Consumer Protection
10-Year Warranties • Burden on the Manufacturer • Gold Standard
Built to Last • No Planned Obsolescence • Right to Repair
The Principle
You buy a fridge. It breaks after 18 months. You contact the manufacturer. They tell you to prove the fault existed at the point of sale. You are not a refrigeration engineer. You cannot prove anything. You buy another fridge. The manufacturer sells two fridges instead of one that lasted. This is not a market failure. It is a business model.
The current consumer protection system is designed around the legal fiction that the consumer and the manufacturer are equal parties. They are not. The manufacturer designed the product, chose the materials, decided the build quality, set the price, and knows exactly how long the product is engineered to last. The consumer knows what the box said and how much it cost. When the product fails, the manufacturer has all the information and the consumer has none. Asking the consumer to prove the fault is asking the person with no information to defeat the person with all of it. The system is designed to produce one outcome: the manufacturer wins.
BUILD reverses this. The burden of proof sits with the manufacturer. If a product fails within the warranty period, the manufacturer must prove either that no fault exists or that the consumer caused the failure through misuse. If they cannot prove misuse, they fix it, replace it, or refund it. The consumer does not need to prove anything. They bought a product. It broke. It is the manufacturer’s job to explain why.
You are not an engineer. You should not need to be. You bought a fridge. It should keep food cold for a decade. If it does not, that is the manufacturer’s problem, not yours.
Pillar 1: Tiered Warranty Standards
Different products have different lifespans. A fridge should last longer than a toaster. A sofa should last longer than a fan. BUILD’s warranty tiers reflect what products should actually last when built properly, not what manufacturers have decided is profitable.
1.1 — Tier One: 10-Year Warranty
The following products carry a mandatory minimum 10-year warranty from the date of purchase:
Fridges and freezers. Cookers and ovens (gas and electric). Washing machines and tumble dryers. Dishwashers. Boilers (gas, oil, and electric). Heat pumps (air source and ground source). Air conditioning units. Solar panels (with a performance guarantee — see section 1.5). All major white goods and heating/cooling systems that a household depends on for daily life and that cost hundreds or thousands of pounds.
These are products that should not die. A fridge manufactured to a reasonable standard lasts 15–20 years. A boiler lasts 15–25 years. A washing machine lasts 10–15 years. The fact that modern versions of these products frequently fail within 3–5 years is not because the technology has got worse. It is because the build quality has deliberately got worse. Thinner steel, cheaper compressors, plastic parts replacing metal, circuit boards designed without surge protection, bearings rated for half the cycles the machine will perform. This is planned obsolescence — engineering a product to fail so that the consumer buys another one. BUILD will not tolerate it.
1.2 — Tier Two: 6-Year Warranty
The following products carry a mandatory minimum 6-year warranty:
Computers (desktop and laptop). Monitors and televisions. Office chairs and desk chairs. Desk lamps and floor lamps (excluding bulbs, which are consumables). Printers (excluding consumable cartridges). Tablets. Routers and networking equipment.
Six years reflects the reasonable productive life of technology that is not deliberately hobbled by software obsolescence. A computer that is physically functional should not become unusable because the manufacturer stopped providing software updates after three years. The right to repair (section 3.1) and the enshittification ban (Life, Liberty & Freedom Charter, Pillar 3.4) ensure that the hardware the consumer bought continues to function for its full warranty life.
1.3 — Tier Three: 5-Year Warranty
The following products carry a mandatory minimum 5-year warranty:
Kettles. Microwaves. Toasters. Tin openers (electric and manual). Steamers and rice cookers. Fans (desk, pedestal, and tower). Blenders and food processors. Irons. Hair dryers. Vacuum cleaners.
These are small appliances that cost £20–£150 and are currently engineered to last 18 months to 3 years. A £40 kettle that fails after two years is not a cheap product that lasted a reasonable time. It is a product that was built to fail. A kettle is a heating element in a water container. The technology has existed for over a century. There is no reason a kettle should not last five years except a deliberate choice to use components that will not.
1.4 — Furniture: Built to a Good Standard
Sofas, beds, mattresses, dining tables, desks, bookcases, wardrobes, and all household furniture must be manufactured to a published durability standard. A sofa that sags after one year. A bookcase that bows under the weight of books. A bed frame that creaks and shifts after six months. A dining table whose veneer peels. These are not products that have been ‘used hard.’ They are products that were built badly.
BUILD will introduce a British Furniture Standard that specifies minimum material quality, joint construction, upholstery durability, and structural integrity requirements. Furniture that meets the standard carries a quality mark. Furniture that does not meet the standard cannot be sold in the UK. The standard will be set by an independent body with representation from furniture makers, materials scientists, and consumer groups — not by the retailers who profit from selling disposable furniture that needs replacing every three years.
1.5 — Solar Panels: 10-Year Performance Guarantee
Solar panels carry a 10-year warranty with a performance guarantee. If a panel’s output drops below 90% of its rated capacity within 10 years of installation, the manufacturer must replace it at no cost to the consumer. Solar panels are sold on the promise of decades of clean energy generation. If that promise does not survive a decade, the manufacturer has sold a product that does not do what it claimed.
Pillar 2: Burden of Proof on the Manufacturer
It is not for the consumer to find the fault. It is for the manufacturer to prove there isn’t one — or that the consumer caused it.
2.1 — The Reversal
Under current law, if a product fails after six months from purchase, the burden of proof shifts to the consumer. The consumer must demonstrate that the fault existed at the point of sale or that the product was not of satisfactory quality. In practice, this means paying for an independent engineer’s report, navigating a complaints process designed to exhaust them, and ultimately accepting a replacement or refund that the manufacturer offers on its own terms.
BUILD reverses this completely. For the entire warranty period — 10 years, 6 years, or 5 years depending on the product tier — the burden of proof sits with the manufacturer. If the product fails within the warranty period, the manufacturer must prove either: that no manufacturing defect or design fault exists (the product is functioning as intended); or that the failure was caused by identifiable consumer misuse (dropped, submerged, modified, used outside its stated parameters).
If the manufacturer cannot prove one of these two things, the product is repaired, replaced, or refunded at the consumer’s choice. Not at the manufacturer’s choice. The consumer decides whether they want a repair, a replacement, or their money back. The manufacturer does not get to offer a refurbished unit when the consumer wants a refund. The consumer bought the product. The product failed. The consumer chooses the remedy.
2.2 — No More ‘Wear and Tear’ Excuse
Manufacturers routinely refuse warranty claims on the basis of ‘normal wear and tear.’ A washing machine drum bearing fails after three years — ‘wear and tear.’ A sofa cushion collapses after 18 months — ‘wear and tear.’ A laptop hinge cracks after two years — ‘wear and tear.’ This excuse is abolished within the warranty period.
If a product is designed and marketed for domestic use, and it fails under domestic use within the warranty period, it was not built well enough. The drum bearing should have been rated for 10 years of domestic washing cycles. The sofa cushion should have been filled with material that retains its shape for a decade. The laptop hinge should have been engineered for 20,000 open-close cycles. If the manufacturer chose cheaper components that fail sooner, that is a design decision, not wear and tear. The warranty covers it.
Pillar 3: Right to Repair
3.1 — Repair, Don’t Replace
Manufacturers must make spare parts available for the full warranty period of the product plus three additional years. A fridge with a 10-year warranty must have parts available for 13 years from manufacture. A kettle with a 5-year warranty must have parts available for 8 years. Repair manuals, diagnostic information, and software tools must be published and available to independent repairers as well as authorised service centres.
The right to repair for agricultural machinery is established in the Farming & Agriculture Charter (Pillar 7). This charter extends the same principle to every consumer product. If you own it, you can repair it. If you choose to take it to an independent repairer rather than an authorised service centre, your warranty is not voided. The manufacturer does not get to create a monopoly on repairs by refusing to supply parts or information to anyone outside their network.
3.2 — Ban Planned Obsolescence
No manufacturer may deliberately design a product to fail, degrade, or become unusable after a predetermined period. This includes: hardware components rated below the warranty period; software updates that deliberately slow or disable older devices; batteries that cannot be replaced by the user or an independent repairer; proprietary connectors or components designed to prevent third-party repair; and any design decision whose primary purpose is to shorten the product’s lifespan and drive a replacement purchase.
This connects to the enshittification ban in the Life, Liberty & Freedom Charter (Pillar 3.4). A product you have paid for must continue to function as it did when you bought it. The manufacturer does not get to degrade your property to sell you a new one.
Pillar 4: The Gold Standard
4.1 — Bring Back Quality Marks That Mean Something
The current system of product certification is a box-ticking exercise. The CE mark (now UKCA) is largely self-declared by manufacturers. It certifies that the manufacturer claims the product meets minimum safety standards. It does not certify quality. It does not certify durability. It does not certify that the product will last longer than the journey home from the shop.
BUILD will establish a British Gold Standard quality mark — an independent, rigorous, publicly trusted certification that a product has been tested and verified to meet BUILD’s durability, repairability, and material quality requirements. Products that carry the Gold Standard have been independently tested, not self-certified. They meet the warranty tier requirements. Their parts are available. Their manuals are published. They are built to last.
The Gold Standard is not mandatory — manufacturers can sell products without it. But products with the Gold Standard carry a visible, trusted mark that tells the consumer: this product has been independently verified to meet the highest durability and quality standards. Over time, the market rewards the standard. Consumers choose Gold Standard products because they know they will last. Manufacturers pursue the standard because it sells. Quality becomes a competitive advantage, not a cost to be cut.
4.2 — Independent Testing
Gold Standard testing is conducted by an independent body with no financial ties to any manufacturer, retailer, or industry body. Testing includes accelerated life testing (running the product at simulated years of use to verify the warranty claim), materials analysis (verifying that the components used match the durability requirements), repairability assessment (confirming that spare parts are available and repair is practical), and user testing (real people using the product under real conditions for extended periods).
The testing body publishes all results. Every product tested, every result obtained, every pass and every fail. Transparency is the standard. If a manufacturer submits a product and it fails, the failure is published alongside the passes. The consumer sees everything.
Pillar 5: Streaming — You Pay, No Ads
5.1 — If You Pay, It’s Ad-Free
Any streaming service that charges a monthly subscription in the United Kingdom must provide that subscription ad-free. No ‘basic with ads’ tier. No ‘premium ad-free upgrade.’ No inserting advertisements into a service the consumer is already paying for and then charging them more to remove the advertisements. If the consumer pays a subscription, the subscription is ad-free. That is what paying means.
Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Spotify, and every other subscription streaming service introduced advertising into paid tiers because they could, not because they needed to. A company that charges 200 million subscribers £13 per month each is not struggling with infrastructure costs. It is extracting additional revenue from a captive audience because Wall Street expects quarterly growth and ads are easier than making better content.
If the infrastructure cost is genuinely unsustainable — which it is not — the answer is not to degrade the consumer’s experience. The answer is to stop paying Amazon Web Services billions per year in hosting fees and invest in owned infrastructure. BUILD’s position on digital sovereignty (Life, Liberty & Freedom Charter) and energy sovereignty (Energy Charter) both support this: host locally, power cheaply, own the infrastructure, and stop handing margin to AWS.
5.2 — £13 Cap and 1% Annual Rise
The maximum price for a standard household streaming subscription in the United Kingdom is £13 per month. This is the cap. Not a ‘recommended price.’ Not a ‘starting price.’ The cap.
Price increases are limited to 1% per year, applied on a fixed annual date — once every 12 months, not every 6 or 8 months whenever the company decides it needs more revenue. At 1% per year, a £13 subscription becomes £13.13 in year two, £13.26 in year three. Slow, predictable, proportionate. Not the current model where Netflix raises prices 10% every eight months and dares you to cancel.
If a streaming service wants to show advertisements in other countries where consumers have not paid a subscription, that is their business. In the United Kingdom, where a consumer has paid, the screen is theirs. No ads. No interruptions. No upsell. You paid. Watch the show.
The Consumer BUILD Will Protect
These five pillars form a single, integrated consumer protection framework. Every pillar shifts power from the manufacturer to the person who bought the product.
Fridges last 10 years because the warranty says they must. Kettles last 5 years because someone finally said out loud that a heating element in a water container should not die after 18 months. Solar panels maintain 90% efficiency for a decade or they are replaced free. Furniture is built to a standard that means the bookcase holds books and the sofa holds its shape.
When a product fails, the manufacturer proves it was misuse or they fix it. Not the consumer proving there was a fault. Not an independent engineer’s report at the consumer’s expense. Not ‘wear and tear’ as a magic phrase that voids every claim. The manufacturer designed it, built it, and sold it. If it broke, they explain why.
Parts are available for years beyond the warranty. Repair manuals are published. Independent repairers have full access. Planned obsolescence is banned. Software cannot be used to kill hardware. And the Gold Standard tells you which products have been independently tested and verified to actually last.
You bought it. It should work. If it doesn’t, that is the manufacturer’s problem, not yours. BUILD will make sure they remember that.
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BUILD UK
builduk.club
August 2026
Download this charter as a document (.docx) — the paper as written. What follows is the same text, readable.