A Major Boost for Motor Finance and GAP Claims As The “Too Late” Defence Comes Under Attack

For too long, consumers pursuing motor finance commission and GAP insurance complaints have been confronted with the same response… their agreement is old, the transaction happened years ago, and they are supposedly too late to claim. In the cases we handle, that argument is frequently attempted despite the central facts about commission having been withheld from the customer.

Limitation objections are regularly defeated in our casework as they have no proper legal foundation because they ignore the effect of deliberate concealment and make no credible attempt to explain how the customer could reasonably have discovered the relevant facts earlier.

Now, a judgment against Black Horse has challenged something even more fundamental, whether the statutory limitation periods relied upon by lenders apply to unfair-relationship claims in the first place.

We regard this as a significant boost to the legal arguments supporting both our motor finance commission cases and our financed GAP insurance cases. If the reasoning is upheld by a higher court, it could remove a statutory defence that consumers and their representatives currently spend substantial time and effort having to defeat.

Black Horse’s limitation argument has been rejected

In Berry v Black Horse Ltd, His Honour Judge Glen allowed an appeal against the dismissal of a motor finance claim concerning a 2005 agreement. As reported by ICLG, the judgment handed down on 1st September 2026 found that neither the six-year nor the twelve-year limitation periods under consideration applied to claims brought under sections 140A–140C of the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

This was not simply another decision that concealment had postponed the deadline. The judge accepted the more fundamental argument that these statutory periods did not govern the claim at all.

Kings Chambers, whose barrister represented the successful appellant, confirms that the reasoning drew on the Supreme Court’s decision in THG v Zedra Trust Company (Jersey) [2026] UKSC 6. That case concerned unfair-prejudice proceedings under company law, where the Supreme Court rejected the application of the relevant statutory limitation periods.

Judge Glen accepted that comparable reasoning applied to the Consumer Credit Act’s unfair-relationship jurisdiction. Black Horse’s reliance on the previously accepted understanding of limitation did not persuade him otherwise.

The claim was returned for further consideration. Nevertheless, the procedural victory is substantial as a claim dismissed as too old was revived because the legal foundation of that dismissal was successfully challenged.

Concealed commission already provides an answer to time-bar arguments

It is important to understand why this strengthens our position rather than creates it. Consumers with concealed-commission claims did not have to wait for Berry to obtain a legal answer to limitation.

Section 32(1)(b) of the Limitation Act 1980 already provides that, where a fact relevant to the claimant’s right of action has been deliberately concealed, the limitation period does not begin until the concealment is discovered or could have been discovered with reasonable diligence.

Where those requirements are satisfied, the clock does not start merely because the customer bought the policy, signed the finance agreement or finished making repayments.

That is central to the GAP complaints we pursue. The customer thought they knew the price they were being charged for insurance. They were not told the amount of the chain commission embedded within that price. Knowing what a product costs is plainly not the same as knowing how much of the payment was commission, paid to the parties involved throughout the chain, compared to how much was for the actual policy.

The Supreme Court has already rejected a lender’s attempt to rely on time

In Canada Square Operations Ltd v Potter [2023] UKSC 41, the lending agreement ended in 2010, but proceedings were not brought until 2018.

The lender argued that the claim was too late. The Supreme Court unanimously rejected its appeal because deliberate concealment postponed the commencement of the limitation period under section 32(1)(b).

The Court also rejected an important attempted restriction on concealment. A claimant does not have to establish a separate legal duty to disclose before intentional non-disclosure can amount to deliberate concealment. Nor must the claimant prove that the defendant knew the concealed fact was relevant to a legal claim.

That matters when a business attempts to defend its position by saying it was not expressly required by a particular regulatory rule to disclose commission. The absence of a separate disclosure duty does not, by itself, defeat a deliberate-concealment argument.

Potter is not an untested theory advanced by consumer representatives. It is Supreme Court authority and firms addressing concealed-commission complaints should engage with it, rather than expect consumers to accept a stock reference to six years.

GAP insurance exposes the weakness of the “you should have complained sooner” response

The GAP cases behind our investigations involve precisely the information imbalance that makes these limitation arguments so objectionable. The businesses involved knew the financial structure of the sale. The customer was presented with a product price, without the amount of the chain commission being disclosed.

Our published investigations into GAP insurance include a transaction in which the customer paid £429 against a gross underwriting premium of £57. The difference was £372, or 86.7% of the customer’s payment, sitting above the amount attributed to gross underwriting.

This goes directly to the economic substance of the product and the customer’s ability to question the value they received.

When a firm argues that a customer should have acted earlier, we expect it to explain what relevant information was available, when it became available and how that customer could reasonably have discovered it. Simply pointing to the date printed on a policy does not address any of those questions.

It is indefensible to withhold the financial facts behind a transaction and then advance a time-bar objection without properly addressing the consequences of that concealment.

Plevin makes the connection with financed insurance impossible to dismiss

The significance of undisclosed insurance commission is already established. In Plevin v Paragon Personal Finance Ltd [2014] UKSC 61, commission represented 71.8% of the PPI premium. The Supreme Court found that non-disclosure of the commission amounts and recipients made the credit relationship unfair.

The customer had received a general indication that commission was paid. That did not answer the unfairness caused by withholding its extraordinary scale.

Plevin does not turn a particular percentage into an automatic result for every subsequent case. What it does establish is that substantial undisclosed remuneration within financed insurance can make the lender–borrower relationship unfair. That principle cannot sensibly be dismissed merely because the insurance product under investigation is now called GAP rather than PPI.

For our cases, the decisions address different parts of the same problem as Plevin supports scrutiny of the underlying unfairness, Potter addresses the consequences of concealment, and Berry challenges the existence of the statutory limitation barrier itself.

A direct boost to motor finance commission cases

Berry arose from motor finance, so its immediate relevance to that sector is clear. Its importance is that it supplies a further argument for getting the substance of an unfair-relationship claim examined, rather than allowing the dispute to end with a limitation defence.

The Supreme Court’s 2025 motor finance judgment already confirmed that Mr Johnson’s claim succeeded under section 140A. The size of the commission, inadequate disclosure and an undisclosed commercial tie between lender and dealer were important to that decision.

Those are substantive questions about how a customer was treated, and they deserve substantive answers. Our position is that lenders should explain and defend the commission arrangements behind their transactions, rather than rely on an agreement’s age without properly analysing the applicable law.

For relevant older cases, Berry adds another basis on which to resist dismissal. It is particularly significant because it does not depend on winning the separate argument that concealment postponed a deadline.

Financed GAP claims can benefit from the same statutory argument

The unfair-relationship provisions are not a motor-finance-commission-only remedy. Under section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act, the court can examine the credit relationship, relevant related agreements, and conduct attributable to the lender.

Where GAP insurance has been financed through the credit agreement, the insurance price, embedded remuneration, interest charged on that amount and relevant non-disclosure may all require examination as part of the alleged unfairness. The connection to the lender’s responsibility must be established, and the fact that a premium was financed is the starting point for that investigation.

Where the GAP claim is properly brought through the same unfair-relationship provisions considered in Berry, the same limitation argument is available to be advanced.

That is why we regard this as a boost to both areas of our work. The legal significance follows the statutory claim, not the marketing label attached to the product.

A standalone insurance complaint without the relevant credit relationship is different. This particular point concerns the financed GAP cases in which the lender–borrower relationship itself is challenged as unfair.

From defeating the defence to removing it

This is the most important potential consequence of Berry. At present, consumers may have to establish why a limitation period was postponed, identify the concealed facts and address arguments about when those facts could reasonably have been discovered. Those arguments regularly succeed, but they still consume time, resources and effort before the underlying unfairness is considered.

If a higher court endorses Berry’s reasoning, the position could change fundamentally for qualifying unfair-relationship claims. Rather than repeatedly arguing that a statutory deadline started later, claimants could establish that the six-year or twelve-year statutory bar being relied upon does not apply.

There is a substantial difference between defeating a limitation defence case by case and establishing that the defence was never available for that type of claim.

That would not eliminate the need to prove unfairness, but it would eliminate a particular statutory obstacle to having that unfairness examined. For consumers whose cases involve concealed commission, that is a development with real practical significance.

Where the judgment stands

Berry remains a County Court decision and is not binding on other courts. An appeal is anticipated, and higher-court endorsement would be the decisive next step but there is real risk if the view of the Judge is upheld at a higher court.

The decision also does not automatically replace the Financial Ombudsman Service’s separate complaint and referral deadlines. Consumers should continue to act promptly and protect their position, rather than wait for further litigation.

Lenders should answer the evidence, not recycle the rejection

Our message to lenders is straightforward. Where commission was concealed, address the concealment. Where a customer could not reasonably have discovered the relevant facts earlier, address that evidence. Where an unfair credit relationship is alleged, explain why the relationship was fair.

Repeating that an agreement is more than six years old is not a substitute for any of that work.

We do not regard Berry as a reason to abandon the arguments we already use successfully. We regard it as a significant additional challenge to the limitation defences raised against our motor finance commission and financed GAP insurance cases.

If its reasoning is upheld at a higher level, firms could lose the ability to put forward that statutory defence in the first place. The focus would then move more directly to the questions we have been asking throughout… what was taken, what was disclosed, how the customer was treated and what remedy is justified.

Consumers should not lose the opportunity to challenge an unfair transaction because the facts needed to expose it were kept from them. The law already recognises that problem. Berry could remove another barrier to putting it right.