The hours page said “Open,” the door was shut, and the law now has a name for it

This is not licensing law, and it has nothing special to do with "bank holiday" as a phrase. It is ordinary consumer-protection law, running since 6 April 2025 through the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA), which prohibits unfair commercial practices — including a "misleading action": false or misleading information relevant to a transactional decision.

CMA207, the CMA's guidance on the Act published 3 December 2025, gives the worked example closing the gap between a website's hours widget and that statutory language. It lists what counts as an "invitation to purchase" — a category carrying a stricter duty to get information right — and a restaurant's menu is on the list:

The Act itself names the first category of information an invitation to purchase must get right:

CMA207 spells out what "main characteristics" covers when a statement is assessed as a misleading action:

Availability is a main characteristic of the product. A restaurant's published hours are a statement about availability. A menu is an invitation to purchase. Keep the two apart: s.230 governs what an invitation to purchase must not omit, s.226 governs a misleading action, and only the latter carries the Part 4A redress at reg 27B. A stale hours notice is capable of being a misleading action, enforceable by trading standards and the CMA itself.

That word "capable" matters. The DMCCA has a harsher route to liability: Schedule 20, a fixed list of thirty-two practices unfair in all circumstances, no need to show a consumer was likely misled. The paragraph closest to an hours notice targets manufactured scarcity, not a forgotten update:

Paragraph 7 catches a trader deliberately claiming a limited-time deal to force a quick decision. A forgotten hours update is not that, and sits outside Schedule 20 entirely. So a stale hours notice is not a per-se breach — a restaurant is not automatically liable simply because its hours were wrong. Liability runs through the general test instead: whether the false information was likely to cause the average consumer to take a transactional decision they would not otherwise have taken. Driving out on a wrong opening time is exactly that, but it is a real threshold, not a trip-wire — and CMA207 says its own examples illustrate the law rather than define it.

Where the general test is met, the practice is a civil wrong, enforceable by trading standards and the CMA. It can also be a criminal offence, with a real penalty:

The trader has a statutory defence available, though, and carries the burden of proof:

A lapsed hours update — "the website was never touched after the rota changed" — sits close to the centre of that defence: a mistake, not a scheme. That does not make the exposure disappear. It makes it a real, available route the trader would have to defend against, not an automatic offence for a wrong opening time.

Here is the detail most plain-English explainers of the DMCCA miss, buried inside a bracket in a commencement instrument rather than the Act's headline sections. The same regulations switching on the unfair-practices prohibition on 6 April 2025 deliberately left three sections unswitched:

Sections 232, 234 and 235 are the DMCCA's own provisions for an individual's personal redress — to unwind a contract, get a discount, or claim damages. As of this article's research, current to on or before 1–2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk records no later commencement date for any of the three. They are enacted. Not in force.

That does not leave a misled guest with nothing. The instrument revoking the old Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 saved that Regulations' redress chapter until DMCCA rules are made, cross-referred to the new Act's definitions. The route today runs through those amended 2008 Regulations, not the DMCCA's headline sections. Its damages provision reads as though written for a family on a locked doorstep, but reg 27A gates it: the consumer must have entered a contract or paid before any Part 4A right opens. A family that drove out on the strength of the website, with no booking and nothing paid, does not clear that gate:

Alarm, distress or physical inconvenience or discomfort — without proving a penny of financial loss. A wasted round trip on a bank holiday sits inside that language, for a guest who did book or pay. For one who did not, the prohibition still bites on the trader, but the private claim does not open. The same rules give a right to unwind a contract or claim a discount where a deposit or booking turned on the wrong hours. Quoting "DMCCA section 232" as operative today is wrong; it is not commenced.

None of the exposure above turns on "bank holiday" carrying special status. The statute using the phrase, the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, governs a narrower thing than assumed: it excuses banks from settling payments on those days. Its schedule of bank holidays for England and Wales is shorter than the popular calendar:

Worth naming, too, the statute that sounds like it should apply and does not. The Licensing Act 2003 regulates licensable activities and trading hours; its offences target trading beyond those hours — the opposite problem from a restaurant that closes when its website said it would be open. Nothing in it addresses the accuracy of an hours notice.

Where a guest paid a deposit, the analysis is straightforward: there is a contract, and the wrong hours information sits inside it. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 makes that explicit for services:

The harder question is the ordinary case — a phone call or a website form, no deposit, nothing paid, ordinary contract-law consideration in play. Whether a free, no-deposit table booking is a "contract to supply a service" capable of engaging that section is not settled by anything found for this article. Where nothing was paid, a misled guest's stronger route is very likely the consumer-protection path already described, not a contract argument about a booking nobody paid for.

The practical fix is not legal argument. It is not keeping two versions of the truth about opening hours — a laminated card behind the till, and a website nobody has opened since it was built. A stale accreditation badge on a restaurant's own site is the same failure mode wearing a different hat: information a guest reasonably relies on, left uncorrected after the underlying fact changed.

TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice for an independent UK restaurant, starting at £19 a month excluding VAT with 0% TableSpark commission. Starter, at £19 a month excluding VAT, carries special-date opening hours on every plan — bank holidays, closures and changed service windows on the same live hours screen as the regular week, next to opening hours and a live "Open now" indicator, so a Christmas Eve closure is one entry, not a forgotten page. Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT, adds direct reservations at 0% TableSpark commission with live availability and reminders. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT, adds online ordering, also at 0% TableSpark commission.

None of that is legal advice, and no such promise is made here. What it removes is the mechanical failure at the centre of this article: an hours change made once, in October, that never reached the public page. Editing is unlimited on every plan, one editor, no developer, and a service window changed once updates everywhere.

A stale hours page is not a paperwork problem. It is the same false statement whether on a laminated card or a live website, and since April 2025 the law reaching it has new numbers — most switched on, one important cluster not.