From 25 June to 1 September 2026, the VAT on children’s meals, family tickets and most attractions drops from 20% to 5%. The Chancellor announced this temporary cut on 21 May 2026. It’s part of the “Great British Summer Savings” package. The detail is in Revenue and Customs Brief 5 (2026). The cut runs for ten weeks. It covers England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Run a restaurant, theme park, soft play centre or other family business in Surrey? The headline is simple. The detail is not. The summer VAT cut splits children’s menus, family tickets, advance bookings and season passes. Each one needs careful handling – at the till, in your booking system, and in your next VAT return.
Our business tax team has put together this short guide. It covers what is in scope, where the pitfalls are, and what to fix before 25 June.
What the Summer VAT Cut Covers
The 5% rate applies to three things:
- Children’s meals eaten in a restaurant. The meal has to be from a children’s menu and “marketed, presented and priced as a children’s meal”. Takeaway children’s meals do not qualify.
- Children’s and family tickets for cinemas, theatres, exhibitions, shows and concerts. Adult-only tickets in this group stay at 20%.
- Adult and children’s tickets to a defined list of attractions. That list covers theme parks, fairs and water parks. It also covers circuses, adventure parks, museums, zoos, aquariums, soft play, indoor bounce parks, and observation attractions like towers and big wheels. Pay-per-ride rides are excluded.
Sports facilities are not in the scheme. Some sports already get a VAT exemption through other rules. Community swimming pools, for example, are unaffected.
Two Things to Fix Before 25 June
You need to sort two areas before the start date. Pricing is one. Advance bookings is the other.
Pricing and tills. The government expects you to pass the saving on at the till. That means updating VAT codes in your EPOS or PMS, changing menu and ticket prices, and clearly separating qualifying from non-qualifying items. A child’s meal has to be “marketed, presented and priced as a child’s meal” to qualify. Serving it to a child is not enough.
Advance bookings. The 5% rate applies to admissions taking place between 25 June and 1 September. It doesn’t matter when the customer paid. For bookings already taken at 20%, you can either apply the new rate or refund the difference. Either route needs clear customer comms, a credit note process, and a clean VAT return.
Where It Gets Technical
Season tickets and multi-entry passes need care. A pass that lets people in outside the 25 June to 1 September window has one condition to qualify. It has to be priced the same as a normal single-entry ticket. A pass used only inside the relief window does qualify automatically.
So an annual pass priced as an annual pass stays at 20%. A peak-summer multi-visit ticket priced at single-entry rates can fall into the 5% band.
Mixed-offer venues are where errors are most likely. A theme park ticket might be at 5% but its on-site adult meal stays at 20%. A soft play centre’s children’s tickets qualify but the parent’s coffee does not. These splits need to be set up properly. In the till, on receipts, and in your VAT return.
How Hamlyns Can Help
Our business tax team is helping Surrey hospitality, leisure and attraction businesses sort the detail before 25 June. We confirm which of your supplies qualify. We agree how to handle advance bookings. We help update your point-of-sale setup. And we reconcile the return so HMRC’s expected position matches what you actually charged.
Where the position is uncertain on your specific menu or ticket mix, we can take it up with HMRC for you.
If you would like a structured review of how the summer VAT cut applies to your business, please get in touch. The window is short. The work involved is more than the headline suggests. The sooner the position is locked down, the cleaner your summer trading will be.
