Avid equestrians will be familiar with the countless stories of horses being mis-sold as suitable for novices or safe for children when they are nothing of the sort. This results in unsuspecting buyers ending up with unsuitable horses (which have probably cost them a large chunk of their savings) and not much they can do about it. This is scary and upsetting for the new owners but also for the poor horses, who will likely end up getting passed around.

There are hundreds of posts on social media where this has happened to somebody who is desperately asking what they can do about it. In the comments section, people usually try to explain how consumer law is supposed to help but in reality, unless the case ends up going to court (and even then, there’s no guarantee of success), these dealers seem to get away with breaching consumer law, time and time again. This is undoubtedly because the current law requires the Competition and Markets Authority or ‘CMA’ (the regulator with powers to enforce consumer law) to take action through the courts, which is difficult, expensive and slow, meaning the CMA will only pursue much higher profile cases