Temporary VAT Reduction

The Great British Summer Savings scheme

From 25 June to 1 September 2026, VAT is being temporarily cut from 20% to 5% on children’s meals in restaurants, children’s tickets for theatres and cinemas, and entrance fees for family attractions like soft play, adventure centres, and theme parks.

What is covered at The Square?

The VAT reduction will apply only to:

  1. Online (pre-booked) entrance fees
    ALL entry prices will be reduced during the scheme dates, both peak and off-peak days, including adults, but it will apply to online pre-bookings only. Our door prices will remain the same.
  2. Private Hire
    We can include private hire bookings in the scheme, BUT we are not allowed to offer any additional services or goods under the rules! This means we cannot set up party tables, for example. So this discount can only be claimed for Private Hire bookings if you are simply hiring the space without any other changes.

How do we get the discount?

The discount code is:

GBSS-5%

Simply enter this code into the ‘coupon code’ box at checkout.
You must read the details in FAQ ‘1’ below before using this code

FAQs

  • This code will only work from 2pm on 24th June until 1st Sept.
  • The code applies to the visit date, NOT the date you are making the booking. All bookings using the discount code must be for visits between 25th June – 1st Sept only.
  • It is the customer’s responsibility to use this code to get the VAT discount. We cannot give the discount after the booking has been made.
  • The discount only applies to online bookings, the code cannot be used at our entrance on the day.
  • The code will only work for our standard sessions (PEAK & OFF-PEAK) and Private Hire bookings. If you have any other products in your shopping cart, it will not work (IE. Gift cards, membership payments, SEN sessions).

Anywhere that shows the VAT rate paid (such as on the booking confirmation), will still show the VAT as 20%. Unless you’re reclaiming the VAT as a business expense, you can ignore this. If you are reclaiming VAT, it’s your responsibility to ensure you reclaim the correct amount.
We explain our reasons for not changing all of our systems in FAQ ‘5’

We are only including online bookings in the scheme because splitting out the VAT for a scheme that jumps across two VAT periods (but only covering a portion of each) and which only covers part of our turnover, will involve a lot of additional admin tasks. Our online booking system already handles most of our entrance fees, so this is the simplest way for us to apply the discount.

Our monthly SEN sessions are not included as they are already heavily discounted by us.

This is because the scheme is only temporary (approx 9 weeks) and changing prices is actually a mammoth task. It involves manual changes on tills, various online systems, any electronic information that references or links to our prices (on our systems or 3rd party platforms such as Google), and physical price notices. Large companies have a team of people and fully-automated systems for such things…we have one person!

But there is a wider reason too – as an industry we are campaigning for a permanent, lower VAT rate on children’s play (or even zero VAT). Many customers simply don’t realise how much goes straight to the government, so by asking our customers to apply the discount themselves, it shows them exactly how much difference VAT makes!

Sadly, no. The rules are very strict and the discount must be for entrance only, with no other goods or services offered. Even if they are charged separately they would be considered as part of the Private Hire offer, because they are not available to customers in normal sessions. Quite a lot of our private hire bookings already request no party furniture, so this offers a good saving with no changes for many customers anyway (it knocks almost £60 from a peak-day private hire booking)!

Many people misunderstand how VAT works. VAT is being temporarily reduced from 20% to 5%, which means 15% is being removed (or more accurately, 15 percentage points). But the misunderstanding arises because many people think VAT is applied to the retail price (the price you pay). VAT is actually applied to the net price. The retailer calculates what their net price needs to be, VAT of 20% is then charged on that price and the sum of the two gives the retail price you pay.

For example (we’ll use round figures for clarity):

If our net price was £10, VAT is applied at 20% (which is £2), hence the retail price is £12.

If the VAT drops to 5%, then a net price of £10 + 5% = £10.50

If we took 15% from the £12 retail price, it would give us a retail price of £10.20, but we’d still owe the VAT man the 5% VAT (50p), hence we’d lose 30p on every transaction. That’s why a VAT discount of 15% is not the same as the retail price discount. It’s actually a retail price discount of 12.5%