When a removal goes badly, most people reach first for the company’s own insurance terms or their booking confirmation. There is a separate, more fundamental legal right sitting underneath every removals contract in England, Wales and Scotland, regardless of what the company’s own paperwork says, and it comes from the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
What the Act actually says
Section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 provides, in the Act’s own words, that “every contract to supply a service is to be treated as including a term that the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill.” This applies automatically, by operation of law, to every consumer removals contract; it does not need to be written into the booking confirmation, and a removal company cannot simply contract out of it by omitting it from their terms.
The key legal point is that this standard is about how the service was carried out, not just the end result. A removal firm that damages furniture through genuinely careless handling has breached this term even if, by chance, nothing valuable was broken elsewhere that day. Equally, an outcome you are unhappy with is not automatically a breach if the company can show the work was carried out competently and in line with normal industry practice; the test is the standard of care applied, not simply whether you are satisfied with how the day went.
How “reasonable” is actually judged
The Act does not define an absolute checklist for reasonable care and skill, and case guidance treats it as varying by trade. For removals specifically, this generally means measuring what happened against how a competent, ordinarily careful removal company would have carried out the same job: correctly assessing and protecting items before moving them, using appropriate packing materials and techniques for fragile or valuable items, and taking reasonable care when navigating stairs, doorways and tight access points. Industry codes of practice, such as those published by trade bodies like the British Association of Removers, are relevant evidence of what “reasonable” looks like in this specific trade, even though following a code of practice is not itself a legal requirement.
What remedies you are actually entitled to
Where a service has not been performed with reasonable care and skill, the Act’s remedies framework, primarily through section 54 and the sections that follow it, gives you the right to require the trader to repeat the service, put right the part that was not carried out properly, where that is possible. If repeat performance is impossible, or is not done within a reasonable time or without significant inconvenience to you, you have the right to a price reduction instead, which can in appropriate cases go as far as a full refund of that part of the service. This sits alongside, not instead of, any separate claim for damage to your belongings, which is usually pursued through the company’s goods-in-transit insurance or its own liability terms.
Why this matters alongside the company’s own insurance terms
Many removal companies’ standard terms include limitation clauses capping their liability for damaged goods at a fixed amount per item or per weight, unless you have paid for enhanced cover. Those limitation clauses genuinely do limit what you can recover for a specific damaged item, but they do not remove your separate right under section 49 to a service performed with reasonable care and skill, and the remedies of repeat performance or price reduction attach to the service itself, not to the value of any individual damaged item. In practice, this means a complaint about a botched move is worth framing on two separate tracks: a claim for the damaged goods under the company’s insurance terms, and, separately, a complaint about the standard of service itself under the Consumer Rights Act, which is not capped by the same limitation clause.
What to actually do if a move goes wrong
Document the problem in writing as soon as possible, including photographs where relevant, and reference the standard of care and skill explicitly in your complaint rather than only describing the outcome. Ask specifically for either a repeat of the affected part of the service or a price reduction, since naming the remedy you are entitled to under the Act tends to move a complaint along faster than a general expression of dissatisfaction. If the company is a member of a trade association operating an approved alternative dispute resolution scheme, that route sits alongside your Consumer Rights Act claim and is usually faster and cheaper than a small claims court case, though the underlying legal standard your complaint is measured against is the same either way.