Prior to purchasing a franchise, can I expect full disclosure of the franchise offering?

The short answer is ‘no’. In the UK franchisors are under no legal obligation to provide full details of the franchise that they offer. That having been said, members of the British Franchise Association have to comply with the BFA’s code of ethics, which does require full disclosure.  Even here, however, franchisees are not fully protected because if a member of the BFA does not provide all relevant information, whilst that will amount to a breach of the BFA’s Code of Ethics, which would entitle a franchisee to complain to the BFA, it would not give a franchisee any rights to damages to compensate for the loss.  Because of the above, it is always sensible for franchisees to assume (even though, in practice, this is unlikely to be the case) that the franchisor is not providing accurate or full information. Prospective franchisees should not accept what the franchisor tells them, but should undertake their own verification. In order to do this, franchisees will need to obtain details of all the franchisor’s franchisees and ask them to confirm whether the information that has been provided is correct.  The rule of ‘caveat emptor’ applies when buying a franchise in precisely the same way as it applies in purchasing anything else.