The Advertising Standards Authority has banned an advert from a building firm after it was ruled as misleading.

The roofing company, Low Cost Building Maintenance Ltd has had an ad banned after it stated “Stockport’s Flat Roof Specialists” with text below stating “Rubberbond EPDM System. With 20 Year Guarantee” as well as featuring a logo for the Federation of Master Builders FMB.

A complaint which the ASA received claimed that the 20 year guarantee was misleading, while the logo was also misleading as it implied it was a member of the Federation of Master Builders.

The firm did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries and this concerned the ASA, which felt the firm’s lack of response was an apparent disregard for the Code, therefore breaching CAP Code rule 1.7.

“We considered consumers would interpret the claim "With 20 Year Guarantee" to mean that the product being promoted in the ad came with a guarantee of 20 year,” said the ASA.

“We had seen no evidence from the advertiser that the consumer would receive a 20-year guarantee on the product as part of the purchase. Therefore, we considered the advertiser had not substantiated the claim made in the ad.”

The ASA also felt that the logo of the Federation of Master Builders was also misleading as they had no evidence from the firm to prove that they were a member of the federation.

“On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.50 (Endorsements and Testimonials),” added the ASA.

The advertising is no longer allowed to appear in its current form and the ASA has warned Low Cost Building Maintenance Ltd to ensure they had evidence in order to substantial claims such as these.