge against the standard the industry itself uses, not against whatever number is printed on the invoice.

General information for the UK. This is about charges raised when you hand a car back at the natural end of a PCP or lease/PCH agreement — it is different from ending an agreement early under your voluntary termination right, and different from a commission mis-selling claim, both covered in separate guides.

Do this first: ask the finance or leasing company for a full written breakdown of every charge, referenced against the BVRLA Fair Wear and Tear Guide (or its own equivalent condition standard) rather than a bare invoice total. If the car was not inspected with you present at handover, ask why not and request the written condition report and photographs it is required to send you. Do not pay anything until you have that breakdown — you cannot properly challenge a figure you have not seen reasoned.

The standard almost every charge should be measured against

Most UK leasing and PCP finance companies are members of the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), and its Fair Wear and Tear Guide is the industry standard used to judge whether a return charge is fair. It is important to be precise about what that guide actually is: it is not legislation. It is an industry standard that BVRLA member companies commit to follow under the BVRLA Code of Conduct. If your finance or leasing company is a BVRLA member, it should be assessing your car against this guide. And even where it is not strictly binding, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) treats it as a key reference point — alongside the car’s age and mileage — when deciding whether a charge was fair.

Examples of what the BVRLA guide treats as acceptable wear, not chargeable damage:

Small dents up to around 10mm, with the paint unbroken — typically up to two per panel. Even a dent this small is never acceptable on the roof or along a swage line.
Scratches up to around 25mm, provided there is no bare metal or primer showing through.
Scuffs to alloy wheels totalling up to around 50mm around the circumference — but none at all on the spokes or the hub.
Light scratches to the windscreen, as long as they sit outside the driver’s sightline — any chip, crack or hole is never acceptable.
An interior that is clean and odour-free, with the kind of everyday wear and light soiling you’d expect from ordinary use.

These are illustrative examples from the guide, not an exhaustive list — and they don’t mean “anything goes”. Damage beyond these thresholds, or in the excluded areas, can properly be charged.

The condition check you’re entitled to at handover

The BVRLA process gives you real rights at the point the car is handed back, and they are worth knowing before you get to that appointment:

You and the collecting agent are supposed to check and agree the car’s condition together, and both sign the condition report. Only sign if you actually agree with what is recorded — if you disagree with anything, note it on the sheet there and then rather than signing it away.
Photograph and film the whole car yourself at handover, inside and out, and point out (and get noted) any wear or marks that were already there before the contract even started.
If a proper joint inspection doesn’t happen — you weren’t there, the weather was bad, the car was too dirty to assess — the finance company has to tell you why, and send you a written condition report together with an explanation of how it worked out any charge.

Your strongest lever: an independent engineer

If you dispute a specific item on the condition report, the BVRLA process gives you the right to pay for an independent, qualified engineer to examine it. Both sides have to agree who that engineer is, their decision is binding on both of you, and — if the engineer finds in your favour — the BVRLA member company must refund the cost of the inspection. This is the single most effective way to challenge a specific damage charge you think is wrong: it takes the argument out of a back-and-forth over emails and puts it in front of a neutral professional, at no risk to you if you turn out to be right.

Excess mileage charges

If you went over the mileage allowance written into your agreement, the finance or leasing company can charge you for it — at a pence-per-mile rate set out in your agreement. There is no regulator-set cap on that rate and no standard figure across the industry; rates reported by leasing brokers vary widely by car and deal, but the only rate that actually matters is the one written into your contract. Check that the figure on the invoice matches the rate in your paperwork, and check how VAT has been applied — the treatment varies between agreements, so confirm it against your own contract rather than assuming.

Where mileage charges get genuinely disputable is whether you knew about the cap. The Financial Ombudsman’s approach is that if you did not know about the mileage allowance when you signed — it was buried, unclear, or never properly explained — that points to the charge being potentially mis-sold, and FOS can disallow it. If you did know about the cap, FOS weighs the fairness case by case: what the agreement actually said, what you were told at the point of sale, and your circumstances.

When a charge is just too high: the Consumer Rights Act backstop

Even where a charge is nominally reasoned against the BVRLA standard, it can still be unfair in law. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you a separate, statutory backstop against a charge that is simply punitive:

Section 62 — a term in your agreement is unfair, and not binding on you, if it causes a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights to your detriment, contrary to the requirement of good faith.
Schedule 2, paragraph 6 — specifically flags as potentially unfair any term requiring a consumer who has failed to fulfil their obligations to pay a disproportionately high sum in compensation.

That is the right hook if a charge looks like it has been plucked out of the air rather than properly assessed — a figure wildly out of line with the actual condition of the car, or a mileage penalty rate that bears no relation to any real loss.

Two things to get right when you push back

The finance company does not carry a formal “legal burden of proof” in the way a court case would. What it does have is an expectation — from FOS and from the BVRLA process itself — that any charge is evidenced and reasoned against the Fair Wear and Tear standard, and you have the right to demand that evidence and escalate to an independent engineer if you don’t accept it.
Don’t assume a damage charge has to match an actual repair invoice pound-for-pound. The BVRLA charge is meant to reflect the loss of value to the car, which won’t always be the same figure a real repair bill would show. The right challenge is not “show me the receipt” — it’s “show me how this is a fair, reasoned assessment against the BVRLA standard”, tested via the independent engineer route if needed, with the Consumer Rights Act as your backstop if the figure looks disproportionate.

Escalating if it’s still not resolved

A PCP agreement is regulated credit under the Consumer Credit Act 1974. A lease or PCH agreement is a regulated consumer hire agreement rather than credit — but the company behind it is normally FCA-authorised either way. That matters because it opens up a free escalation route:

Complain to the finance or leasing company first, in writing, referencing the specific charges and the BVRLA standard. It has up to eight weeks to send you a final response.
The BVRLA’s own conciliation service — available in writing if the company is a BVRLA member and you can’t resolve it directly.
The Financial Ombudsman Service — free, and generally available once you have the finance company’s final response (or eight weeks have passed), normally within six months of that response. PCP damage and mileage disputes are commonly eligible; whether a lease/PCH dispute qualifies depends on the detail of the hire agreement and the firm’s authorisation, so in most cases it is worth checking eligibility with FOS rather than assuming it.

FOS awards can in principle run up to £455,000 (from 1 April 2026, for acts on or after 1 April 2019; £205,000 for anything before that date) — useful context for how seriously the service is meant to be taken, though real end-of-contract damage and mileage disputes are almost always far smaller than that ceiling.

Getting the letter right

A written challenge works best when it does four things: sets out exactly which charges you dispute and why; asks for the condition report, photographs and the reasoning behind each figure, measured against the BVRLA Fair Wear and Tear Guide; invokes your right to an independent, jointly agreed engineer for any item still in dispute; and puts the finance company on notice that a disproportionate charge can be challenged under section 62 and Schedule 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 if it won’t engage. Set a clear deadline, and say you will escalate to the BVRLA conciliation service and the Financial Ombudsman Service if it doesn’t.

Generate Your End-of-Contract Dispute Letter in Seconds

WriteMyLegalLetter drafts a clear, firm letter to your PCP or lease finance company disputing damage or excess mileage charges — referencing the BVRLA Fair Wear and Tear Guide, your right to an independent engineer, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 backstop against a disproportionate charge. Answer a few questions and your letter is ready to send.

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General information for the UK, not legal advice. This applies UK-wide — the Consumer Credit Act 1974, FCA regulation, the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 all apply the same way in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It covers charges raised at the natural end of a PCP or lease/PCH agreement, not ending an agreement early (voluntary termination) or a commission mis-selling claim, which are separate topics. Sources: BVRLA Fair Wear and Tear Guide and BVRLA Code of Conduct; Financial Ombudsman Service guidance on motor finance and consumer hire complaints; Consumer Rights Act 2015 (sections 62 and Schedule 2, paragraph 6); Consumer Credit Act 1974; FCA rules on regulated consumer hire and credit agreements. Correct as at September 2026 — FOS award limits are uprated annually, so check the current figure before relying on it.