Category Archives: Money

Older people at risk from overcharging and mis-selling ‘scandal’

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Unnecessary policies and overpayments for services are draining the accounts of vulnerable customers

Elderly and vulnerable customers are being routinely overcharged by utility and insurance firms in a hidden scandal highlighted today by one of the country’s senior financial services executives. Unfair practices are putting them at risk of being unable to afford food and heating, he warns.

Michael Donald, a former director of Visa UK, said he was staggered to discover hundreds of pounds of overcharging when he carefully checked the direct debits on his 79-year-old mother’s accounts.

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Truss ‘considering plans to send childcare cash to parents’ in England

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PM said to be planning shake-up of subsidy system whereby parents, rather than nurseries, get cash to spend as they see fit

Liz Truss is said to be considering a shake-up of the childcare subsidy system whereby parents, rather than nurseries, would be given government cash to spend as they see fit.

At present, all three and four-year-olds in England are entitled to 15 hours’ free childcare a week during term time, while some families can claim up to double that amount.

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Kwarteng considers extending mortgage guarantee scheme

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Initiative may continue beyond December as bank bosses raise concerns over mortgage market

The chancellor is considering extending the government’s mortgage guarantee scheme after UK bank bosses raised concerns over the state of the UK’s mortgage market at a high-level meeting at No 11 Downing Street.

The meeting on Thursday – which was attended by chief executives including Alison Rose of NatWest, Charlie Nunn of Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC UK’s Ian Stuart, Mike Regnier of Santander and TSB’s Robin Bulloch – was scheduled amid mounting fears about the potential fallout from rapidly rising mortgage rates.

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UK drivers for Bolt ride-hailing app pursue worker benefits claim

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Lawyers acting for more than 1,600 drivers say they have been wrongly classed as self-employed

More than 1,600 UK drivers working for the ride-hailing app Bolt are seeking compensation for missed holiday and minimum wage payments as they argue they have been wrongly classed as self-employed contractors.

Lawyers for the drivers have written to the government-backed workplace conciliation service Acas, in the first stage of lodging the claim against Bolt.

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IFS: Millions in Britain ‘face stealth tax raid’ under Liz Truss’s plans

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For every £1 given workers by cutting tax rates £2 was being taken via freeze on income tax thresholds, thinktank calculates

Millions of households are facing a “stealth” tax raid under Liz Truss’s government despite her promise to support workers through the cost-of-living crisis by lowering their tax bills, Britain’s leading economic thinktank said on Wednesday.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that for every £1 given to workers by cutting headline tax rates, £2 was being taken away through a freeze on the level at which people begin paying tax on their earnings.

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Battersea power station: timeline of a modern classic

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Begun in 1929, the building was a collaboration between architects Theo Halliday and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott

Battersea power station was built in two phases, as a collaboration between the architects Theo Halliday and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Halliday was responsible for the overall shape and the interior.

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Kwasi Kwarteng set to address Tory conference with authority on the line after 45% tax rate U-turn – UK politics live

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Chancellor expected to give changed address after confirming plan to axe top rate of income tax has been scrapped

Q: Where does this leave your credibility?

Kwarteng says he has been in parliament for 12 years. He says ministers do sometimes change their minds.

I decided, along with the the prime minister, not to proceed [with the policy].

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‘UK travel is on sale’: plunging pound attracts US visitors

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Operators catering for inbound tourists enjoy best month for bookings in three years

The plunging pound may cause British holidaymakers to choke at the prices if and when they next choose to go abroad. But one slice of the travel industry is seeing a silver lining in the storm clouds.

Tour operators catering for visitors are quietly calling it their best month for bookings since October 2019 as US tourists take advantage of sterling’s tumble.

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Buy-to-let landlords facing financial cliff edge after mini-budget

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Mortgage market meltdown has left many amateur landlords facing a stark choice: to raise rents or sell up

Britain’s amateur landlords have benefited from years of runaway house price inflation, while intense competition among tenants has sent rents soaring. Now, thanks to the meltdown in the mortgage market triggered by last week’s disastrous mini-budget, many face a financial cliff edge.

Figures shared with the Guardian show that the number of new buy-to-let mortgage deals available has plummeted by 55% in less than a week as lenders frantically pulled products and in many cases increased prices.

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Homeowners warned of ‘significant’ rise in UK interest rates

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Bank of England’s chief economist speaks out after mini-budget, with financial markets expecting rates to reach up to 6%

Britain’s homeowners have been warned to brace themselves for a “significant” increase in interest rates from the Bank of England in response to Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-cutting mini-budget last week.

Huw Pill, Threadneedle Street’s chief economist, added to the concerns of millions of mortgage payers who have already seen hundreds of home loan products pulled by lenders in anticipation of a big increase in the cost of borrowing.

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Mini-budget 2022: pound crashes as chancellor cuts stamp duty and top rate of income tax – live

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Tax cuts to cost Treasury around £37bn in 2023-24, official figures reveal

There are no urgent questions in the morning, and so Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, will be delivering his statement soon after 9.30am.

The Commons starts sitting at 9.30am, but they always begin with prayers in private, and so Kwarteng will be up a few minutes later.

The last time they did it one third of the beneficiaries were people buying second homes or buy to let, so we are sceptical that this is the magic bullet to increase homeownership. What we really need to do is to build more houses and to help get people onto the property ladder by increasing the supply of housing.

When this has been done before, it has often fuelled an already hot market and many of the beneficiaries have been people buying a second or third home, rather than the first time buyers that we really want to help who are often trapped in private rented accommodation where they’re paying as much in rent every month as they would in a mortgage.

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Disabled woman wins legal challenge against DWP over automatic benefit deduction

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High court rules DWP scheme to deduct money without consent is illegal and breaches ‘obligation of fairness’

A disabled former police officer has won a legal challenge against the Department for Work and Pensions over its policy of allowing utility companies to automatically deduct hundreds of pounds a year from individuals’ benefits without their consent.

Helen Timson, 51, of Leicester, argued it was unlawful and immoral that the DWP enabled water and energy firms to draw down up to 25% of a claimant’s monthly benefit income at source without undertaking any form of check with the claimant. Hundreds of thousands of claimants are understood to be subject to the deductions.

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Sunday roasting dwindles as cost of cooking crisis hits home

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Annual Good Food Nation survey finds a fifth of Britons no longer turn on their oven to save money

Families have crossed Sunday roasts, stews and home baking off the menu and in drastic cases no longer use their oven, as soaring energy costs force big changes in the kitchen.

One in four home cooks said they were less likely to prepare a roast dinner, while a fifth were not baking as many cakes or biscuits, according to the annual Good Food Nation report.

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New bill vows to stop kleptocrats ‘treating UK as their safe deposit box’

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Proposed reforms previously delayed by Boris Johnson reannounced amid accusations Tories are soft on ‘dirty money’

Companies House will be given new powers to challenge incorrect or fraudulent claims made by kleptocrats and their agents in an economic crime bill that was previously delayed by Boris Johnson a few weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The new bill – the second of two that had to be hurriedly reannounced amid accusations the government had gone soft on dirty money – is backed by the new security minister, Tom Tugendhat.

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Bring back eviction ban or face ‘catastrophic’ homelessness crisis, ministers told

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Sir Bob Kerslake calls on government to protect at-risk tenants as it did during pandemic

The former head of the civil service has warned of a looming “catastrophic” homelessness crisis caused by the cost of living unless the government reintroduces the eviction ban that protected tenants during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sir Bob Kerslake, who chairs the Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, said a failure to act “could see this become a homelessness as well as an economic crisis and the results could be catastrophic; with all the good achieved in reducing street homelessness since the pandemic lost, and any hope of the government meeting its manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping by 2024 gone”.

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London council could seize oligarchs’ homes for affordable housing

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Exclusive: Westminster looking at compulsory purchase orders to tackle laundering of ‘dirty money’

Homes acquired with “dirty money” in the richest parts of London could be seized and turned into affordable housing under plans to crack down on oligarchs using Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Mayfair “to rinse their money”.

Labour-controlled Westminster city council is examining the use of compulsory purchase orders in extreme cases where it finds properties are not being used for their stated purpose, as part of a push to “combat the capital’s reputation as the European centre for money laundering”.

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Pound falls as weak retail sales raise fears UK economy is in recession

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On Black Wednesday anniversary, sterling hits 37-year low against dollar and 17-month low against euro

Fears that the British economy is already in recession after a slump in retail sales last month triggered heavy selling of the pound on international money markets taking it to a 37-year low against the dollar.

With average UK wages continuing to fall behind rising prices and the Bank of England expected to push up interest rates next week, sterling fell by more than 1% against the US currency to $1.135, its lowest since 1985.

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One in seven buy now, pay later customers had more than 20 loans last year, Choice survey shows

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Use of BNPL services to cover essential bills raises concerns as Albanese government prepares to consult on regulating the sector

One in seven users of credit from buy-now-pay-later providers such as Afterpay or Zip had more than 20 loans last year, according to new data from consumer group Choice.

The Choice survey also found that consumers were using BNPL services to cover essential bills, with one in six using the short-term loans to cover supermarket purchases and 14% to pay for power.

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EU calls for money to be clawed back from energy firms, saying profits must go ‘to those who need it most’ – politics live

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Liz Truss has stated her opposition to windfall taxes but the European Commission says energy profits must be shared

Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, says the UK is facing a “crisis of income”. She says workers should get a better share of corporate profits.

This has parallels with the point Ursula von der Leyen was making about profits in her speech this morning (see 9.35am), although von der Leyen, a German Christian Democrat who has little in common with Graham, was just talking about the energy sector.

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Housebuilders ‘lobbied against plan for electric car chargers in new homes in England’

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‘Blatant efforts’ by companies criticised by campaign group Transport & Environment

Britain’s biggest housebuilders privately lobbied for the government to ditch rules requiring electric car chargers to be installed in every new home in England, documents have revealed.

The FTSE 100 construction firms Barratt Developments, Berkeley Group and Taylor Wimpey were among the companies who argued against the policy in responses to an official consultation seen by the Guardian. The “blatant lobbying efforts” were criticised by Transport & Environment, a campaign group.

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