Offices share half-a-billion business rates write-off December 22, 2020 The Valuation Office Agency has agreed to write off almost £500m-worth of offices’ business rates after weeks of negotiations. Business rates discounts were announced for firms directly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, including pubs and restaurants. Read more: UK borrowing in November the third-highest on record Offices that lay empty however [...]
Temporary register buys time for crypto firms from the FCA December 21, 2020 What happened? The UK crypto scene breathed a collective sigh of relief this month as the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) announced a temporary registration scheme for cryptoasset companies. The regulator’s announcement came just weeks before its original registration deadline of January 10, 2021. Firms that have already submitted applications which have not yet been processed, [...]
Westminster year in review: Who is up and who is down in 2020? December 21, 2020 As the UK ushered in 2020 it looked as if Boris Johnson had an unshakeable grasp on Westminster and the Conservative party. Johnson’s election landslide win last December and his victory in dragging the UK out of the EU in January made him look infallible. Before the Open newsletter: Start your day with the City [...]
UK house prices end year on high with £62bn more deals than 2019 December 21, 2020 UK house prices are set to finish the year on a high note despite the worst downturn since the 1700s, with the residential property market racking up £62bn more in agreed sales in 2020 than last year, according to new data. Property website Zoopla said house prices rose at an annual rate of 3.9 per [...]
Publish which firms get furlough cash, government told December 20, 2020 The government should publish a list of companies that have received furlough money to increase transparency around the scheme, amid fears of waste and fraud, parliament’s spending watchdog has said. The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also said that chancellor Rishi Sunak’s repeated extensions to the scheme at short notice caused uncertainty that could have [...]
Furlough scheme to be extended until April and loans to continue, too December 17, 2020 The Chancellor has confirmed today that the furlough scheme will be extended an extra month until the end of April 2021. The scheme had been intended to close in March, itself an extension from an original planned end date in the middle of 2020. The furlough programme pays 80 per cent towards wages of unworked [...]
New: European Parliament paves way for emergency Brexit session December 17, 2020 The European Parliament ‘stands ready’ to convene an emergency session before the end of the year if the United Kingdom and the European Union can strike a deal by midnight Sunday. In a statement, bosses said if a deal was struck by “midnight on Sunday 21December” and though this is not in fact the date [...]
Rishi Sunak ‘to extend emergency Covid business loan schemes’ December 17, 2020 Chancellor Rishi Sunak is set to extend the UK’s £68bn coronavirus emergency loan schemes to help support businesses hit with the double whammy of Covid and Brexit, according to reports. Officials are drawing up plans to extend the three main loan guarantee schemes, including the government’s £43.5bn coronavirus bounce back loans programme, the Financial Times [...]
Sunak: Covid schemes could stave off damage from Brexit turbulence December 17, 2020 The Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said that Coronavirus support schemes could provide insurance against the economic impact of Brexit. “For businesses that need liquidity to get through a temporary time, we’ve got very generous… loan programmes for anyone who is having trouble with costs and employment,” he told The Spectator in a wide-ranging interview. It [...]
Vaccine ‘gamechanger’ will see UK economy bounce back sharply, analysts say December 15, 2020 The coronavirus vaccine will help the UK economy recover more rapidly than most experts think, according to economists at consultancy Capital Economics (CE) who predicted Covid will barely affect growth in the long-run. The respected economics consultancy predicted the economy would grow by about 7.5 per cent in both 2021 and 2022, after shrinking by [...]