New garden city to be built in Ebbsfleet March 19, 2014 THE GOVERNMENT yesterday confirmed that it will set up an urban development corporation to support a new garden city at Ebbsfleet in Kent, where up to 15,000 new homes will be built. A total of £200m of infrastructure funding will be available to kick-start the development of what will be the first new garden city [...]
Help to Buy scheme extended until 2020 March 19, 2014 THE HELP to Buy equity loan scheme will be extended by four years until 2020, the chancellor confirmed yesterday. George Osborne said that the government initiative, which supports house buyers with small deposits, is expected to help at least 74,000 households buy a new-build home by March 2016. Extending the scheme will help a further [...]
Tax breaks for film industry and theatres March 19, 2014 THEATRE productions will receive up to 25 per cent tax relief from September and movies filming in the UK will benefit from film tax relief that will be raised to 25 per cent for major films with budgets over £20m from April.
British science set for large fund increase March 19, 2014 RESEARCH in the fields of big data, graphene and cell therapy will get a £222m boost from new funding announced yesterday. Chancellor George Osborne said the funding would help Britain: “out-compete, out-smart and out-do the rest of the world.” Part of the spending will go to a new big data research facility called the Alan [...]
Warehouses to be converted into residences in planning reforms March 19, 2014 BRITAIN’S property industry welcomed news yesterday that planning rules may be relaxed to allow more commercial buildings to be turned into homes, in an effort to tackle the housing shortage. New rules were already introduced last year allowing offices to be converted into homes without going through a lengthy planning application process. However in his [...]
What does the chancellor’s Budget mean for you? March 19, 2014 Catherine Gannon, 51Managing director of law firm Gannon The business continues to perform extremely well, but new legislation for LLPs means that it is being restructured. Profits and earnings are up on last year but the cost of living has increased rapidly. She doesn’t have much by way of a traditional pension plan but hopes [...]
Budget Viewpoint: A political Budget aimed at blue rinsers not business March 19, 2014 CONFIDENCE up. Inflation down. Exports up. Unemployment down. Growth forecasts up. With this backdrop it must have been difficult for George Osborne to draw up his fifth Budget. But what we have ended up with is a Budget for blue rinsers rather than businesses. He obviously thinks that everything is heading in the right direction [...]
High street bookmakers lose out in betting machine clampdown March 19, 2014 TWO OF THE biggest bookmakers on the high street lost a combined £460m from their stock market valuations yesterday after a 25 per cent tax rate was announced for fixed-odds betting machines. William Hill saw £270m wiped off its market capitalisation after the chancellor announced that tax on the machines would be raised from 20 [...]
Bingo operators to invest as they hit jackpot on tax drop March 19, 2014 BINGO halls got a boost yesterday as the rate of duty was cut by the government from 20 per cent to just 10 per cent. Chancellor George Osborne said he would go further than the 15 per cent rate that the industry had requested, by halving the existing rate from 30 June. Bingo hall operator [...]
Osborne sets £119bn welfare cap March 19, 2014 THE CAP on welfare spending, first proposed by the coalition government in June 2013, will be set at £119.5bn for 2014-15, the chancellor announced in his Budget statement yesterday. The cap will include 26 different benefits and payments but will exclude Jobseeker’s Allowance and its associated benefits, the state pension and a few smaller specific [...]