Your guests and the law
What you may and may not put in your own booking terms, and why PitchDesk behaves the way it does. Written for the person who runs the site, not for a solicitor.
Last updated 21 August 2026.
The short version
- Your campers are consumers, so an unfair term in your terms is not binding on them, however clearly you displayed it.
- Thirteen clauses that appear on UK campsite websites and will not hold up. Each one has a version that does.
- Never call it a non-refundable deposit. Take the same money as a payment on account and credit it against your cancellation ladder. The label carries the legal weight.
- A proportionate sliding scale is expressly endorsed by the CMA. A flat 100 per cent charge ten weeks out is not.
- Your ladder is the money term. Never write a figure or a deadline into the free text beside it, because if the two disagree the ambiguity is read against you.
- The price you show must include everything the guest necessarily has to pay. No "from £18 a night".
- The payment button must say what it costs. Get that wrong and the guest is not bound by the booking at all.
- If you cancel, the guest gets everything back. That one is locked in the software.
This page is a summary of the law as it applies to your terms. It is not legal advice, and the sections below carry the detail.
Who this page is for
You, if you run the campsite. Your campers are almost certainly consumers, which means a body of law applies to what you sell them whether your terms mention it or not. A term that breaks that law is not simply frowned upon, it is unenforceable. You can put it on your website, print it on the booking form and have the guest tick a box next to it, and it still will not bind them.
Three pieces of law do most of the work.
- The Consumer Rights Act 2015, Part 2, which is what makes a term unfair and therefore not binding.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, which say what you must tell a guest before they pay and how the payment button must be labelled.
- The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, in force since 6 April 2025, which regulates how you display a price.
The Competition and Markets Authority publishes guidance on all of it. The current version of its unfair terms guidance, CMA37, is dated 22 July 2026, and the paragraph numbers quoted below are from it.
This page is not legal advice and we are not your solicitor. It is a plain summary of the rules the software already builds around, written so you can see why the product behaves as it does.
The one test that decides it
Section 62 of the Consumer Rights Act: a term is unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations to the detriment of the consumer. An unfair term is not binding on the guest, although the rest of the contract survives.
Schedule 2 of the Act lists terms that may be regarded as unfair. Everybody calls it the grey list. Being on it does not make a term automatically void, but it does mean you will be asked to justify it, and "everyone else writes it" is not a justification.
The practical version
Read your own term back and ask two questions. Does it give me something without giving the guest anything equivalent? Does it let me decide the outcome after the fact? If the answer to either is yes, it is in trouble.
Thirteen clauses to take out of your terms
These are the ones that turn up again and again on UK campsite websites. The middle column is why each one fails, so you can argue the point if somebody tells you otherwise.
| What sites write | Why it fails | What to write instead |
|---|---|---|
| All payments are non-refundable in all circumstances. | Grey list paragraphs 4 and 5. It gives you the money whatever happens and gives the guest nothing back in return, and it ignores the possibility that the stay becomes impossible. | Use a cancellation ladder. Say exactly what is kept at each point before arrival. |
| No refunds. Credit note only, valid six months. | Grey list paragraph 5. It turns an entitlement to money into a voucher that expires, which is worth less than the money. | Offer a credit note as a choice the guest can accept, never as the only outcome. |
| No refund unless we are able to re-let the pitch. | Grey list paragraphs 5 and 16. Whether you re-let is entirely in your hands, and if you do re-let you have been paid twice for the same pitch. | Set the refund by the date of cancellation, not by whether you find a replacement. |
| Refunds are at the manager's discretion. | Grey list paragraph 16. A term that lets you decide the outcome case by case is the definition of an unfair one. | Publish the ladder and apply it. You can always be more generous than your own policy. |
| Cancel within 70 days of arrival and you pay 100 per cent. | CMA37 paragraph 6.63, the mitigation limb. A touring pitch cancelled ten weeks out will almost certainly sell again, so keeping the whole price is a penalty rather than a loss. | Keep 100 per cent only within a day or two of arrival, where the pitch genuinely will not re-let. |
| A 50 per cent non-refundable deposit. | CMA37 paragraph 6.62: a genuinely non-refundable deposit "will not normally be more than a small percentage of the price". Half the price is not a small percentage. | Take the same 50 per cent as a payment on account and credit it against the ladder. See the section below, because the label is doing the legal work. |
| If you fail to pay the balance we keep everything you have paid. | OFT668 paragraph 3.29. You cannot be better off because somebody missed a payment than you would have been if they had cancelled outright that day. | Keep no more than a cancellation on the balance due date would have cost. PitchDesk works this out for you. |
| We may cancel your booking at any time and refund what you have paid. | Grey list paragraphs 4 and 7. You can walk away at will and the guest cannot, and they get no compensation for a holiday cancelled at short notice. | Keep the right to cancel for a real reason, and say what the guest gets. PitchDesk locks a full refund when the campsite cancels. |
| A £100 fine for charging an electric car. A £25 late departure charge. | Grey list paragraph 6. A charge for breaking a rule has to be a genuine estimate of what it actually costs you, not a round number chosen to deter. | Charge the metered cost of the electricity, or the real cost of the pitch not being ready. |
| We may change the pitch, the price or the facilities at any time. | Grey list paragraphs 11 to 14. It lets you alter what was sold after the guest has committed and paid. | Name what you can change and why, and give the guest a free cancellation if you use it. |
| No refund for bad weather, including where we have to close the site. | Grey list paragraphs 2 and 4. Weather is nobody's fault, but a site closure is your non-performance, and you cannot charge for a stay you did not provide. | Separate the two. No refund because it rained is fair. No refund because you shut the field is not. |
| The above is subject to our full terms, available on request. | Grey list paragraph 10 and section 68. A term the guest had no real chance to read before booking does not bind them. | Show the terms in the booking flow. PitchDesk does this and stores what was shown. |
| We accept no liability for death or personal injury however caused. | Consumer Rights Act section 65. This one is not merely grey, it is blacklisted and void. Writing it does not weaken your position, it just tells a solicitor you have not read the Act. | Delete it. Carry public liability insurance instead. |
None of this stops you protecting the business. It stops you protecting it with words that will not hold.
Deposit, or payment on account? The label does the legal work
This is the most useful thing on this page, and it costs you nothing.
CMA37 paragraph 6.62 says a genuinely non-refundable deposit may be kept in full, but that such a deposit "will not normally be more than a small percentage of the price", and that a larger prepayment is more likely to be unfair because it may amount to a disguised penalty.
So a 25 per cent non-refundable deposit is on thin ice. A 25 per cent payment on account, credited against whatever your cancellation ladder says you keep, is not, because the fairness question moves to the ladder, and a proportionate ladder is something CMA37 paragraph 6.64 expressly endorses.
| Non-refundable deposit | Payment on account | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A sum forfeited on any cancellation | Money paid towards the price, credited against whatever the ladder says is due |
| Size limit | Must be small | None. The ladder is what has to be fair |
| PitchDesk default | Avoid | This one |
The money is the same. The word is not. PitchDesk takes your payment at booking as a payment on account and never calls it a non-refundable deposit, and you should not either.
The cancellation ladder
CMA37 paragraph 6.64, in its own words: a sliding scale of cancellation charges can be fair where each step is a genuine pre-estimate of the loss, there are no circumstances in which it is disproportionate or punitive, and it is given proper prominence. The Authority goes further and says such a scale, done well, gives consumers certainty about where they stand.
Paragraph 6.63 says what makes a charge disproportionate. It must reflect what you save by not hosting them, what you can recover by re-letting the pitch, and the benefit of having been paid early. That middle limb is the one that matters for a touring pitch, because a pitch cancelled two months out will very probably sell again.
PitchDesk ships this ladder, and you can change it within limits:
| If the guest cancels | You keep | They get back |
|---|---|---|
| 22 days or more before arrival | 0 per cent | 100 per cent |
| 15 to 21 days before | 25 per cent | 75 per cent |
| 8 to 14 days before | 50 per cent | 50 per cent |
| 3 to 7 days before | 75 per cent | 25 per cent |
| Inside 3 days, or a no-show | 100 per cent | 0 per cent |
Alongside it, locked and not editable: if you cancel the booking, the guest gets everything they have paid, in full. That is the reciprocity the grey list asks for at paragraph 4, and without it the rest of the ladder is much harder to defend.
One more rule the software applies for you. If a balance payment fails and the booking is eventually cancelled for non-payment, the most you keep is what a voluntary cancellation on the balance due date would have cost. Not everything paid. That is OFT668 paragraph 3.29, and it is a clause several large parks currently get wrong.
And cancelling never leaves a guest owing you money. Where the ladder would retain more than they have actually handed over, we keep what they paid and stop there. An automatic invoice for the difference is the kind of disproportionate charge Schedule 2 paragraph 6 catches. If you have a real loss beyond that, pursuing it is a decision for you to take, not something the software does in your name.
Your ladder is the policy. Your own words are not
Two things sit side by side in your settings and they do different jobs. It is worth being clear about which is which, because getting it wrong is the most likely way for a careful owner to end up with a term that does not hold.
| The ladder | The words you write |
|---|---|
| The structured scale you set, band by band | Free text alongside it, in your own voice |
| What the guest is shown in real pounds on real dates at the checkout | What the guest reads for everything the scale cannot say |
| What the refund is actually calculated from | Not read by the refund calculation at all |
| Stored with the booking exactly as it stood that day | Also stored, so both are on the record |
| Use it for: every figure, every deadline, every percentage | Use it for: how to tell you, who to ring, how long a refund takes, what happens if you have to close the field |
Do not write money into the free text
If your words promise something your ladder does not do, the ladder is what happens, because that is what the software calculates from. Worse, section 69 of the Consumer Rights Act says an ambiguous term is read in the way most favourable to the consumer, and sections 68 and 64(2) require terms to be transparent. A guest who can point at two different answers inside your own terms is in a strong position and you are not.
So "50 per cent within 14 days" belongs in the ladder, not in the paragraph. "Ring us on 01234 567890 and we will always try to move your dates rather than cancel" belongs in the paragraph, and it is worth far more to a guest than another number.
This is also why PitchDesk will not let a free text box drive the refund arithmetic. It is not a limitation we are apologising for. It is the thing that stops your terms disagreeing with themselves.
Showing the price
Section 230(4) of the DMCC Act 2024: the total price includes any fees, taxes, charges or other payments that the consumer will necessarily incur if they buy. Not the pitch fee with the compulsory bits added at step three.
In practice, for a campsite:
- In the headline price: the pitch fee, VAT if you are registered, any compulsory booking or admin fee, any compulsory per-person charge for the party being booked, and any bank holiday supplement that applies on those dates.
- Not in the headline, but you must say they may be payable: the dog, the extra car, the gazebo, early check-in. Anything the guest chooses.
- Cannot be worked out in advance, such as metered electricity: section 230(5) says you must explain how it is calculated, with the same prominence as the total.
This kills "from £18 a night"
Unless £18 is genuinely achievable and the tile also says what is necessarily added. It is the pattern the CMA has been most active about since the new regime came in. PitchDesk shows the total for the whole stay, for the party entered, with the per-night figure derived from it, everywhere a price appears. You cannot make it show a bare "from" price, and that is deliberate.
The payment button, and why its wording is not cosmetic
Regulation 14 of the 2013 Regulations. Directly before the guest places the order you must show, clearly and prominently, what they are buying, the total price including tax, any further charges, the dates and any minimum stay. Not behind a link, not inside an accordion.
Then regulation 14(4): the button must be labelled only with "order with obligation to pay" or an equally unambiguous formulation. "Book now", "Reserve", "Continue" and "Submit" all fail it.
The penalty is the whole booking
Regulation 14(5): if you have not complied, the consumer is not bound by the contract or the order. For a booking system whose entire job is holding a guest to their booking, that is not a technicality. PitchDesk labels the button with the money: "Pay £21.00 now and book" for a payment on account, "Pay £84.00 and book" where the whole amount is taken at the time, and it puts the summary block immediately above it. Where you take nothing at booking and hold a card instead, the button reads "Confirm card and book" and the line under it says what is payable and when, because there is no figure being charged today to put on the button.
Regulation 40 goes with it: no pre-ticked boxes. Consent to an optional extra cannot be inferred from the guest not un-ticking something, and an extra charged without express consent is repayable on demand. Every optional extra in PitchDesk starts unticked and there is no setting to change that.
Getting your terms in front of the guest
Grey list paragraph 10 catches terms the guest had no real opportunity to read. Section 64(2) says the exemption that normally protects your price and your main subject matter only applies if those terms are transparent and prominent.
A link to a terms page at the bottom of a checkout is not enough. What works is showing the deposit, the balance date, the cancellation ladder and the no-show rule as visible text in the booking flow, worked out in real pounds and real dates for this booking, with the guest actively agreeing to it.
PitchDesk does that, and stores an immutable snapshot of the exact words shown, the version number, the timestamp and the IP address. If a guest ever disputes what they agreed to, you can produce it.
Taking the balance off the card later
Strong Customer Authentication normally means the cardholder has to be present and authenticate. The later balance payment is outside that requirement, but only as a merchant-initiated transaction, and only if the conditions are actually met.
The FCA's guidance, at paragraph 20.9 of its payment services approach document, is that a payee-initiated transaction is out of scope where the guest gave a mandate, the mandate itself was set up with authentication, and the payment falls within the scope of that mandate. If the amount goes outside what was agreed, the payment is unauthorised.
There is a second reason to be exact. Regulation 79 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 gives a payer the right to a full refund from their own bank where the authorisation did not specify the exact amount and the payment was more than they could reasonably have expected. If the mandate states the exact amount and the exact date, that regulation simply does not apply to you.
So the mandate a guest ticks in PitchDesk never says "the balance". It says the amount and the date, in figures. We also email them before it is taken, which is not required for a card payment but is the cheapest evidence you will ever get that the charge was expected.
And we keep the words. Not a record that a box was ticked, which only proves a box existed, but the exact wording the guest was shown, the amount, the date and the moment they agreed. If a guest ever tells their bank they did not authorise the charge, that record is what you produce, and it is the difference between a chargeback you win and one you do not.
What PitchDesk does for you, and what is still yours
We are the software, not your solicitor, and your terms are still your terms. But the parts of this that can be built in, are.
| We handle this | You still own this |
|---|---|
| The total price shown everywhere, inclusive of compulsory charges | The prices themselves, and whether you are VAT registered |
| A payment button labelled with the amount | Deciding what to charge at booking |
| Optional extras unticked by default | Which extras you offer |
| A mandate naming the exact amount and date, and a reminder before it is taken | Your balance due window |
| The ladder computed into real money on the real dates, shown in the checkout | Choosing your ladder inside the permitted range |
| A full refund locked in when you cancel a booking | The reason you cancel it |
| Never keeping more on a failed balance than a cancellation that day would have cost | Whether to cancel at all |
| An immutable record of the terms the guest agreed to, with the time and IP | Writing the site-specific rules |
The free text you write for your arrival instructions and your site rules is yours and we do not police it. What we will not do is let a free text box drive the refund arithmetic, because that is exactly how a site ends up with a clause it cannot enforce.
Where to read more
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, Part 2 and Schedule 2: legislation.gov.uk
- Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013: legislation.gov.uk
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 230: legislation.gov.uk
- CMA37, unfair contract terms guidance, version of 22 July 2026, from the CMA
- Payment Services Regulations 2017, regulation 79: legislation.gov.uk
If a guest brings a complaint you cannot settle, Citizens Advice and Trading Standards are where it goes next. Getting the terms right first is cheaper than either.
The rest of the small print
Questions about any of this go to hello@pitchdesk.co.uk and a person will answer.