Missed appointments are not a small annoyance — they are one of the largest quiet costs a service business carries. To put a number on it: in the NHS, more than 15 million GP appointments a year are missed with no warning, at around £30 each — over £216 million a year — and NHS England now treats reducing did-not-attends as a national priority. A private clinic or salon feels the same thing at its own scale: every empty chair is time you can't sell twice.
A clear no-show policy is the foundation. Below is one you can copy and adapt today. But read to the end, because the policy document is the easy part — enforcing it is what actually changes your numbers.
The template
Adapt the bracketed parts to your business. This is a general template, not legal advice — if your bookings are high-value or your situation is unusual, have a solicitor glance at it.
[Business name] — Cancellation & No-Show Policy
We understand that plans change. To keep appointments available for everyone, we ask that you give us as much notice as possible if you need to cancel or rearrange.
Notice. Please give at least [24 / 48] hours' notice to cancel or reschedule. You can do this by [phone / WhatsApp / reply to your reminder].
Deposit. A deposit of [£X / the full appointment price] is taken when you book. It is applied to the cost of your appointment when you attend.
Late cancellation. If you cancel with less than [24 / 48] hours' notice, your deposit is [retained / 50% charged].
No-show. If you do not attend and do not let us know, the [full deposit / 100% of the appointment price] is charged.
Repeated no-shows. After [two] missed appointments we may ask for full pre-payment to book again.
By booking with us you agree to this policy. Thank you for helping us run on time for everyone.
That's the whole thing. Short, plain, and — critically — shown before the client books, which is what makes it enforceable.
The three settings that decide whether it works
A policy is only as good as the numbers you put in it. Three choices matter.
- Notice period. 24 hours is the UK norm and the easiest for clients to accept; 48 hours suits longer or higher-value appointments where a same-day gap is hard to refill. Pick one and apply it to everyone.
- Deposit vs fee. Taking a deposit at booking works far better than trying to collect a fee afterwards. The client has something to lose, there's no awkward chasing, and you're not out-of-pocket if they vanish. A fee you have to invoice after the fact often costs more to collect than it's worth.
- The amount. It should reflect the slot you lost, not punish the client — that's also what keeps it legally defensible. Common UK practice is a fixed £10–£30 deposit, or the service price for higher-value bookings, or 50% for a late cancellation and up to 100% for a genuine no-show.
Why the document alone changes almost nothing
Here's the part most "no-show policy template" articles leave out: a written policy, on its own, barely moves your no-show rate. What actually works is three things happening together, every time:
- A deposit taken at the moment of booking — so the client has skin in the game.
- Reminders at 48 hours, 24 hours and around 2 hours before — which remove the honest "I completely forgot", the single biggest cause of no-shows.
- Consistent enforcement — because a policy applied only sometimes is one nobody believes.
Do all three and no-shows fall. Do only the first — write the policy and file it — and very little changes. The policy document exists to make steps 1 and 3 defensible; the reminders do most of the actual work.
Making it run itself
The catch is that those three steps are exactly the kind of repetitive admin a busy front desk never gets to. Someone has to take the deposit at booking, remember to send three reminders per appointment, and have the awkward conversation about the fee. In practice, that's why so many good policies sit unenforced.
This is the natural job for automation. An AI receptionist like Remi takes the deposit when the appointment is booked, sends the 48h / 24h / 2h reminders over WhatsApp automatically, and applies your no-show fee to a genuine no-show — so the policy enforces itself in the background rather than depending on whoever is on the desk that day. It works the same way for salons and spas, where the empty chair is the whole cost.
Write the policy from the template above. Then make sure something is actually running it — that's the part that shows up in your numbers.