TPS, CTPS and the calls you must not make

This is a practical summary for lead buyers, not legal advice. If you are unsure about your own position, take advice from someone qualified to give it — the rules here carry real penalties and the regulator has been active.

Consent is specific, and it belongs to a moment

When a homeowner completes a form asking for quotes, they consent to being contacted about that thing, by the parties described in the wording they saw. That consent is not general permission to market to them, and it does not automatically transfer to whoever ends up holding the record.

So the first question about any purchased lead is not 'is there consent?' but 'consent to what, given to whom, and when?'

• What did the opt-in wording actually say?
• Did it name your company, a category of company, or nobody in particular?
• When was it given, and how long ago is that now?
• Is there a record of the wording as it appeared on the day?

What TPS and CTPS screening does

The Telephone Preference Service is the UK register of numbers that have opted out of unsolicited live marketing calls. CTPS is its corporate equivalent. Screening a number against those registers before calling is a standard step, and any supplier selling live-transfer or phone-contactable leads should be doing it.

Screening is not a substitute for consent, and consent is not a substitute for screening. They answer different questions, and a serious process does both.

Where the responsibility sits

This is the part buyers most often get wrong. The organisation making the call is responsible for that call. A supplier's assurance is a commercial protection, not a regulatory one — if the call should not have been made, it was still you who made it.

“The supplier said the leads were compliant is not a defence anyone wants to be relying on.”

That is why the records matter. If you hold the opt-in wording, timestamp, IP and source for every lead you called, you can demonstrate the basis on which you acted. If you hold nothing but an invoice, you cannot.

What to keep, and for how long

• The opt-in wording as displayed to the homeowner
• Timestamp of submission
• IP address and source URL
• Evidence of TPS/CTPS screening and when it ran
• Your own call records against that lead

Agree a retention period with your supplier and write it into the supply agreement, along with what happens to those records if you stop buying. Chasing consent evidence from a supplier you no longer trade with is not a position to be in.

Three practical checks

• Ask your supplier to send you the full record for one lead, unredacted apart from the personal data you already hold. If it takes them a week, that is your answer.
• Check whether your CRM stores the consent fields, or drops them on import. Many do drop them.
• Make sure the person who handles a complaint can retrieve the record in minutes, not days.

None of this is onerous once it is set up. It is only difficult retrospectively, which is the position most firms discover they are in at exactly the wrong moment.