Part 3: Enforcement of consumer protection law Chapter 6: Investigatory Powers Section 208: Investigatory powers of enforcers
Schedule 5 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 details the investigatory powers available to consumer enforcers for the purposes of civil enforcement of consumer protection law. This section introduces Schedule 17 to this Act, which amends Schedule 5 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to enhance the enforceability of statutory information notices given to a person under paragraph 14 of Schedule 5 and to clarify enforcers’ ability, during onsite inspections, to access material which is held remotely. The key amendments in this Chapter and its corresponding Schedule are to:
provide the courts with a power to impose a civil monetary penalty (subject to maximum amounts) where the court finds there has been non-compliance with an information notice without reasonable excuse,
provide a direct enforcement power for the CMA to decide whether an information notice that it has issued has been complied with and if not, to impose a civil monetary penalty (subject to the same maximum amounts referred to above in the context of the court’s equivalent fining power) for any non-compliance without reasonable excuse,
set out the extra-territorial reach of enforcers’ powers to request information by notice, to which the above sanctions apply, for purposes including the Part 3 enforcement regimes,
provide rules for service of notices, and
amend the prescribed conditions for seeking a premises entry warrant to make clear that they cover documents accessible from the premises as well as documents located on the premises.