Requirement to deal with tips, gratuities and service charges Section 6: Information Written policy
This section, which inserts section 27I sets out the circumstances in which employers are required to have a written policy on dealing with tips and details the circumstances in which they must make this policy available to workers.
	Subsection (1) provides that employers must have a written policy where qualifying tips are paid at, or otherwise attributable to, an employer’s place of business on more than an occasional and exceptional basis.
	Where an employer is not required by subsection (1) to have a written policy because qualifying tips are not paid at that place of business but the employer would be required by subsection (1) to have a written policy if worker-received tips paid at, or otherwise attributable to, that place of business were to count as qualifying tips, subsection (5) applies (see subsection (4)). This means that subsection (5) applies where tips (which are not qualifying tips) are paid on more than an occasional and exceptional basis at an employer’s place of business. This could, for example, be the case at a restaurant where all tips are paid to workers in cash and the employer exercises no control or influence over them.
	Subsection (5) provides that in such circumstances the employer must make the following information available to all their workers at that place of business:
the fact that the employer is not required (under section 27I) to have a written policy in relation to that place of business; and
the reasons why the employer is not required to have a written policy under section 27I.
	Where an employer is required by subsection (1) to have a written policy in respect of a place of business, it must include information on the following (subsection (2)):
whether the employer requires or encourages customers to pay tips;
how the employer ensures that all qualifying tips are dealt with in accordance with this legislation, including how the employer allocates qualifying tips, gratuities and service charges between workers.
	Where an employer is required to have a written policy in respect of a place of business, subsection (3) requires the employer to make the written policy available to all workers of the employer at that place of business. Section 27I does not prescribe precisely how the employer achieves this. The employer may therefore select some suitable means based on the circumstances of its workers and their working practices. As the written policy must be made available, it would not be sufficient for the employer simply to tell its workers about the policy orally.
	If an employer makes a written policy available to workers at their place of business and the employer subsequently amends it, the employer must make the amended version of the written policy available to all their workers at that place of business (subsection (6)).