Three contractors just won £500m from TfL to sort out London’s roads January 5, 2017 London drivers, brace yourselves for more roadworks: Transport for London has said it has signed a £500m deal with three of the UK's largest contractors to deliver "complex, large-scale civil engineering schemes" on the capital's roads. Costain, Morgan Sindall and Skanska will spend four years working on projects to improve journey reliability, encourage cycling and [...]
Persimmon lays strong foundations for 2017 January 5, 2017 Persimmon is kicking off 2017 with some good news, as it reported today that its revenues and sales were up. And the markets certainly seem to be happy with the housebuilder – the company's share price was up 4.42 per cent at the open. The figures The housebuilder's trading update has laid some strong foundations for the [...]
Professional advisers cash in on the carcass of BHS January 5, 2017 Professional advisers working on the BHS case have raked in £1m in just six weeks even as the retailer's former workers wait on Sir Philip Green to make a contrbution to the BHS pension black hole. According to Sky News, firms such as DLA and Savills earned £1.125m between 25 October and 2 December, and the [...]
Make 2017 a year of celebration – not the suffocation of London’s Night Time Economy January 5, 2017 We live in interesting times. This term, actually a Chinese curse, reflects all the hope, possibility and opportunity of a period – as well as the worst that we can imagine from it. What has been “interesting” recently is the overwhelming cultural and political view that the British public is a nasty species that requires [...]
The optimal Brexit strategy is really quite simple – if Britain leaves the Customs Union January 5, 2017 Discombobulate means to confuse or disconcert. It’s a word which is likely to become very apt as politicians and the media struggle to define the Brexit strategy between now and the end of March – the deadline for initiating Article 50. For the life of me I can’t work out why everybody seems to be [...]
We won’t close the gender pay gap in the City until we face up to the pressures of having a family January 5, 2017 The Resolution Foundation’s report yesterday on the gender pay gap shows progress for young women graduates, but makes for depressing reading for women approaching their 30s. The pay gap for women in their 30s and 40s has hardly changed in a generation. The report concludes that having children has a “sharp and long-lasting” effect on [...]
Are hardcore Remainers deluding themselves that the government’s Brexit strategy is in crisis? January 5, 2017 Tim Worstall, senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, and author of Chasing Rainbows: Economic Myths, Environmental Facts, says Yes. To claim that anyone’s Brexit strategy is in crisis is to misunderstand what a strategy is. It is the goal that you have decided to reach. Britain’s strategy in World War II was the unconditional [...]
MPs and peers are calling for a new, regional visa system January 5, 2017 A cross-party group of 24 MPs and peers is demanding the government investigates a new, regionally-led immigration system for the UK. The panel of MPs, which is led by Labour’s Chuka Umunna, argues that regions and cities should gain control of their own visa rules. This would mimic a system already in place in Canada, [...]
Loyalty costs: Energy consumers sticking with standard variable tariffs rack up combined bill of £3.6bn a year January 5, 2017 Loyalty costs when it comes to energy bills, according to new research from comparison site uSwitch. Customers staying loyal to their supplier’s standard tariff without looking for the cheapest deal are paying a combined £3.6bn more for their energy each year than they need to. British Gas has the most standard variable customers, around 6.6m [...]
The oil price rally has pushed petrol and diesel prices to their highest levels in 18 months January 5, 2017 Petrol and diesel prices rose by around 3p a litre in December, taking the fuels to their priciest levels since July 2015. An oil price rally triggered by a production cut among members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) at the end of November pushed up the wholesale costs for both fuels [...]