Royal Mail allowed to ditch Second Class Saturday deliveries January 30, 2025 This morning, regulator Ofcom has said it is proposing to scrap Second Class letter deliveries on Saturdays and reduce the service to alternate weekdays while lowering Royal Mail’s delivery targets. In a statement published this morning, titled ‘Protecting the postal service for the future,’ Ofcom said Royal Mail’s universal service agreement “urgently needs reform to [...]
Will the public miss WH Smith if it disappears from the UK high street? January 30, 2025 YouGov’s chief executive Steve Hatch takes a closer look at the data behind the biggest stories in business. Here, he looks at the future of WH Smith. News broke last week that WH Smith was looking to sell its UK high street stores. The company told the London Stock Exchange that it intended to become [...]
Savers get three-month warning over £50bn in maturing ISAs January 30, 2025 Savers are being urged to act as a huge £53.9bn in cash ISAs will mature by April, according to Paragon Bank. Paragon said that £36.4bn of that was held in one-year, fixed-term deals, which are almost certainly paying better rates than savers can get today. Derek Sprawling, savings managing director at Paragon Bank, said: “Over [...]
Show me my money! Four ways to get your finances in order before the new tax year January 30, 2025 The financial landscape is vast, and navigating it can be a headache, especially with a lot of change. However, with inflation still eating into savings, and a bigger tax burden on individuals looming for 2025, protecting your money and making sure it is working hard enough for you has gone from a nice-to-have, to a [...]
Water bills to rise by an average of £123 January 30, 2025 Households can expect their annual water bill to rise by an average of £123 from April, more than the amount announced by the regulator last month, the sector’s industry body has said. According to Water UK, the average bill in England and Wales will jump from £480 to £603 in the year from 1 April, [...]
Mark Kleinman: Are Barclays pay rows a mere historical relic? January 30, 2025 Mark Kleinman is Sky News’ City Editor and the man who gets the Square Mile talking in his weekly City AM column. This week, he tackles pay rows at Barclays, how WH Smith is clinging on and a floating debate for Monzo Are Barclays pay rows a mere historical relic? There was a time when Barclays and public [...]
Hundred: Sale of franchise stakes could value cricket league at £700m January 29, 2025 English cricket is set for a major financial boost with the Hundred sale, which enters its final round of bidding, expected to value the eight franchises at as much as £700m. That figure is double the sum the England and Wales Cricket Board rejected from Bridgepoint for the whole tournament in 2022 and would therefore [...]
EE: Home nations agree four-year contract extension with telco January 29, 2025 The Football Association (FA) will continue with EE as its lead partner after the telco signed a four-year contract extension. The agreement covers the England men’s and women’s senior teams, the 90,000 capacity Wembley Stadium and the other three home nations football associations up to the 2028 Euros, which Great Britain and Ireland will co-host [...]
Manchester unveils £15bn plan to become go-to tourist destination outside London January 29, 2025 Greater Manchester has unveiled plans to grow its visitor economy to be worth £15bn by the end of the decade in a bid to be the go-to tourism destination in the UK outside of London. The new strategy, which covers a five-year period through to 2030, aims to increase the region’s visitor economy from around [...]
DeepSeek accused of using OpenAI’s models to train its viral bot January 29, 2025 OpenAI has accused Chinese competitor DeepSeek of using its models to train the competing system, violating its property rights. The ChatGPT maker claimed that its new Chinese competitor employed a technique called ‘distillation’ – when a smaller model learns from its larger counterpart – to develop its new chatbot. Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence adviser, David [...]