Matthew Burrows

Work started on only 5% of the 88,000 homes London needs each year in 2024 to 25, and the developers' answer is a tax break for buyers. Related Argent, the firm behind King's Cross, and the Institute of Directors are leading the push. They want time limited stamp duty relief on new build homes, arguing faster sales would make stalled schemes viable again. They also want build to rent homes, built to be let out, kept free of rent controls for 25 years, which they say would give investors certainty before they commit money. Related Argent's Tom Goodall says: "It costs more to build a home in Bristol than in Paris, Los Angeles or Sydney." He blames delays, complexity and red tape, since the bricks, steel and concrete are much the same as abroad. Taylor Wimpey and Berkeley have both warned that building in the capital is becoming steadily less viable. The 5% works out at about 4,400 homes, and at that pace London would need 20 years to deliver one year's requirement. That is a queue, not a pipeline.

London Stadium can hold 85,000 for a pop concert but only 60,000 for boxing. The people running it would like that gap closed. The operator, LS185, plans to reclassify boxing as a unique event, so fights get the same limit as concerts. That is room for 25,000 more paying fans on a fight night, and a shot at the mega fights that usually go to Wembley. Fury v Whyte at Wembley in 2022 drew 94,000 people and brought in over £11m. Joshua v Fury in Cardiff in December is expected to earn more than £20m. The push makes sense once you see the lease. The stadium had cost the public £701m. West Ham paid a one off £15m plus £2.5m a year in rent, and the rent was cut when the club went down. The taxpayer now covers £19m a year. Boxing fans may fill 25,000 more seats, but a £701m stadium let on £2.5m a year needs more than a good undercard.

Britain's biggest employers have cut or announced at least 137,000 jobs since Labour took office in July 2024, and entry level hiring has taken the biggest hit. The tally draws on more than 250 reports of layoffs, redundancy rounds and administrations, and it combines announced plans with roles already gone. Shops, pubs and restaurants account for around 45,000 of the cuts, the largest share of any sector. About 30% came from financial, legal and professional services. Ben Caswell, senior economist at NIESR, puts the jump in what an entry level worker costs a firm at 10% in a single year. Almost 1m people aged 16 to 24 are now not in work, education or training. Vacancies slipped under 700,000 in September, a level last seen five years ago. Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, argues there is a direct connection between the jobs tax, meaning the employer national insurance firms pay on staff, and firms laying off staff. Barclays says automation could remove up to 5,000 roles, so not every cut is about payroll. A 10% jump in costs is a hefty premium for a firm weighing up a junior hire.

Passing the family firm to the children could cost an extra £193,000 on a £1m handover, if HMRC gets its way. Few children can pay a retiring parent in one go, so many companies issue the founder redeemable preference shares and repay them in stages out of profits. Those payments are currently charged capital gains tax at between 10% and 24%. HMRC has proposed capping what counts as capital at the amount the founder first invested, with anything above taxed as a dividend at between 35.75% and 39.35% for higher and additional rate taxpayers. On a £1m handover, the bill moves from £200,000 to roughly £393,000. HMRC is also considering a strict cut off for buybacks, where the company buys the founder's shares back. Any shares a founder still holds after 24 months would be taxed as income. Chris Etherington, a tax partner at RSM, warned the wider proposals could impact family buyouts and people wanting to retire. Tax the family route harder and the outside buyer starts to look like the better heir.

Borrowing for five years now costs Britain more than at any point since 2008, and the price landed on John Healey's desk hours before his first Budget. The Debt Management Office sold £4.5bn of five year gilts, government bonds, at a yield, the annual return buyers get, of 5.04%. That is the highest for five year bonds since 2008. Each gilt sold at 5.04% locks that cost in until it matures in 2032, so a high yield is a bill for the next five years. Investors didn't flinch, with bids at 3.5 times the gilts on offer. Servicing the national debt now costs Britain more than £115bn a year, a bigger sum than the entire education budget for England. Healey has signed up to Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules, the government's budgeting limits, and her pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT, so there isn't much give. Investors queued up at 5.04%. The taxpayer picks up the tab.

John Healey's breathing space Budget arrived after Rachel Reeves had already taken another £60bn a year out of the private sector. Labour's 2024 manifesto ruled out changes to income tax and VAT, two of the biggest levers the Treasury has. That leaves fresh revenue to come from smaller levies, which tend to land on the same firms already paying for Reeves's choices. So it reads as a pause more than a programme. The weightier document is Andy Burnham's ten year plan, with the spending review that follows then setting the budgets each department lives on. A quiet Budget suits Burnham, and it is the wrong deal for business. Firms still carrying that £60bn a year were unlikely to get much relief.

John Healey's first Budget hands 20m households £100 towards energy, and asks the banks to help cover it. The £100 goes to households in council tax bands A to D, costs £2.6bn and lands straight in bank accounts. Banks pay an extra 3% surcharge on profits for 15 months from January, money earmarked for energy support. Tax on wages and dividends is untouched, and the planned cut to the cash ISA allowance from £20,000 to £12,000 is scrapped. The minimum and living wage both rise by 3.9% in April, and fuel duty stays frozen for a 16th straight year. The Office for Budget Responsibility puts headroom, the cushion left against the fiscal rules, at £15bn in 2029 to 30. Defence and welfare decisions wait for next year's spending review. Help now, hard choices later.

London is paying for being expensive, and Zoopla says stamp duty is part of the bill. Some 85% of homes in London and the south east have lost value over the past year, Zoopla figures show, against 35% across the UK as a whole. The average London home has lost £5,400. In the north west, the typical home has gained £6,600. Zoopla puts the slide down to higher mortgage costs and weaker buyer demand since the Iran war began. It also argues that because London homes cost more, stamp duty takes a bigger slice of every purchase, which pushes sellers to lower their prices to keep deals moving. Its suggested fix is extending the 2% stamp duty rate band, which it estimates could save home movers up to £7,500 and first time buyers up to £6,000. For owners who stay put, the drop is a paper loss. For anyone who needs to move, it eats into the money they'd built up in their home and were counting on for the next purchase. The north west is going up in the world. London is marking down its price tags.

Buying on a record high day has beaten buying on an ordinary day over one, three and five years. Sitting on cash waiting for a bargain has been the pricier habit. Vanguard data covering 1950 to 2025 shows money put in on a record high day returned 9.5% a year later on average, against 9.2% for any other day. Over three years it was 30.2% against 28.5%, and over five years 55.8% against 51.9%. Over 10 and 20 years record high buyers did lag, a fair warning against putting one big lump in at a peak and never adding to it. The S&P 500 set a new high on 15 April and has gained more than 10% since, without a single 5% pullback. A saver who kept £5,000 in cash from mid April waiting for that dip would have missed a gain worth over £500. David Dierking's answer is a fixed amount each month, so no single day decides the outcome. A dip may still come. Markets rarely send a calendar invite.

Crypto firms have spent years outside the US banking system. Ripple now has a federal bank charter of its own. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has given final approval to Ripple National Trust Bank, after Ripple applied in July 2025. The bank will hold the reserves behind RLUSD, Ripple's dollar linked stablecoin, a crypto token built to track the dollar, worth about $2.5bn (~£1.9bn). It is a trust charter, so no everyday deposits and no loans. It covers holding and safeguarding assets for clients, which is the scope Ripple needs. RLUSD itself is still issued by Ripple's New York regulated unit, so state and federal regulators each oversee part of the structure. BNY holds most of the reserves. Chief executive Brad Garlinghouse says Ripple has long argued that crypto and banks work better together. The approval is that idea with a federal stamp on it. The price of the credibility is two layers of rules as well as two regulators.