United Kingdom briefings

Salons & barbers

Clinics & med-spas

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All owner-operated businesses

Salons & barbers · 2026-08-23

From 1 October you have to check your chair renter. Getting it wrong costs £45,000 per person

Right to work checks have always been an employee thing. From 1 October 2026 they are not. If someone rents a chair, covers a Saturday, or takes your colour work as a freelancer, you are the one who has to check they are allowed to work here, and the penalty for getting it wrong starts at £45,000 for each person. The Home Office named beauty salons as a target sector when it announced this. The good news is that the actual task takes about ten minutes per person. The bad news is the bit almost everyone will get wrong, which is thinking the contract saying "self-employed" moves the risk somewhere else.

Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-08-16

The kids' menu goes back to 20% VAT on 2 September. Set the price now

VAT on qualifying children's meals has been 5% since 25 June. On Wednesday 2 September it goes back to 20%, and that is £119.05 out of every £1,000 those meals take, straight off your margin, unless you move the price. Here is the exact number to move it by, the promotion that quietly cancelled the relief for a lot of cafes, and why these ten weeks are worth more to you as data than they ever were as cash.

Salons & barbers · 2026-08-09

A client abusing your stylist is about to become your bill, and the price list is already published

Short version: from 30 October 2026 the government intends that if a client harasses one of your stylists and you cannot show you took all reasonable steps to stop it happening, that is on you, not just on the client. And from 1 October the window for a member of staff to take you to a tribunal is meant to double, from three months to six. Neither change is law yet, which matters, and not in the way most of the newsletters are telling you.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-08-04

Can you renew your lease? It comes down to one paragraph most owners have never read

Rent is your biggest fixed cost after wages, and one paragraph in your lease decides whether you get any say in it. If your lease was contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, then on the day the term ends you have no right to stay, no right to a new lease and no compensation. If it was not contracted out, you have all three. Below: how to tell which one you signed, what each is worth in cash, and what the reform now out for consultation would change. This is England and Wales law. Scotland and Northern Ireland work differently.

Clinics & med-spas · 2026-07-31

What your NHS dental practice is worth changed on 1 April, and £62.50 decides which way

If you are thinking about selling an NHS practice, start with the thing a buyer will price: the contract. One slice of it now pays a flat national rate instead of your own UDA rate, and whether that helped you or hurt you comes down to a single division. Seventy five pounds over 1.2. If your UDA value is under £62.50 you are better off than you were in March. If it is over, you are doing mandatory work at a discount.

Gyms & studios · 2026-07-27

Your casual gym staff get a right to guaranteed hours in 2027. The number that decides the cost is being picked this summer.

If you staff your gym with casual instructors and zero-hours front desk cover, you will have to start offering some of them guaranteed hours. Not yet. The law passed in December 2025, the rules that make it work are being written now, and the government expects it to bite in 2027. The reason to read this in July 2026 is that the detail deciding how much it costs you is genuinely undecided, the consultation on it closes on 25 August, and the way your rota looks in January is the thing that will set your bill.

Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-07-23

You now pay sick pay from the first day off. Here is what that does to a cafe.

Quick version, because you are on the floor: from 6 April 2026 you pay Statutory Sick Pay from the first day someone is off sick, not from day four, and you pay it to staff you never used to (your very part-time people). Nobody handed you extra revenue to cover it, so it comes straight out of margin. Here is the real cost on a normal cafe rota, one rule that makes it bite cafes harder than most, and the bit that quietly shows up when you sell.

Clinics & med-spas · 2026-07-18

The remote prescriber who signs off your Botox is now off-limits. Here is what that does to your clinic

If your clinic offers Botox or fillers and you are not a prescriber yourself, this one goes straight to your profit. The prescriber who used to sign off your prescriptions without ever seeing the client can no longer do that. The cheap, remote way a big slice of the market sourced its toxin is gone. Here is what the rule actually is, what it does to the margin on your best treatment, and why it quietly changes what your clinic is worth.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-07-13

The 2026 business rates "tax cut" is really a rise for a lot of small firms. Here is how to tell which one you got

Here is a rare bit of tax news that sounds like good news: from 1 April 2026 the government cut the business rates multiplier for shops, cafes, salons and gyms in England and called it a permanent tax cut. So why are some owners opening a bigger bill than last year? Because the headline compares your rates to a price you never actually paid. Here is how to work out, in about two minutes, whether your bill went down or up, and what to do either way.

All owner-operated businesses · 2026-07-09

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has started, and the real cost is not the software

If you trade as a sole trader or take rental income, the way you report it to HMRC changed on 6 April 2026. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is now live for the first band of people, and it is coming for almost everyone else over the next two years. Most of the noise is about which software to buy. That is the small question. The bigger one is what this does to your time, your cash, and quietly, what your business is worth.

Cafes & coffee shops · 2026-07-08

The April 2026 National Living Wage rise lands hardest on cafes, and quietly on what a cafe is worth

The National Living Wage went up again on 1 April 2026, to £12.71 an hour. In most trades that is a line in a payroll email. In a cafe, where a big share of your hours are paid at or near the legal minimum, it moves the number at the bottom of the page. Here is what the 4.1% rise actually does to your margin, and the quieter thing it does to what your cafe is worth.

Clinics & med-spas · 2026-07-07

What CQC registration really costs an aesthetic clinic, and why the incoming licensing scheme changes the question

If you run an aesthetic clinic and you have searched "CQC registration cost", you are probably asking the wrong first question. Most clinics doing botox and fillers do not currently need to register with the CQC at all. What is changing is a new licensing scheme for England, and it quietly resets both your compliance bill and what your clinic is worth to a buyer.

Salons & barbers · 2026-07-06

The employer National Insurance rise is quietly reshaping which UK salons are worth buying

The employer National Insurance change that took effect in April 2025 was not a headline in the salon world, but it changed the maths under every chair you employ. Here is what it actually does to your margin, your hiring choices, and, less obviously, what your salon is worth to a buyer.