ERA 2025 commences October 2026 — what hospitality operators need to do now
The Employment Rights Act 2025 adds worker consultation obligations on top of EATA. Here's what changes, what you need to document, and why starting now matters.
Most hospitality operators have heard of the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 — EATA — and broadly understand that tips now have to go to workers in full, fairly, and on time. What many haven't yet absorbed is the second wave of legislation sitting behind it.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA) commences on 1 October 2026. For tipping specifically, it adds a new layer: a mandatory worker consultation process that must happen before your tipping policy is set or changed. That means anonymous feedback, documentation, and a demonstrable process that workers' views were taken on board.
What EATA already requires
Before covering ERA, it's worth being clear on what EATA already demands — because many operators are still not fully compliant with the 2023 Act, let alone the 2025 one. Under EATA you must pass 100% of tips to workers with no deductions, maintain a written tipping policy accessible to all workers, distribute tips fairly and document how fairness is determined, pay tips no later than the end of the following month, keep records for 3 years, and respond to worker requests within 4 weeks.
Fines for non-compliance route through Employment Tribunal and can reach £5,000 per affected worker per instance.
What ERA 2025 adds
ERA builds on EATA by requiring that workers are actively consulted before a tipping policy is adopted or changed. Workers must be able to give feedback anonymously — an open meeting doesn't satisfy the requirement. You need a documented mechanism. Their feedback must demonstrably be taken on board, and the final policy must be communicated back to workers in an accessible format.
Why October 2026 is closer than it sounds
The consultation process itself takes four to six weeks done properly. If you haven't started by August, you're cutting it close. Tip4 has the ERA consultation tooling built into the platform — anonymous worker feedback, policy generation, audit pack assembly, all timestamped and Tribunal-ready from day one.