Nottingham Council has been slapped down by the head of a new local government watchdog, which said that councils are going bankrupt because of poor financial management, not a lack of money, GB News reported. Nottingham Council, which declared effective bankruptcy earlier this year, cited the impact of inflation as a cause. It also blamed increased demand for children's and adults' social care and rising homelessness.
Read more
Opposition councillors have warned that the ruling Conservatives at County Hall have risked the financial future of the authority in their determination to get the proposed 3.9-mile road built, the Eastern Daily Press reported. They say that Norfolk County Council has now committed so much cash to the project that if it does not now go ahead, the authority would not be able to balance the books. It comes at a time when a number of English councils have been forced to effectively declare themselves bankrupt because of their financial dire straits.
British shopper numbers at stores on Boxing Day rose from a year earlier, especially in London, research data showed on Wednesday, marking a strong start to the post-Christmas bargain-hunting spree, Reuters reported. Research group MRI Software said footfall rose 4% across all UK retail destinations on Dec. 26. Known in Britain as Boxing Day, the date that traditionally launches high-street sales was in the Victorian era the time when the rich would donate leftover food and goods from Christmas Day festivities to the poor.
Read more
A serviced-office provider with a slew of sites in London’s financial district has collapsed into administration, the latest flexible workspace business to fold in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. BE Offices Ltd. and almost a dozen subsidiaries entered an administration application at London’s High Court, according to a filing. This included units responsible for workspaces in the city’s Cheapside, Threadneedle Street and in Paddington, the filings show.
Read more
Most Londoners are hunkering down, hoping to weather Britain’s housing storm rather than look for more affordable homes outside the capital, Bloomberg News reported. Londoners spent roughly £29 billion ($37 billion) on homes outside the capital this year, almost a third less than in 2022, according to a report from broker Hamptons International. While affordability pressures caused the rate of London outmigration to rise over the past 12 months, the number of homes bought outside the capital dropped to just over 69,000 — the lowest in nine years.
Read more
The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office must pay Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. after it began a corruption investigation based on tips improperly obtained from a senior lawyer for the company, a U.K. court said. The SFO committed a “serious breach” of its own duties by privately communicating with a lawyer then at Dechert, a law firm hired by the company to run an internal investigation into possible bribery, Justice David Waksman of the High Court in London said Thursday in a written judgment. Without those communications, the agency wouldn’t have launched its investigation, Waksman found.
Read more
A trade association is urging business owners to seek help sooner rather than later if they are facing financial problems, the Bournemouth Daily Echo reported. R3, the trade body for restructuring and insolvency professionals in Dorset, has said that corporate insolvencies have ‘shot up’ by more than a fifth compared to last year. Newly published figures for England and Wales show a rise from 2,032 insolvencies in November 2022 to 2,466 for November of this year.
Read more
Britain and Switzerland signed a wide-ranging financial services deal on Thursday granting reciprocal market access for their banks, insurers, asset managers and stock exchanges to boost trade and cut compliance costs, Reuters reported. After two years of talks which began after Britain left the European Union, the deal - which will require British and Swiss parliamentary approval - is based on mutual recognition of rules and supervisors, easing regulatory burdens.
Read more
English councils will receive a 6.5% funding boost next year to help them battle soaring costs, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government said, but the move failed to quell growing fears of a looming wave of bankruptcies, Bloomberg News reported. Michael Gove, the UK’s secretary of state for leveling up, housing and communities, on Monday announced almost £4 billion ($5.1 billion) of extra cash for local councils in 2024/25, taking their total central government funding to over £64 billion. While the government said this represented a rise in real terms, the sector criticized the uplift.
Read more
A streak of unexpectedly good news on inflation has continued in Britain, as the annual rate of price increases dropped to its lowest level in more than two years, the New York Times reported. Consumer prices in Britain rose 3.9 percent in November from a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. That was down from 4.6 percent the previous month and the lowest since September 2021. Price growth slowed as fuel costs declined and food inflation continued to ease.
Read more