Autumn Budget 2026: What It Means for UK Hospitality Finance Teams 

Less than a day after the Budget, around 60 operators gathered at KERB in Spitalfields. The headlines were already out. The session was about what they meant for real sites. 

One number stood out. For a £1.5m restaurant, next year costs about £51,500 more. That’s roughly £141 every trading day, before a single cover walks in. 

Then came a detail that’s easy to miss. More than half of that rise has nothing to do with the Budget at all! 

That matters if you’re the one signing off January’s numbers. Some costs were set long before Wednesday. Others only arrived with the Chancellor’s speech. Mix the two up and the forecast tells the wrong story. 

So which changes are new, and which were coming anyway? And what do they do to a group with ten or twenty sites? 

That’s what we’ve tried to work out here, in plain terms, with a few dates worth putting in the diary. 

The Budget on one page 

You’ll have seen the headlines by now. Here’s everything that touches hospitality, in one place. 

For most groups with several sites, the rates help is a cap on increases. Few will see an actual cut. The rest of this piece looks at what that means in practice. 

Read the rates small print before you celebrate 

1. Does the £18,000 threshold help a group? Not much, sadly. Small business rates relief applies to one property only. If you run several sites, it won’t reach you. 
2. Is a restaurant with a busy bar now a pub? Only if the numbers say so. To get the higher pub relief, a restaurant would need its wet and dry split to make the case. A few might. Most won’t. 
3. Does the inflation cap cover every rise? No, and this is the one to remember before a refit. Rises that come from improving a property aren’t covered. The same goes for rises caused by losing other reliefs after 1 April 2026. So a smart new bar or extra covers could push the bill up regardless. 
4. Is this the end of rising rates? Probably not. Colliers expects the total rates take to grow from £33.6bn in 2025/26 to £43.1bn in 2031/32. That’s a 28% rise in six years. The cap buys two years of breathing space. It doesn’t change the longer trend. 

The pub “win”, in black and white 

Pubs came out of the Budget with the biggest rates boost. Relief more than doubles. On paper, it looks like a clear win. 

A pub taking £25,000 a week Extra rates relief: £1,460 a year Extra wages and on-costs: about £22,460 a year 

That worked example comes from an Ops Club session the morning after the Budget. It’s a useful one to keep in your back pocket. The relief is real, and every pound of it helps. It just covers a small slice of the wage rise. 

So if your estate includes pubs, budget the relief in, by all means. Then put the payroll line next to it. For most operators, wages are still where next year’s money goes. 

When each change actually hits 

Finance teams tend to plan by month. So here’s the Budget laid out by date. 

• 1 January 2027 – The first-year allowance on main-rate plant and machinery rises from 40% to 50%. 
• 1 February 2027 – Alcohol duty goes up with RPI, by 3.9%. 
• 1 April 2027 – New minimum wage rates start, with the National Living Wage at £13.21. In England, the new small business rates relief, the higher pub relief and the inflation cap on rates all begin. 
• April 2027 – The main-rate writing-down allowance falls from 14% to 12%. 
• 2027/28 and 2028/29 – Rates bills for other hospitality venues can’t rise faster than inflation. 
• Date to be confirmed – Mayors get powers to bring in an overnight visitor levy. Reports differ on when. 
• April 2029 – VAT e-invoicing is planned to become mandatory. 

Worth printing out. Most of the big changes land between February and April. 

What it does to a multi-site P&L 

Here’s how the numbers look on a real P&L, using two published worked examples. 

Now the useful bit. More than half of that restaurant’s rise isn’t the Budget at all. Some of it was already in train before 28 October. So when you brief the board, split the two. Show what was coming anyway, then what Wednesday added. 

These are other people’s examples, built on their own assumptions. Plug in your own headcount and hours to get your number. 

Four lines most round-ups missed 

Most Budget round-ups stopped at wages and rates. These four got far less attention, but each one lands on a hospitality P&L. 

1. Live-in staff cost a little more to house. The accommodation offset rises by 43p to £11.53 a day from April 2027. If you provide staff housing, check your minimum wage sums still add up. 

2. The electricity VAT cut isn’t for you. It applies to household bills. Most restaurants, hotels and pubs still pay 20% VAT on their energy. 

3. Time your refits with care. The first-year allowance rises to 50% from January. The writing-down allowance falls to 12% from April. A quick word with your tax adviser before signing off capex could pay for itself. 

4. Payroll is getting busier. Benefits in kind are moving onto payroll, and there are new rules for agency workers. Check which apply to you well before the April pay run. 

The pay ladder nobody budgets for 

The 50p rise gets the headlines. The harder bit sits one rung up. 

Around 330,000 hospitality workers are thought to be on the minimum wage. When their pay goes up, the people just above them notice. A shift lead who earned a clear step more last year may now earn only a little more. Leave that gap to close and you risk losing the people who hold a busy Saturday together. 

So most operators will lift supervisor pay as well. That cost rarely shows up in the first Budget sums. It does show up in April’s payroll. 

Tronc deserves a look at the same time. If the business has a hand in deciding how tips are shared, PAYE sits with the employer. Changing pay bands is a good moment to check your tronc set-up still matches how it works in practice. 

When did you last map your pay bands against the new floor? 

Five jobs before April 2027 

1. Rebuild the wage forecast. Use £13.21 for over-21s and £11.27 for 18 to 20s. Then add the rises needed one rung up. 

2. Check every site’s rateable value. Work out which relief each one gets: small business, pub, or just the cap. 

3. Talk to suppliers about duty. The rise lands on 1 February, two months before everything else. Agree how it flows into your prices. 

4. Review payroll and tronc together. Look at who decides the tips split, and how benefits in kind will be handled. 

5. Line up capex with the new allowances. If a refit is planned, check whether timing it around January or April changes the tax relief. 

Where this leaves you 

HOSPA made a fair point after the Budget. The headlines are one thing. The real test is how it all adds up on the balance sheet. 

This one is a mixed bag. Pubs and small single sites do well on rates. Most groups get a cap and a bigger wage bill. Duty goes up in February, and the rest follows in April. None of it is a shock. It just needs to be in the numbers before the spring. 

This is the sort of work we help hospitality groups with at QX, from payroll and tronc to management accounts and forecasting. If it would help to talk any of it through, you’re very welcome to book a call with our team. 

Next, we’ll take a closer look at the wage rise, and what it does further up the pay scale. The focus will be on hotels, and where the pressure on margins really builds.