In the next few weeks, two employment law developments come into force.
- From 1 October 2026, workers will have six months rather than three to bring a tribunal claim about your tipping policy or your tipping records.
- 22 September 2026 is the deadline for the Fair Work Agency’s holiday pay compliance and enforcement consultation. The Palanki v Big Table tribunal’s outcome has implications for how tronc payments are treated for holiday pay.
The claim deadline for tipping policy and records is doubling
Under the Employment Rights Act 2025, the time limit set out in section 27N of the Employment Rights Act 1996 moves from three months to six. It applies where the failure happens on or after 1 October 2026, and it covers claims about:
- your written tipping policy
- making that policy available to workers
- keeping proper tipping records
- responding correctly to a worker’s request for their records
It does not touch the separate 12-month deadline under section 27K for claims about unfair allocation, late payment or non-payment. That stays as it is, and the statutory four-week window for responding to a records request hasn’t changed either.
Our blog ‘How would a tribunal assess whether your tipping policy is fair’ covers this in more detail.
What to check before 1 October
- Any tipping policy, website copy, FAQ page or complaint template that quotes a three month deadline needs updating
- Every worker, including agency staff, should be able to show they received the correct version of the policy
- A record of who requested tipping information, when, who owned the request, and when and how it was answered
None of this touches your allocation schedule or your NI treatment. It’s a documentation and record-keeping exercise, but it’s one worth getting right before the new deadline lands.
The Palanki v Big Table case shows a compliant tronc isn’t automatically holiday pay safe
The Palanki v Big Table tribunal case clarified one of the grey areas around holiday pay and tronc schemes. The central premise of the case was whether the tips distributed through a tronc scheme should be included in holiday pay calculations.
The claim went in favour of the employees because their contract of employment stated that they were entitled to payments from the tronc scheme. Even though the tronc scheme was compliant,
the payments were deemed to be contractual, and therefore deemed as payments from employment and should be factored into holiday pay calculations.
The important take away from this case is that the contract of employment should have no reference to the tronc scheme. The employer should, outside of the contract of employment, advise
the employees that they would be eligible to join the tronc scheme which is run by the independent Troncmaster.
Why this matters even if your tronc is fully compliant
The tribunal treated holiday pay status and the NI disregard as two separate questions. The original tronc payments in this case could still sit within the NI disregard, even though they counted as remuneration for holiday pay. In other words, a tronc can be perfectly NI-compliant and still leave an employer with a holiday pay liability, depending on how the money moves before it reaches the Troncmaster.
If you do need to fund a holiday pay uplift, that’s an employer cost. It should go through PAYE as employment earnings, with the usual employee and employer NI applied, not come out of the tip pool.
A holiday pay enforcement body may be on the way
The government is consulting on giving the Fair Work Agency power to enforce statutory holiday pay from 2027, running alongside the existing tribunal route. The proposals include whole-employer investigations rather than only responding to individual complaints, a six-year look-back period, penalties of up to 200% of arrears capped at £20,000 per worker, and the possibility of public naming.
These are proposals, not confirmed rules, and the consultation doesn’t reconsider what should count as remuneration for holiday pay in the first place. It closes on 22 September 2026.
How Tips and Troncs can help
We act as an independent Troncmaster, which means the money moves the way the Palanki judgment expects it to before it’s allocated. We will advise on the set up of your scheme and help you avoid any of the nuances, such as mentioning troncs in the contract of employment, that caught Big Table out. We can also support your employee consultation and communication process, helping employees understand the tipping policy and rules.
Get in touch – we’re happy to talk it through any questions you may have.