1. May 2026

Autumn Budget: What It Means for UK Hair & Beauty Businesses

First published on the NHBF website.

Rachel Reeves has been very clear about how she wants today’s Budget to be seen: a set of ‘fair and necessary choices’ designed to be ‘built on fairness and fueled by growth’. She doesn’t want a return to austerity and promises to avoid a spree of reckless borrowing.

For the hair & beauty sector, the question is: Does that idea of fairness reach the high street and the small employers who keep it going?

This policy update is the NHBF’s initial reaction and whilst there are positive commitments made for future reform this budget doesn’t meet the mark.

In her pre-Budget comments, the Chancellor set out three big aims:

• Help families with the cost of living
• Cut NHS waiting lists
• Get national debt on a downwards path while kick-starting growth

The Government’s own spin is that this Budget puts more money in people’s pockets which leaves them able to spend more in your businesses and grow the economy

For the sector, things aren’t quite as simple as that.

Hair & Beauty businesses have always recognised the importance of fair pay and support with the cost of living for our staff and our clients.

But in our sector around half of workers are on minimum or living wage rates and these wages make up the bulk of costs, the same policies that boost take-home pay also drive up the wage bill for employers who are already under intense pressure.

In other words, the Budget is putting more money into people’s pockets but it is also taking more money out of the business when wages increase in the new rates land in April 2026.

Fairness in Pay – For Employers and Employees

The Government has confirmed another significant uplift in the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage. This has been trailed as worth roughly £1,500 more a year for the lowest-paid and around £900 for those on the main living wage rate.

Our last State of the Industry and Low Pay Commission work shows that many salons and barbershops are only just back to small profits, if at all, after years of rising wage rates, energy bills, product prices, National Insurance changes and higher rents and rates.

There is very little cushion left for a large increase in wage bills.

We’ve just closed our latest survey and will publishing the results before the end of the year.

So while stylists, barbers and therapists will welcome higher pay, fairness also has to mean recognising the capacity of small, people-intensive businesses to absorb those rises without cutting hours, jobs or training.

In the Budget there was limited support on the employer side, the Government needs to urgently put this in place before the wage bill spikes once again.

That is where NHBF will keep pressing: if Government increases wages it must also choose policies that let employers sustain them and their business.

Cost-of-living help: welcome, but not a substitute for business support

Freezing rail fares and holding down prescription costs will make a real difference to many staff and clients. For a junior team member commuting by train or a self-employed professional juggling work and caring responsibilities, these things matter.

But they are support for households, not for businesses.

They won’t reduce the cost of employing people, they won’t reform the tax system and they won’t bring down commercial rents or business rates.

So whilst the NHBF welcomes practical help with the cost of living, we will be very clear with Ministers: you cannot call this a fair Budget for the high street if it only helps us as consumers and never as employers.

Growth, skills and investment

The Chancellor has promised “the biggest drive for growth in a generation”, with investment in infrastructure, housing, defence, education and skills.

That language should open the door for our sector, if Government is serious about it. The hair & beauty sector:

• Creates local jobs in every community,
• Offers entry-level opportunities and progression for young people,
• Depends heavily on apprenticeships and skills training.

If growth is really to be “fuelled by fairness”, then supporting small employers to keep taking on apprentices, training staff and investing in premises has to be part of the plan.

We will be looking very closely at the fine print on any skills, training and apprenticeship measures in the Budget – and making the case for hair & beauty to be treated as a growth sector, not an afterthought.

High Street Enforcement

The Budget announces a High Streets Illegality Taskforce and extra funding for Trading Standards and law enforcement to tackle organised crime and illicit businesses on the high street – the Chancellor explicitly name-checks ‘barbershops and nail bars’.

What this means on the ground, we don’t know yet, but the NHBF will be pressing the Government for details.

Debt, Discipline and Taxation

The Chancellor has been equally clear that she will not return to “reckless borrowing” and wants national debt to fall. That means more of the Budget pressure is falls on tax and revenue measures.

NHBF has already put constructive, costed ideas on the table, especially around reform of the VAT system which the NHBF has been fighting for nearly two decades for. 

These are exactly the kind of ‘fair and necessary choices’ that can raise revenue in a more sensible way without punishing the very businesses Government says it wants to grow.

The Budget however contains a sizeable package on business rates for high-street businesses from April 2026.

How will the NHBF Respond?

Under our Respect our sector campaign, we will now:

• Go through the Budget Document line by line.
• Publish clear, practical guidance for members on what the Budget means in real terms for wages, tax, VAT and business rates;
• Continue to press the Treasury, DBT and the Low Pay Commission for a genuinely balanced approach.