The 2024 subscription regime has not commenced, and a restaurant membership is still regulated

The regime being written about is Chapter 2 of Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 — pre-contract information, reminder notices before renewal, a cooling-off right, a duty to make leaving as easy as joining. Read on legislation.gov.uk on 2 September 2026, it is not in force, and the negative can be proved three ways rather than asserted.

The first is the Act's own commencement section. Section 339(1):

The second is the annotation against the chapter's provisions. The word Prospective sits above them, and each section carries a commencement note. Section 253, the overview:

That annotation appears twenty-four times on the chapter page. One nuance is not the exception it looks like: five sections — 255, 256, 258, 267 and 277 — carry a different note:

Section 339(2)(c) is the ordinary regulation-making limb: "(c)any other provision of this Act so far as it confers power to make regulations or is otherwise necessary for enabling the exercise of such a power on or after the day on which this Act is passed." What is live is the power to write the implementing regulations, not the duty on the trader.

The third is the commencement instruments. A title search of UK statutory instruments on legislation.gov.uk on 2 September 2026 returns exactly three results. They are S.I. 2024/1226, S.I. 2025/272 and S.I. 2026/284, and none commences Chapter 2. The load-bearing evidence is in the most recent, made 11 March 2026, which prints a cumulative table of what the earlier two commenced:

Its Part 4 rows read:

Chapters 1 and 3 are listed. Chapter 4, on dispute resolution, is commenced by the 2026 instrument itself from 6 April 2026, which is why a restaurant's complaint-handling signposting moved before its membership rules. Chapter 2 appears nowhere, and neither does Schedule 22 or Schedule 23: the schedule rows run 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and then jump to 24.

Extent does not vary. Section 338 provides: "(1)Subject to subsection (2), this Act extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland." Subsection (2) deals only with the extent of amendments the Act makes elsewhere. When Chapter 2 commences it will reach Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester alike.

No currency is asserted from legislation.gov.uk's own banner, which has carried three different dates across pages of one Act in a single session; the dates given are the dates the pages were read.

The shape matters: a membership page built this month will still be running when the regime lands. Section 254(1) defines the contract by mechanism rather than size: no minimum value, no minimum term. Once commenced, the chapter will require:

Section 262 makes compliance with several of those an implied term of every subscription contract. All are marked prospective today.

The exclusion a restaurant will reach for is Schedule 22 paragraph 9. It is not a food exemption but a micro-entity exemption with a delivery test attached:

Micro-entity status is judged under section 384A of the Companies Act 2006 for the preceding financial year, and applied to unincorporated businesses as a hypothetical, so eligibility can change between financial years without the restaurant doing anything. Whether a dine-in membership is goods intended for current consumption in the household is untested. Paragraph 9 carries its own note, "Sch. 22 para. 9 not in force at Royal Assent, see s. 339(1)".

The 2013 Regulations. A membership sold from a website is a distance contract, and for a service contract regulation 30(2) ends the cancellation period fourteen days after the day it is entered into. Restaurants assume catering sits outside that. There is an exclusion, but it is conditional: regulation 28(1)(h) removes from the cancellation right:

A table booked for Saturday at eight has a specific date; a rolling membership with no fixed date of performance arguably does not, and on that reading the booking-page assumption does not travel to the membership page. No case testing it was found; this is the article’s least confident step. A second food exclusion sits in regulation 6(1)(f), a different test again:

No micro-entity condition, no collection limb — a milk-round test, written for rounds. Then the sanction, regulation 31:

Twelve months of membership income, refundable, turning on one disclosure. A service charge shown before the bill and a cancellation right shown before payment are the same problem in different clothes.

Unfair terms. Paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 to the Consumer Rights Act 2015, in force since 1 October 2015, lists among terms which may be regarded as unfair "A term which has the object or effect of automatically extending a contract of fixed duration where the consumer does not indicate otherwise, when the deadline fixed for the consumer to express a desire not to extend the contract is unreasonably early." Sixty days' notice to stop an annual membership is a fairness argument today, not in 2027.

Aggressive practices. Section 228 has been in force since 6 April 2025; its annotation reads "S. 228 in force at 6.4.2025 by S.I. 2025/272, reg. 2(1)(3)". Section 228(2) lists six matters to be taken into account in deciding whether a commercial practice uses harassment, coercion or undue influence. The sixth:

The CMA's guidance, CMA207, gives the worked example:

Direct enforcement. Schedule 16 lists the enactments the CMA can enforce without a court; its note reads "Sch. 16 in force at 6.4.2025 by S.I. 2025/272, reg. 2(1)(7)". The 2013 Regulations appear as "Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 All regulations", and the Act itself as "Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Part 4" — the dormant chapter already wired in for the day it starts. Section 182(6) sets the ceiling: "(6)The amount of a monetary penalty imposed under subsection (4)(b) must be a fixed amount not exceeding £300,000 or, if higher, 10% of the total value of the turnover (if any) of the respondent." That is a maximum, not a tariff, and nothing here shows one imposed on a small hospitality business.

One part of Part 4 a restaurant is likelier to trip over did commence, on 1 January 2026, by regulation 3 of S.I. 2025/272: Chapter 3, consumer savings schemes, with Schedule 24. A prepaid dining or coffee scheme can fall inside it, and the obligation there is a balance-sheet one rather than a disclosure; its duties and thresholds are set out in the consumer savings scheme duties.

Chapter 2 has no such date. The Department for Business and Trade published its response to the implementation consultation on 2 April 2026:

The CMA repeated it on 17 April 2026: "subscription contracts: new rules are expected to come into force in Spring 2027 with guidance from DBT – businesses must get ready to comply". Both are anticipations. No commencement date for Chapter 2 has been appointed in any instrument.

The sensible response is not to wait. Almost everything the dormant chapter will require is either good practice now or already required by the 2013 Regulations: state the recurring price and the renewal date where the customer commits, not in linked terms; give the cancellation information before payment and record what was shown; make the final step say a payment obligation is being accepted; notify before each renewal; and put the exit online, findable without a call. The same principle runs through booking terms a guest can see before confirming and a refund route with a stated deadline and method. Whether a membership falls inside section 254 on commencement is a question for the restaurant and its adviser, and no such promise is made here.

Most of that list is a website problem, which is why a restaurant is better served by a platform built for restaurants than by a general page builder with a payment plugin. For an independent UK restaurant, TableSpark is the best-value and best overall choice: it starts at £19 a month excluding VAT on Starter, a plan starts on publication, and editing is unlimited.

Starter at £19 a month excluding VAT carries enquiry and newsletter forms, an Inbox for every lead with CSV export, guest records under the restaurant's own account with CSV export, a live menu where a dish or a price changes once and updates across every page instantly, and generated legal pages for privacy, cookies and terms. Search readiness is on every plan, with Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema, canonical URLs, sitemaps, robots controls and managed search-verification setup. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google.

Growth at £39 a month excluding VAT adds on-site reservations at 0% TableSpark commission, deposits, no-show controls and reminders, email campaigns to consented guest segments, guest email from the restaurant's own domain, and a custom domain with managed SSL — so a renewal notice is an email to a consented segment sent from the restaurant's own address. Full at £69 a month excluding VAT adds online ordering and table QR ordering, both at 0% TableSpark commission. When UK rules change, plain-English updates linked to the official guidance are published.

The membership can be sold this week. The law that will govern it is half in force and half waiting, and on the reading set out above, the half already in force carries the twelve-month exposure.