licensed credit brokers

[scaniaman]

The thread by Canucki is very interesting and raises other questions.
Hope some of you Legal Eagles can answer.
If a car dealer has many branches, does he need to have a separate licence for each branch, or is there a "company" credit license?
Same question again, but what is position where each branch is a separate company? eg Smith Cars (Paisley) Ltd Smith Cars (Perth) Ltd.
Which council would issue license? Where can info on who has a current license be found?
Referring to Canucki again, if car subject to hp arranged by unlicensed dealer, and you stop payments, can dealer or anyone else come and lift car ie. Who is legal owner?

[smvtuser]

One consumer credit licence will cover all branches of a company, as it is the company which is a legal entity. However a group which trades as a separate limited company at each outlet will require a licence for each limited company.

Consumer credit licences are issued by the OFT, not councils, and current licence details can be found on the Public Register Public Register

A secondhand dealer's licence, issued by the local council, is required in most, but not all areas of Scotland. This is nothing to do with credit and is issued under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act.

On the final point, the legal owner under HP is the finance company, but if arranged by an unlicensed dealer, the agreement is not enforceable unless the OFT issue a validation order, so repossession by the finance company would amount to unlawful enforcement.

[scaniaman]

Thanks for your full reply, that cleared the license issue up. (Can't get firm on public register--don't have enough info).
On the point of ownership, what i was thinking at the time, was that if HP Co. went after dealer to recoup money, does dealer have any hold on the car? If he does not, are you saying the buyer gets the car free???

[smvtuser]

Interesting question! I suppose it might depend how long the agreement ran before the matter came to light. Finance companies might have difficulty recovering their money and dealer could not just take the car back legally.