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Plain English campaign news articles

Consumer duty and vulnerable customers – FCA’s push for plain English information

In a big win for you, the consumer, the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has set out further legislation to protect customers – including protection against misinformation and unclear language. They’ve pledged to push firms to ‘act to deliver good outcomes for customers’.

Over the next 12 months, new ‘consumer duty’ rules will be imposed that will further prevent firms from misleading customers. This is very important news at any time – especially so during a cost-of-living crisis, when money is tight, and the need for clarity has never been greater.

So, soon enough, it’ll be much harder for firms to confuse you with badly written or baffling information. Central to the new legislation is the drive to improve ‘consumer understanding’.

As champions of clear information and consumer clarity, we naturally welcome such legislation. And of course, we’re more than happy to adopt such strict principles regarding our own conduct.

To blow our own trumpets, we’ve always done our best to keep things clear and simple, so everyone understands us. And we’ve never made a distinction between vulnerable customers and any other kind – to us, everyone is deserving of the clearest possible information.

But rest assured, we’ll continue to maintain our high standards and make sure you know exactly what you’re getting from us. Whether you’re looking to pay for some work to be edited, or you want to undertake one of our many training options, our communication will always be clear and unequivocal.

In summary: we both support and enthusiastically adopt the imminent FCA Consumer Duty and vulnerable customer measures, which will help everyone, especially those who need it the most.

We look forward to seeing all organisations using plain English to communicate with their customers.

And if you need help making your documents easier to understand – we can help.

 

Links to editing services and virtual in-house training

 

Online Plain English Diploma course

Until recently, the workshops for our diploma course were held in London and Manchester, so it wasn’t feasible for vast numbers of people to attend.


With the changes that have been made to people’s working arrangements, we’ve had to adapt. As a result, we’ve moved our diploma course online and can now offer it to more people than ever before. So, no matter where you are working, anywhere in the world, you can now enjoy our most popular course.

We run the first workshop online over two consecutive days. You then complete five assignments and email them over to us. We’ll mark and grade them and send them back to you.

You will also need to prepare a presentation, which you will deliver online to the rest of the group.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure about any of these details – we’re here to support you before, during and after the course.

Contact Terri Schabel on 01663 744409 or email terri.schabel@plainenglish.co.uk for more details.

2021 plain English awards

You can view our plain English awards for 2021

2020 Foot in Mouth Award nominees

Here are the 2020 Foot in Mouth Award nominees. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 1 December.

Read more: 2020 Foot in Mouth Award nominees

Confused.com Plain English Award nominees 2019

As part of our 40th Anniversary celebrations and to mark a new partnership – and in a slight break from tradition – we’re releasing some of our award nominees a little earlier than usual. We’ve also created some new categories to mark our Confused.com sponsorship of this year’s awards. Please note that these are not award winners. Award winners will be announced in early December.

Confused.com considers 2019 ‘the year of confusion’ and we can only agree. There are those who have helped make some sense of an often baffling year, and those who have only contributed to the general bafflement. This early release contains a few culprits of the latter variety. For more plain English villains, and all the heroes fighting against obfuscation and gobbledygook, tune in again for the full and final list of winners and losers in early December.

Read more: Confused.com Plain English Award nominees 2019

2019 Awards

Please send in your award entries - we're almost halfway through the year (!) and while we already have some excellent candidates, we could always do with a few more. Email info@plainenglish.co.uk or get in touch via our social media pages right up until the end of November. Thanks!

2017 Awards

It's time for this year's Plain English Campaign award winners.

It's been a mixed year for clear communication, but as usual, there are plenty of things to cheer, as well as jeer.

GDPR help for small businesses

Since May 2018 small businesses need to be GDPR compliant. What does this mean?

The way companies communicate with their users, and how they handle and process the information they hold about their users, will need to change. This is so all company practice falls in line with new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) guidelines. The guidelines are EU-led, but identical guidelines will almost certainly be written into post-Brexit UK legislation.

Read more: GDPR help for small businesses

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