Background
On 7 April 2025, the Advertising Codes were updated to reflect the revocation and restatement of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs – the legislation from which the majority of the CAP and BCAP rules on misleading advertising derived) by the Unfair Commercial Practices provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA). On that date, the wording of a number of the rules in the Advertising Codes was changed to reflect relevant changes introduced by the DMCCA on 6 April 2025.
Given that the complaint that formed the subject of this ruling was received before 7 April 2025, the ASA considered the ads and complaints under the wording of the rules that existed prior to 7 April 2025, and the Ruling (and references to rules within it) should therefore be read in line with this wording, available here – CAP Code and BCAP Code.
Ad description
A national press ad for Lloyds Banking Group, seen on 25 March 2025, included a photo of a black horse galloping past new homes with building work underway. Large text stated “£19.5 billion for social housing. And that’s just the start”. Smaller text underneath stated “Everyone deserves a safe place to call home. That’s why we’ve provided £19.5 billion to the social housing sector since 2018. Helping Britain Prosper Search Lloyds Banking Group social housing”. The ad included the Lloyds Banking Group logo.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that Lloyds Banking Group had donated £19.5 billion to social housing projects.
Response
Lloyds Bank plc t/a Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) stated that this ad formed part of a wider campaign which, aimed to highlight their commitment to social housing within the context of their broader sustainability purpose. They said that, even though the ad was published in The Times, the general public was not the ad’s intended audience, rather it was aimed at LBG’s corporate stakeholders, political groups, journalists and competitors. The ad was intended to demonstrate the bank’s role as a leading commercial supporter of the sector.
They said that The Times was a national broadsheet with a professional and policy-oriented readership. It was the UK’s leading daily print title for reaching business professionals, with 86% of its readership falling within higher socio-economic groups. They said that its readers were typically sophisticated with a strong awareness of business, economic and public affairs issues.
On that basis, they said that the average reader of The Times would have understood that LBG was a major UK banking group, not a charitable or philanthropic organisation, and that the claim did not imply the £19.5 billion was given as a donation. Because of that, they believed readers would understand that Lloyds would not donate such a huge sum as £19.5 billion. Instead, they would have understood that LBG, which was the UK’s largest financial services provider, supplied that funding through a range of commercial mechanisms including loans, investment and capital markets activity, which would make financial sense for a bank. They explained that was why the generic term “provided” had been used in the ad.
LBG believed that a reasonable reader of the ad would not conclude that they had provided such a large sum as a charitable donation, either as a one-off or over a seven-year period. By way of a comparison, they stated that the UK government had allocated a sum of £39 billion over a ten-year period from 2026 to 2036 to a successor to the Affordable Homes Scheme. In this context, they said that a £19.5 billion donation by them would have been seen as extremely large, because it was equivalent to government spending over a five-year period.
To support the claims made in the ad, LBG referred to its 2024 Annual Report, which stated that, since 2018 they had supplied funding of around £20 billion to the social housing sector. The report also stated that LBG’s colleagues had raised over £3 million since they started their partnership with the housing charity Crisis.
LBG said that the ad therefore was factually accurate, did not mislead nor omit material information, and therefore did not breach the CAP Code.
Assessment
Upheld
The ad appeared in The Times, which was read by both consumer and business readers. The ASA therefore considered that members of both those groups would see the ad.
The ad stated in large text, “£19.5 billion for social housing. And that’s just the start”. Smaller text underneath stated “Everyone deserves a safe place to call home. That’s why we’ve provided £19.5 billion to the social housing sector since 2018”. The ASA considered that the meaning of “[…] for social housing” and “provided […] to social housing” was ambiguous. We noted that the ad did not specify whether the money had been donated, lent or invested, and the ad did not make reference to funding having been made available via commercial arrangements.
In the absence of further qualification, we considered readers were likely to interpret the claims “£19.5 billion for social housing” and “That’s why we’ve provided £19.5 billion to the social housing sector since 2018” to mean that LBG had made a significant financial contribution to the social housing sector, and that the figure referred to funding that had directly benefitted organisations within it. In particular, we considered readers were likely to understand the term “provided” to mean the funding had been given or donated to social housing projects, rather than made available through commercial loans or investments.
We considered that both of those claims were seen in a context which framed that financial contribution as part of a broader social mission. The headline claim “£19.5 billion for social housing” was followed by the text “And that’s just the start”, which we considered suggested the financial contribution was part of an ongoing programme of charitable activity. The claim “That’s why we’ve provided £19.5 billion to the social housing sector in the sub-heading”, was preceded by the text “Everyone deserves a safe place to call home”, which we considered positioned the claim within a wider message of social responsibility. On that basis, we considered readers were likely to understand the claim related to a charitable donation, and that the money had not been provided on terms that benefited the bank or would need to be repaid.
Furthermore, we considered overall presentation of the ad, including the image of the LBG black horse galloping past new homes with building work underway, and the statement “Helping Britain Prosper”, furthered that impression. Taken together, we considered readers were likely to interpret that to mean LBG had played a direct role in creating affordable housing and the funding had been provided on a non-commercial basis, for public benefit.
However, we understood the claim related to their role as a financial services provider and that it had been provided to the social housing sector through loans and other financial investment schemes.
We acknowledged LBG’s comments about the medium in which the ad had been seen and that the average reader of the ad would understand that LBG supplied funding on commercial terms, and because they were not a charity or philanthropic organisation, would not donate a sum as large as £19.5 billion. We agreed that readers would recognise LBG as a bank, not a philanthropic organisation and we acknowledged that, because the sum of money was so large, it may have led some readers to doubt whether the ad referred to a donation. However, we noted that the ad referred to LBG providing the financial support “since 2018”. We considered that it was not an inconceivable amount for a large bank to have donated over a seven-year period, especially because it was commonplace for banks, and other large companies, to be involved in social or charitable projects. We also acknowledged LBG’s comparison with government spending on social housing, but considered that most readers would not be familiar with these figures. Notwithstanding those points, we considered that many readers were unlikely to focus on the precise figure listed in the ad, beyond recognising it as substantial. Given the indications in the ad that the initiative was charitable, and in the absence of any information to the contrary, we considered it was reasonable for consumers to assume that the money referred to a donation to the housing sector.
We concluded that the overall presentation of the ad, in the absence of any qualification or clarifying text, while ambiguous, gave the overall impression that the sum of money had been donated to the social housing sector. Because that was not the case, we concluded that it was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Lloyds Bank plc t/a Lloyds Banking Group not to misleadingly imply that they had donated money to social housing projects when that was not the case, and to ensure future ads did not mislead by omitting significant information that put claims into context.
