How to Write Terms and Conditions for Your UK Business Website

Terms and conditions (T&Cs) — sometimes called terms of service or terms of use — are a legally binding agreement between your business and the people who use your website or buy from you. They set out the rules of engagement: what you offer, how payment and delivery work, your refund and returns policy, liability limits, and how disputes are handled. They’re an essential part of any business website, not an optional extra.

Many small business owners either skip T&Cs entirely, copy someone else’s without adaptation, or bury them somewhere visitors are unlikely to find them. All three approaches carry risk. This guide explains what UK business T&Cs should cover, how to write or source them, and how to display them properly on your website.

What UK Business T&Cs Should Cover

The specific content of your T&Cs depends on your business type, but a typical set for a UK small business should address the following: who you are and how to contact you; the products or services you offer; pricing, payment terms, and what happens if a payment fails; delivery or fulfilment timelines and what happens if there’s a delay; returns, refunds, and cancellation rights (particularly important for consumer-facing businesses under the Consumer Rights Act 2015); limitation of liability — what you are and aren’t responsible for; intellectual property — who owns content on your site; how disputes will be handled and under which jurisdiction (UK law); and how you can update the T&Cs and how you’ll notify users.

If you sell to consumers (as opposed to other businesses), UK consumer protection law gives customers specific rights around returns and refunds that your T&Cs cannot override. You can’t write away statutory consumer rights — if you try to, those clauses will be unenforceable and you may fall foul of Trading Standards.

Writing or Sourcing Your T&Cs

There are three realistic options: write them yourself using plain English and adapt a reputable template; use a specialist legal document service (various UK providers offer T&C templates reviewed by solicitors for specific business types at reasonable cost); or instruct a solicitor to draft bespoke T&Cs. For most small businesses, a good quality template adapted carefully for your specific business is the most proportionate approach. Copying another company’s T&Cs verbatim is not just ethically questionable — it means you’re applying their business model, not yours, and potentially copying errors or clauses that don’t apply to you.

Use plain English where possible. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires that consumer contracts be transparent and expressed in plain, intelligible language. T&Cs written in dense legal jargon that a typical customer cannot understand may be unenforceable in a consumer context.

How to Display T&Cs on Your Website

T&Cs only protect you if customers have a reasonable opportunity to read them before entering a contract with you. For e-commerce sites, this means displaying a link to your T&Cs at checkout with a clear prompt for customers to review them before placing an order — ideally a tick-box confirmation. For service businesses, T&Cs should be provided (and ideally signed) before work commences.

Place a T&Cs link in your website footer so it’s accessible from every page. Include a link in order confirmation emails. If you have a separate privacy policy (which you must have under UK GDPR) and a cookie policy, link to those from the T&Cs and vice versa. Keeping these documents up to date as your business evolves is just as important as writing them in the first place.