The motor finance pause lifts tonight. The right move is to refuse the lender's first offer.

At 00:01 on Sunday morning, the Financial Conduct Authority's two-year pause on motor finance commission complaints ends. From 1st June, lenders can issue final response letters on PCP and hire purchase commission cases for the first time since the original Court of Appeal judgment in late October 2024.

The pause has been lifted three weeks earlier than the consulted-on date of 31st July. The lender's complaints desk is back at work on Sunday morning, four weeks before the FCA's redress scheme opens. The four-week gap is where most of the year's worst settlements will be made.

What is happening

PS26/3, the FCA's industry-wide motor finance redress scheme, is expected to put roughly £7.5 billion back in the hands of consumers across about 14 million agreements. It rolls out in two stages. Scheme 1, for agreements between 2014 and 2024, opens on 30th June 2026. Scheme 2, for pre-2014 agreements, opens in August. The FCA's own analyst briefing puts the average payment per agreement at around £829, with the cap set at the lower of 90 per cent of commission plus interest, the realised total cost of credit adjusted for a minimal cost of credit, and an unadjusted total cost of credit cap. Interest is the Bank of England base rate plus one per cent per year, with a three per cent floor.

Lloyds (Black Horse), Barclays, Santander, Close Brothers, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services and MotoNovo have all confirmed they will not be challenging the scheme. The legal challenge filed by other parties on 1st May 2026 is still live and is the reason scheme implementation slipped from the original autumn timing, but it does not stop the pause being lifted tomorrow.

What the lender will do in June

The lender knows two things in June that most consumers do not.

It knows the scheme will produce a higher number per case than a pre-scheme "goodwill" offer, because the scheme's APR adjustment of 21 per cent for Scheme 1 and 17 per cent for Scheme 2 is designed precisely to put consumers in a position they would have been in without the undisclosed discretionary commission arrangement. It also knows that every complaint settled in June, before Scheme 1 opens, is one fewer file it needs to process through the scheme's mechanical calculation. The structural incentive is obvious.

The pattern in late 2024, before the pause, was offers of two to five hundred pounds against scheme-equivalent calculations that ran into four figures. The pattern in June 2026 will be the same, with the additional pressure that the consumer has been waiting two years for any movement and is more likely to accept the first number they see.

What to do on Monday morning

Three concrete steps, in order.

First, send the complaint. Keep it short. Cite PS26/3 explicitly. Cite the original Court of Appeal judgment in Johnson v FirstRand Bank, October 2024. Cite section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 on unfair relationships, and the FCA Handbook rule at DISP 1.6.2R for the eight-week firm complaints clock. State that you reserve your right to participate in the FCA's redress scheme once it opens. That single sentence is the most important sentence in the letter. It is also the sentence that some complaint-handling scripts will be trained to talk you out of.

Second, time-stamp the chronology before you need it. The pause did not stop the limitation clock under section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980. For pre-2020 agreements, the six-year window is shorter than it looks, and a missed limitation point can hand the lender a clean defence at the worst possible moment. Two dates matter today: the date of the original agreement, and the date you sent the complaint this week. Diarise the FOS escalation deadline, which has been extended to 29th July 2026 or fifteen months from the lender's final response, whichever is later.

Third, refuse any offer dated before 30th June 2026. Send a one-paragraph acknowledgement that reads, in substance: "Thank you for your offer of X dated Y. I am not in a position to accept until the FCA's PS26/3 redress scheme is open and my agreement has been assessed under it." That sentence preserves both the lender's offer and your right to a scheme-level outcome. It also creates a written record of the lender having opened the file, which the FOS will treat as your formal complaint date if it comes to escalation.

The principle

Most lost consumer disputes come from accepting whichever number is in front of you because the wait feels worse than the discount. Motor finance in June 2026 is the textbook case. The lender has had two years of pause to model exactly how it wants to clear its backlog. The consumer has had four weeks since PS26/3 was finalised. The asymmetry of preparation closes only one way, which is by waiting four more weeks and forcing the lender into the calculation it would rather you settled out of.

The lender has been waiting two years to settle. You can wait four more weeks.

Also worth your time this week

Other moves that mattered, one line each, source link below.

• Court approves Argento Wealth distribution. The High Court has approved a pro rata distribution to investors of money the FCA recovered from Argento Wealth Limited and EMB Fund Limited. Unknown investors must self-identify by 1st August 2026 to receive payments. FCA news.
• SB Remit payment institution insolvent. Sukate & Bezeboh Ltd (trading as SB Remit), an FCA-authorised payment institution, entered administration on 22nd May 2026. The FSCS does not cover payment services, so there is no automatic compensation. Affected customers should contact joint administrators Opus Restructuring LLP on 0161 383 8419. FCA news.
• Asda Grafix sand bottle recall, asbestos risk. OPSS confirmed Asda has recalled Grafix Make Your Own Sand Bottle kits because the sand may contain asbestos. The product was sold exclusively at Asda between August 2021 and May 2026. Affected consumers are entitled to a full refund. Which? recalls page.
• Maxi-Cosi recalls Isofix car seat. Which? reports a specific Maxi-Cosi Isofix car seat model has been recalled for a safety defect. Affected consumers are entitled to free replacement or refund under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 sections 9 to 10. Which? coverage.
• Ofgem confirms 13 per cent energy price cap rise. The Q3 2026 cap announced on 27th May takes a typical dual-fuel direct debit household from £1,641 to £1,862 a year from 1st July. Gas rises 24 per cent, electricity 5 per cent. 22 million accounts on fixed tariffs are unaffected. Martin Lewis has called the rise "voluntary" for switchers and has published a fix-vs-cap comparison. Ofgem release.
• HM Treasury confirms Consumer Credit Act reforms. The Policy Statement published on 18th May confirms statutory sanctions in the Consumer Credit Act 1974 will be repealed and replaced by FCA supervision, the FOS and the Consumer Duty. FCA consultation on the delegated elements is expected later in 2026. Lewis Silkin analysis.
• DUAA section 103 commences 19th June. From 19th June 2026 every UK data controller must operate a formal data-protection complaints procedure and accept complaints regardless of channel, including social media. Worth checking your insurer, energy supplier and bank publish a clear route before then. CMS briefing.
• FOS Q3 2025/26 quarterly data. The Financial Ombudsman Service received 47,300 new complaints in Q3 (Oct-Dec), down from 68,400 in Q2, almost entirely on the motor finance pause. Volumes are expected to surge from June. The case fee rises 4.6 per cent to £680; the compulsory levy is up 10 per cent to £86 million. FOS quarterly data.
• Citizens Advice on Royal Mail. Royal Mail confirmed it missed Ofcom delivery targets for the year. Citizens Advice's response reinforces consumer rights to compensation for delayed and lost mail under Royal Mail's published scheme. Citizens Advice press release.

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