The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act, which received the royal assent on 26th March 2015 and the text of which can be found here, provides that the Secretary of State may make regulations providing that a ban on assignment clause has no effect, either generally, or in relation to persons of a prescribed description, or only for prescribed purposes. Consumer contracts are excluded, as are ‘excluded financial services contracts’. The power is wide, and the details of any new regulations will be important, but this is clearly a step towards control of such clauses.

The Secured Transactions Law Reform Project has been considering whether there should be a statutory override of such clauses for some time, and has produced a survey to ascertain industry views. If you are involved in the receivables financing industry please take a few minutes to fill in this survey which will then continue to inform our work in this area.

Ban on assignment survey