Capital Allowances Restaurants, Pubs and Bars Can Claim on Fit-Out and Plant

Capital allowances restaurants, pubs and standalone catering kitchens can claim cover the qualifying capital spend inside the trading premises that comes off taxable profit: the cooking line, extraction canopy and ductwork, cold rooms and refrigeration, the bar servery and cellar cooling, fixed seating and floor coverings, washroom sanitaryware, and the building services running through all of it.

Catering spend splits four ways for tax:

• Plant and machinery inside the building, relieved in full in the year or written down at the main rate
• Integral features, the building services taxed in the slower special rate pool
• Fixtures already present when a site is bought, which carry conditions of their own
• The structure itself, which attracts the capital allowances tax relief available under the structures and buildings allowance

This guide walks a site area by area and names the allowance and the rate attaching to each item.

Why a Pub or Restaurant Holds More Qualifying Spend Than Most Buildings

An office holds desks, partitions and a lift. A pub holds a commercial kitchen, an extraction system, a refrigerated cellar, a servery full of fitted joinery and a dining room fitted out to be replaced every few years.

That density is the argument for a review. Embedded capital allowances tax relief is the part of the spend already sitting inside the building rather than on the equipment invoice, and it is the part an accountant's fixed asset register rarely reaches, because a fit-out arrives as one contractor figure with no breakdown.

Curtis Plumstone records The Bull at Benenden, bought for around £510,000, where £88,104 of unclaimed allowances was identified and the tax saving was around £35,000, and the George and Dragon in Horsham, where over £500,000 of kitchen and restaurant works produced £172,071 of qualifying expenditure (curtisplumstone.com, accessed 13 August 2026). HMA Tax states that it uncovers around 32% of the original property purchase value on average, which it works through as a £500,000 restaurant holding about £160,000 of allowances (hmatax.co.uk, accessed 13 August 2026). Both are those firms' own published results rather than a benchmark to expect, but they show the order of what an unanalysed site can contain.

The Commercial Kitchen: Equipment, Extraction and Cold Rooms

The kitchen is the densest room in the building and the one operators most often assume is partly building work. Most of it is not.

Item on the line	What it is for tax	Pool
Cooking suite, ovens, fryers, combi ovens	Loose plant	Main pool
Extraction canopy and ductwork	Fixture, plant	Main pool
Gas interlock and safety system	Fixture, plant	Main pool
Cold room, walk-in refrigeration, ice plant	Fixture, plant	Main pool
Dishwash machine, grease trap, waste disposal	Fixture, plant	Main pool
Stainless benching, shelving and wash-hand basins	Fixture, plant	Main pool
Kitchen ventilation and make-up air where it forms part of the building's air system	Integral feature	Special rate pool
Hot and cold water and space heating serving the building	Integral feature	Special rate pool

GOV.UK draws the boundary plainly. Plant and machinery allowances cannot be claimed on the building itself, including doors, gates, shutters and mains water and gas systems. Fixtures such as fitted kitchens, bathroom suites and fire alarm and CCTV systems can be claimed, and those fixtures sit in the main pool rather than at the slower special rate (GOV.UK, "Claim capital allowances: What you can claim on", accessed 13 August 2026).

The distinction that matters in a kitchen is between the mains supply and the trade installation. The incoming gas main is part of the building. The gas run installed to serve the cooking suite, and the interlock protecting it, is plant.

A hotel kitchen is the same physical installation inside a different claim, treated as one section of a wider fit-out. That treatment is covered in Capital Allowances for Hotels: What You Can Claim on Rooms and Back of House.

An operator running a tenanted, leased or tied house claims on the fit-out it paid for, not on the landlord's building. That boundary is covered in Can You Claim Capital Allowances on a Leased or Rented Property?

Behind the Bar: Counters, Cellar Cooling and Beer Lines

Bar capital allowances cover the servery above and the cellar below, and the cellar is the part most often missing from a fixed asset register entirely.

Main pool plant in the bar and cellar:

• Bar counter, back-fittings and fitted shelving
• Glasswash machines and under-counter refrigeration
• Ice machines
• Cellar cooling units and their pipework
• Beer lines, pumps, python and dispense equipment
• Barrel lifts and drop hatches
• Trade drainage serving the cellar

The cellar cooling unit is a good illustration of why a site walk beats an invoice review. It is installed with the building works, priced inside the contractor's figure, and it looks like air conditioning. It is trade plant serving the cellar, in the main pool.

Bar joinery is the other routinely misfiled item. A fitted bar counter and its back-fittings are installed to serve the trade of selling drink. They function as plant, not as part of the fabric.

Ventilation, Lighting and Heating: the Items That Sit at 6%

The capital allowances special rate pool holds the building services, and they relieve at 6% rather than 14%. In a pub or restaurant that is a substantial share of the fit-out.

HMRC's integral features are lifts, escalators and moving walkways, space and water heating systems, air-conditioning and air cooling systems, hot and cold water systems but not toilet and kitchen facilities, electrical systems including lighting, and external solar shading (GOV.UK, "Work out your writing down allowances: Rates and pools", accessed 13 August 2026).

For a trading site that captures the general lighting installation across the dining room and bar, the air conditioning, the space heating, the electrical distribution and the water installation. It does not capture the trade equipment those services feed, which stays in the main pool at the higher rate.

The borderline cases in the category itself are covered in What Counts as an Integral Feature for Capital Allowances?

Fixed Seating, Tables and Floor Coverings in the Dining Room

Capital allowances on furniture in a dining room cover more than the loose chairs. Fixed banquette seating, booth joinery, fitted screens and partitions between covers, the bar-height fitted units, tables, chairs and the decorative and ambient light fittings are all plant in the main pool. So are carpets, and specialist flooring installed as part of the fit-out rather than as a floor structure.

A refit budget has to be split before any of that is claimed. A like-for-like carpet replacement across a dining room is a repair, deducted in full against profit in the year. A strip-out and full re-fit is capital, and it then divides between plant, integral features and building. Both reach a deduction, by different routes. The general test is covered in Which Refurbishment Costs Qualify for Capital Allowances?

Inside a capital refit, have the joinery, the seating, the loose furniture, the lighting and power alteration and the mechanical services priced separately. Plaster, screed, decoration and structural alteration will not qualify as plant, and a contractor who issues one figure for the room makes the split impossible after the fact.

Washrooms and Sanitaryware in a Pub or Restaurant

Capital allowances toilets in a trading site split in a way that surprises operators, because the fittings and the system serving them land in different pools.

• Sanitaryware, cubicles, vanity units, hand dryers and fitted mirrors are plant in the main pool
• The hot and cold water installation and the space heating serving the washroom are integral features in the special rate pool
• The tiling, walls and floor structure are part of the building

GOV.UK confirms that bathroom suites are claimable fixtures rather than part of the building (GOV.UK, "Claim capital allowances: What you can claim on", accessed 13 August 2026). The general categorisation of fitted kitchens, sanitaryware and lighting across property types is covered in Are Fitted Kitchens, Sanitaryware and Lighting Claimable Fixtures?

Glassware, Crockery and Other Short-Life Items

Capital allowances short life assets suit the items a hospitality site replaces on a short cycle. Large numbers of very similar items can be pooled together as short life assets, and the example GOV.UK itself gives is crockery in a restaurant (GOV.UK, "Work out your writing down allowances: Rates and pools", accessed 13 August 2026).

The point of the treatment is timing. The pool is written off when the items go, rather than the unrelieved cost sitting in the main pool for years after the last plate has been broken. Items still in use after eight years move to the main pool.

In practice most sites relieve this spend in full in the year through the annual investment allowance instead, which is simpler. The short-life pool matters where the annual ceiling has already been used.

New Kitchen Equipment: Full Expensing and the 40% First-Year Allowance

Capital allowances full expensing gives a company 100% relief on the cost of new and unused main-rate plant in the year of purchase, with a 50% first-year allowance for new special-rate spend, on expenditure incurred from 1 April 2023 (GOV.UK, "Claim capital allowances: Full expensing and 50% first-year allowance", accessed 13 August 2026). A new cooking suite, a new cold room or a new dishwash line bought by a company is relieved in full in the year.

Two restrictions decide whether it applies. The relief is for companies only, so a pub or restaurant run as a sole trade or partnership cannot use it. And the equipment must be new and unused, which shuts out the second-hand kitchen kit the trade buys heavily.

Since 1 January 2026 a second route sits alongside it. A 40% first-year allowance applies to qualifying main-rate plant and machinery purchased on or after that date, with writing down allowances running on the remaining 60%, and it was introduced with fewer restrictions so that unincorporated businesses and lessors can use it (GOV.UK, "Claim capital allowances: Overview", accessed 13 August 2026; HMRC policy paper "Capital allowances: new first-year allowance and reducing main rate writing-down allowances", 26 November 2025). Second-hand assets and cars are excluded from it.

Where the Annual Investment Allowance Fits

The capital allowances AIA limit is £1 million of qualifying plant and machinery per accounting period, set at that level since 1 January 2019, and time-apportioned for a period shorter or longer than twelve months (GOV.UK, "Claim capital allowances: Annual investment allowance", accessed 13 August 2026).

For most pubs and restaurants this is the main route to an immediate deduction, and its advantage over full expensing is coverage rather than rate. Both give 100% in the year. The annual investment allowance is open to sole traders and partnerships as well as companies, it covers second-hand equipment, and it covers special-rate spend such as a new heating or lighting installation.

A £180,000 kitchen and bar refit relieved in full under the annual investment allowance produces a £180,000 deduction in the year of the spend. The same spend left to the pools produces £25,200 in year one on the main-rate element at 14%, with the balance following over the following decade.

Writing Down Allowance Rates and the April 2026 Change

Where spend is not relieved in full in the year, it enters a pool and is written down annually. The capital allowances WDA rates changed this year, and almost all hospitality guidance online still gives the old figure.

Pool	Rate	Typical pub and restaurant items
Main pool	14% from April 2026 (18% before)	Cooking line, extraction, cold rooms, bar joinery, cellar cooling, seating, sanitaryware
Special rate pool	6%	Lighting installation, air conditioning, space and water heating, electrical distribution
Structures and buildings allowance	3% straight line	The shell, the extension, the terrace structure

The main pool rate fell from 18% to 14% on 1 April 2026 for Corporation Tax and 6 April 2026 for Income Tax, while the special rate pool stays at 6%. An accounting period straddling that date applies a hybrid rate based on the proportion of the period falling either side of it (GOV.UK, "Work out your writing down allowances: Rates and pools", accessed 13 August 2026).

The change makes the first-year routes more valuable. It also means a site that never claimed on a past fit-out is now writing down at a slower rate than the figures in older guidance imply.

Extensions, Terraces and the Building Itself

Capital allowances structures and buildings cover the part of a site that is not plant: the walls, floors and roof, the extension, the covered terrace structure, and the construction works that form the fabric.

The allowance is 3% a year on a straight-line basis for Corporation Tax from 1 April 2020 and for Income Tax from 6 April 2020, having been 2% before that, over an allowance period of 33 and one third years (GOV.UK, "Claiming capital allowances for structures and buildings", last updated 3 September 2020). All construction contracts must have been entered into on or after 29 October 2018.

Qualifying construction costs include design fees, site preparation, renovation, conversion and fitting-out works, but never anything that qualifies for plant and machinery allowances. The two are mutually exclusive on the same cost, which is why an itemised invoice from the fit-out contractor is worth more than a single figure.

A site bought as a going concern carries a further condition, and it is settled before completion or not at all. On a second-hand building an operator can usually only claim for the integral features and fixtures the previous owner claimed, and only if the value is agreed with the seller (GOV.UK, "Claim capital allowances: What you can claim on", accessed 13 August 2026). Those mechanics are covered in Capital Allowances When Buying a Commercial Property: What to Agree Before Completion.

What to Do Next

Walk the site and write down what physically exists before speaking to an adviser: the kitchen line, the extraction, the cold store, the bar servery, the cellar, the dining room, the washrooms and the outside, with the year each item was installed and the invoice or project it appears on.

An online estimate is not entitlement. An estimator applies a percentage to a purchase price; it cannot know whether the fixtures were fixed by a previous owner's election, whether they were ever pooled, or whether they belong to the landlord rather than the operator. The figure is a reason to investigate, not a claim.

Run the site through the capital allowances tax relief estimator to put a number against the premises before approaching an adviser.