This is a guidance note to the disclosure document to be used by a franchisor, used in order to disclose required information to a potential or current franchisee.

The disclosure document is prescribed in Annexure 1 of the Franchising Code of Conduct, which is located in Schedule 1 of the Competition and Consumer (Industry Codes—Franchising) Regulation 2014 (Franchising Code of Conduct).

The disclosure document must be provided to all potential (and current) franchisees.

Adaptation of disclosure document

Section 8(3) of the Franchising Code of Conduct requires that the disclosure document be set out in the form and order, using the headings and numbering, of Annexure 1 of the Franchising Code of Conduct.

The document attached to this guidance note contains the disclosure information as extracted from Annexure 1. It has been formatted for easy use and drafting guidance has been added. However, no substantive changes have been made to the text of the legislation (all original text is indicated in bold), nor has the order of the text, the headings or numbering been changed.

Regard should be had to the Franchising Code of Conduct to ensure that the form complies with the requirements of section 8(3).

Information statement

Practitioners should attach the information statement from Annexure 2 of the Franchising Code of Conduct to the disclosure document.

Attachments to the disclosure

Documents containing additional information may be attached to the disclosure document. Any attachments added to the disclosure document must be listed in the table of contents.

This guidance note has been authored for LexisNexis by Jane Garber-Rosenzweig, Principal, Gable Lawyers.

This guidance note is part of a suite of commercial transaction structure documents prepared with the assistance of Specialist Editor Stephen Newman, Executive Counsel, Ponte Earle.