Two Acts govern a restaurant service charge and neither settles when to show it

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 inserts a new Part into the Employment Rights Act 1996, and reaches service charges explicitly. Section 1 defines an employer-received tip as an amount a customer pays by way of a tip, gratuity or service charge, however described, that the employer or an associated person receives, so a charge added before the bill reaches the table is inside the scheme. Section 2 inserts the allocation duty at section 27D(1):

Section 4 inserts a deadline at section 27G: allocation and any resulting payment to a worker must happen no later than the end of the month following the month the customer paid. The statutory Code of Practice works the arithmetic at paragraph 33: a tip left on 23 June must be distributed by 31 July at the latest. Section 6 inserts a records duty at section 27J(1): where such payments arise on more than an occasional and exceptional basis, the employer must record how each was handled and keep that record for three years.

Extent and commencement. Section 13 reads, whole: "This Act extends to England and Wales and Scotland." Northern Ireland is outside it. The duties were commenced by S.I. 2024/829; the note on the allocation duty, read on 2 September 2026, reads: "S. 2 in force at 1.10.2024 in so far as not already in force by S.I. 2024/829 , reg. 3(b)". The legislation.gov.uk banner claiming when a page was last updated is a caching artefact, so no currency date is taken from it.

The written-policy duty inserted by section 6 requires the policy to record whether the employer requires or encourages customers to pay tips, gratuities and service charges, and how allocation works. The next subsection settles who sees it:

Workers. The Code of Practice, in effect from Tuesday 1 October 2024, says so in terms at paragraph 40: "An employer may share their written tipping policy with customers or display it publicly if they wish, but this is not a requirement of the Tipping Act."

So the Act says almost nothing about what a guest must be told before the bill arrives: it regulates the destination of the money, not the disclosure of the charge. It does one thing to the customer-facing side, in the Code's glossary:

A charge becomes voluntary because the guest was clearly told it was. Section 27T, inserted by section 9, makes the Code admissible in employment tribunal proceedings and requires a tribunal to take relevant provisions into account, while providing that a failure to observe it is not of itself actionable — and the Code's Foreword adds that such a failure is not in itself proof that an employer has acted unfairly.

The Code is mid-revision, and the 2024 one still governs. A revised code was published on 29 June 2026 and pulled a month later. The GOV.UK page, read on 2 September 2026, records under 29 July 2026: "This code of practice was previously laid before Parliament, but has been withdrawn so that a new public consultation can be held on its content." Its instruction is unambiguous: "For now, employers should continue to follow the existing code of practice." That page applies to England, Scotland and Wales.

Price disclosure sits in Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Section 230 lists what an invitation to purchase must carry, and its two price limbs travel together:

Then the definition that decides everything:

Section 230(2)(g), covering optional charges left outside that total, names one family only: freight, delivery or postal charges. Not service charges.

Extent and commencement. Section 338(1) reads: "Subject to subsection (2), this Act extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland." The commencement note on section 230, read on 2 September 2026, reads: "S. 230 in force at 6.4.2025 by S.I. 2025/272 , reg. 2(1) (3)"; regulation 2(3) commences Chapter 1 of Part 4, protection from unfair trading, except sections 232, 234 and 235.

The regulator has already put restaurants inside this. Guidance CMA207, dated 18 November 2025, lists a restaurant menu among its examples of an invitation to purchase, expressly including a digital menu reached by scanning a QR code. Its paragraph 6.3 says: "The price of a product is usually material information. Failing to provide the price in a timely fashion before a transactional decision is made is likely to amount to a misleading omission. For example, in restaurants, the prices of the food and drink available will need to be displayed to consumers before they order, and in many cases before they enter the restaurant." Its chapter 4 summary states the prohibition: "The practice of showing consumers an initial headline price for a product and subsequently introducing additional mandatory charges as consumers proceed with a purchase or transaction – sometimes called ‘drip pricing’ – is prohibited."

Two duties, two maps. Fair allocation covers England, Wales and Scotland from 1 October 2024; price transparency covers the whole UK, Northern Ireland included, from 6 April 2025. A restaurant in Belfast is outside the first and inside the second, and a group either side of the Irish Sea runs two rulebooks over one bill format.

Here is the honest state of it. Section 230(4) captures charges the consumer "will necessarily incur". The Code makes a service charge voluntary precisely when the guest is told there is no obligation to pay. Read together, a genuinely optional, clearly flagged charge does not obviously fall inside the total price at all — and read the other way, a charge added by default, in small type, on a bill the guest meets only at the end, does not look optional in substance.

The full text of CMA207 was read on 2 September 2026 and it never uses the words "service charge", "tip", "gratuity" or "discretionary", despite naming a restaurant menu as its own worked example. No CMA decision, court judgment or tribunal ruling opened for this article draws the line for a hospitality service charge. The strongest version of the argument is that a service charge presented to the guest as effectively unavoidable is a mandatory charge in substance, and so belongs in the total price shown before the guest orders or books — but no court, tribunal or regulator has drawn that line for a restaurant, and the two tests point in opposite directions. That is an inference from two adjacent regimes, not settled law, and no such promise is made here.

The regulator's appetite is not in doubt. On 15 April 2026 the CMA announced its first financial penalty under the new consumer regime, against the AA's driving schools: a mandatory £3 booking fee not shown in the upfront price to more than 80,000 learners booking online. The whole outcome is far larger than that one fee and is not the price of a single late line on a single screen: refunds of over £760,000, a £4.2 million fine, reduced from £7 million, and a stated total cost of almost £5 million. The CMA's framing was general: "Under consumer law, businesses must show all unavoidable charges in the headline price from the outset, enabling people to make informed choices." Driving lessons are not dinner, and a fixed booking fee is not a discretionary service charge. Only the appetite transfers.

Regulation 6A of the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 forbids a payee from charging any fee for payment by a card-based payment instrument that is not a commercial card, and extends it to two further categories of instrument and to euro credit transfers and direct debits. Regulation 6A(2) caps other payment fees at the payee's own cost. The note, read on 2 September 2026, dates it: "Regs. 6A, 6B inserted (13.1.2018) by The Payment Services Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/752) , reg. 1(6) , Sch. 8 para. 12(6) (with reg. 3 )". Regulation 6B confines regulation 6A to payments involving a payment service provider located in the United Kingdom, and regulation 5's excluded contracts, which limit the older cost cap in regulation 4, cover sectors such as gambling, banking and insurance. Restaurant dining is not among them. The instrument is headed U.K. throughout.

One afternoon can produce what both regimes want.

A menu price rise that reaches the website late is the same fault without a service charge; the DMCCA rules on subscription contracts is the same Act pointed at recurring payments. The 29 July 2026 update to the UK tipping rules covers the withdrawn code, and budgeting card processing from a real card mix is the lawful way to recover what a surcharge reached for.

The solution principle is dull and effective: one number, published once, everywhere a guest reads it before deciding. That fails when menu, confirmation and till are three systems kept by three people.

On Starter at £19 a month excluding VAT, a TableSpark site carries a "Live menu — sections, dishes, prices, photos" and a "QR-ready digital menu — one owned menu link for table cards, windows and social profiles", so the menu scanned at the table is the menu that was edited — and "Change a dish or a price once and it updates across every page instantly." Editing is unlimited on every plan, one editor and no developer, and every site is built mobile-first. An Inbox for every lead with CSV export sits on Starter too, so a query about a charge lands there rather than in a review.

Where the confirmation must carry the number, direct bookings matter. On-site reservations with slots and party size at 0% TableSpark commission, with deposits, no-show controls and reminders, are on Growth at £39 a month excluding VAT, as is guest email from the restaurant's own domain for branded confirmations. Online ordering and table QR ordering, both at 0% TableSpark commission, are on Full at £69 a month excluding VAT — and because cards and deposits go straight to the restaurant, the published qualifier applies: "Prices exclude VAT. Stripe's standard card-processing fees apply to online payments."

A price only helps if the guest finds the page, and TableSpark publishes the boundary in its own words: "A live link is not the same as an indexed one. Crawlable restaurant content, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots controls, Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema and managed search-verification setup. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google."

Decide the service-charge wording once, put it where the guest meets the price, and keep the allocation record for the people it protects. For an independent UK restaurant, TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for that job: it starts at £19 a month excluding VAT on Starter with the live menu, the QR menu link and managed search readiness; direct reservations, deposits and reminders arrive on Growth at £39 a month excluding VAT; online ordering and table QR ordering arrive on Full at £69 a month excluding VAT, each at 0% TableSpark commission. The law will settle the discretionary question in its own time. The number the guest sees first is settled tonight, by whoever edits the menu.