Storage near you

Nobody licenses storage operators. That is worth saying plainly, because a facility with a barrier, a uniform and a lot of CCTV can look institutional in a way that implies oversight it does not have. What applies is general law. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 a contract to supply a service to a consumer includes a term that the trader must perform it with reasonable care and skill, and under section 62 an unfair term of a consumer contract is not binding on the consumer, a term being unfair if contrary to the requirement of good faith it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations to the consumer's detriment. Section 57 limits how far liability for the reasonable care and skill duty can be excluded or restricted.

The Self Storage Association UK is a trade association. It operates a membership standard for operator members covering, in its own description, facilities, units and containers, security, operating procedures, contracts and consumer protection, managing customers, and customer's insurance, and it runs a two-tier structure where members start as provisional and become full members once they meet the standard. That is a useful signal and a private one. It confers no statutory status on a member and no legal remedy on you.

For storage arranged through a removal firm, the British Association of Removers code reaches further because it covers storage of household and personal effects for private individuals. It requires that consignments accepted for storage be covered by a detailed inventory or receipt as agreed with the customer, and that all consignments stored be adequately identified and stored so as to protect them from damage, pilferage and confusion with other consignments. It also requires members to identify in the contract circumstances where additional charges may arise, giving storage and redelivery charges as its example. Again, those are membership obligations rather than law.

Read the storage agreement as a rolling contract rather than a purchase, because that is what it is. The three terms that decide what it really costs are the notice period to move out, the rules for increasing the price, and the minimum term if there is one. Long notice periods are common and entirely lawful, but they mean a facility you leave at short notice still bills you, so know the number before you start rather than when you are trying to go.

How you signed up affects your cancellation rights. If the contract was concluded at a distance, online or by phone, or off-premises, for example at your kitchen table during a removal survey, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 apply. Regulation 29 gives the consumer the right to cancel a distance or off-premises contract at any time in the cancellation period without giving a reason and without incurring liability, subject to the stated exceptions, and regulation 30 provides that for a service contract the cancellation period ends at the end of 14 days after the day on which the contract is entered into. Sign in person at the reception desk of the facility and those particular rights do not arise, because that is an on-premises contract.

If you want the service to start before that period ends, which is normally the whole point with storage, regulation 36 requires an express request from you, on a durable medium for an off-premises contract, and provides that if you then cancel you pay a proportionate amount for what was supplied. It also provides that you bear no cost where the trader failed to give you the required information about cancellation rights beforehand. In short: you may still cancel, but you pay for the days your goods were actually in store.

This is the part of storage that people discover too late. Storage contracts almost always give the operator a lien over the goods for unpaid charges, meaning it can refuse to release them until the debt is paid. The BAR code touches the same territory from the other direction, requiring members not to refuse to release goods for which they have no contractual liability and where no legal right of lien exists while acting as a subcontractor or destination agent, which tells you how normal the right is in the trade.

Beyond withholding, English law provides a route to sell. Section 12 of the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 gives a bailee, which is what a storage operator holding your belongings is, a power of sale where the bailor is in breach of an obligation to take delivery of the goods, or where the bailee could impose such an obligation by giving notice but is unable to trace or communicate with the bailor. Where the bailee is entitled to payment before delivery, the section requires either that notice of intention to sell has been given in accordance with Part II of Schedule 1 to the Act, or that reasonable steps have been taken to trace the bailor without success. A valid sale gives the buyer good title as against the bailor, and the bailee must account to the bailor for the proceeds less the costs of sale, deducting sums due before the notice.

The practical lesson is about addresses and contact details, not about law. Sales under this power depend on notice and on attempts to make contact. If you move abroad, change your phone number or stop opening the emails, you make it easier for the process to run its course without you. Keep contact details current, deal with arrears early, and if you genuinely cannot pay, tell the operator before the correspondence stops rather than after.

Do not assume your belongings are insured because they are behind someone else's locked gate. Storage contracts routinely require you to insure the contents yourself, and separately limit the operator's own liability. That is why insurance appears as one of the areas in the SSA UK membership standard, listed there as customer's insurance, and why the BAR code requires its members either to offer insurance meeting the association's minimum standards of insurance, or, where such insurance is not offered or arranged, to accept liability under the removal contract subject to a declaration of value, with its own insurance sufficient to meet that liability.

Check three things before you sign. First, whether the cover offered at the counter is insurance or a limited liability arrangement, because they are not the same product and only one of them is regulated as insurance. Second, whether the sum insured is enough: a full household of furniture is worth more than most people guess, and under-declaring can reduce a payout proportionately. Third, what your existing home contents policy says about goods in storage, since some policies extend for a limited period and many do not extend at all.

Then look at the exclusions, which are where storage claims are usually lost. Damp and mould, moth, vermin, gradual deterioration, mechanical breakdown and damage to items you were not permitted to store are common exclusions, and some policies exclude high-value categories such as jewellery, documents and works of art unless specifically declared. An inventory with photographs, taken as the unit is loaded, costs an hour and is the single most useful thing you can do for a future claim.

The British climate is mild, wet and changeable, which is a worse combination for stored possessions than a hard, dry frost. The specific enemy is condensation: warm air meeting a cold surface deposits moisture, and in an unheated container or a ground-floor unit the cold surfaces are the metal walls, the floor and the outside of anything you sealed in plastic. That is how a sofa put away dry in October comes out smelling of mildew in March.

Preparation does most of the work. Everything must be genuinely dry before it goes in, including the inside of a washing machine or fridge, which should be defrosted and drained and left with the door ajar. Use breathable covers rather than sealing furniture in polythene, lift boxes and furniture off the floor onto pallets or battens, leave a gap between stacks and the walls so air can move, and use rigid, uniform boxes rather than bin bags so the stack is stable and ventilated. Silica or moisture absorbers help in a small container and are not a substitute for any of the above.

Choose the space with the same thinking. An upper floor of a heated, converted building behaves very differently from a steel container on an exposed yard, and the price difference usually reflects that. If you are storing anything genuinely moisture-sensitive, such as a piano, artwork, vinyl, photographs or upholstered antiques, ask specifically about heating and humidity rather than accepting the phrase climate controlled at face value, and ask what it actually means at that site in January.