Tipping in the UK
British tipping habits are mostly a matter of personal choice, but a 2023 law now forces employers to hand every tip and service charge to staff in full.
Photo: Ewan Munro via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Tipping anywhere in the UK is a matter of personal choice, not law. But where money is collected from customers as a tip or a service charge, a 2023 law says the whole amount must reach staff, fairly and openly.
What the law requires
The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 2 May 2023 and applies to tips, gratuities and service charges that an employer receives, controls, or has significant influence over, including card and cash tips and charges added to a bill. Under the Act, an employer must ensure the total amount of these tips is allocated fairly between the workers at that place of business, and must pass the money on without deductions, other than in very limited cases such as income tax. A statutory code of practice on the fair and transparent distribution of tips came into force on 1 October 2024, and employers must also consult staff on how tips are shared and review that arrangement at least every three years.
Discretionary charges and what you can ask
Under the code, a service charge only counts as "voluntary" or "discretionary" if it is made clear to you, before you pay, that it is entirely optional and that you are under no obligation to pay it. So if a bill describes a charge that way, you are entitled to query or decline it. Whatever tips or service charges a business does collect from you, the 2023 Act requires it to pass that money on to the staff who earned it, rather than keep a share for itself.
Custom, not law, in everyday tipping
Outside that legal backbone, how much, if anything, to tip in a restaurant, pub, taxi, hairdresser's or hotel, or for a delivery driver or a tradesperson, is a matter of custom and personal judgement rather than a fixed rule, and it varies by setting and by region. If you cannot tell from the bill or the venue how a tip or service charge reaches the people who served you, it is reasonable to ask the person serving you, or the business itself, how tips are shared before you decide how much, if anything, to add.
The one certainty in UK tipping law is that once money is collected from a customer as a tip or service charge, it belongs to the staff, not the business. Everything else, from whether to tip a taxi driver to how much to leave on a restaurant table, remains down to you.
