British Prime Minister Boris Johnson began a national lockdown Monday, ordering the British population to stay home until mid-February amid spiraling infection rates caused by a new variant of the coronavirus, the Wall Street Journal reported. As of Monday evening, schools and nonessential shops are to shut across England and people have been told to only leave their homes if necessary.

With just over four weeks to go until the 31 January self-assessment deadline, several million people in the U.K. still haven’t filed their tax return, the Guardian reported. Each year about 11 million people have to complete a self-assessment tax return. Looking at recent years, there were still 5.4 million taxpayers who hadn’t filed by 31 December 2019, and 5.5 million who were yet to file by 31 December 2018. HMRC says that it is aware that many people will have been adversely affected by the pandemic, and may, for example, need help to spread the cost of their tax bill.

British lawmakers approved Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union yesterday as both sides looked to begin a new chapter of relations just days before their divorce becomes a reality, Reuters reported. Britain and the European Union signed the deal on Wednesday and the British parliament will finalise its implementation, ending over four years of negotiation and safeguarding nearly a $1 trillion of annual trade.

Acadia Healthcare Co. agreed to sell Priory Group, a chain of U.K. mental-health facilities known for treating celebrities for drug and alcohol addiction, to Waterland Private Equity for 1.1 billion pounds ($1.5 billion), Bloomberg News reported. Priory operates about 450 sites across the U.K., specializing in treatment of mental health-care problems as well as conditions ranging from addiction to eating disorders. Acadia, which acquired the British operations in 2016, launched a sale process early this year but temporarily suspended it after the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the world.

The U.K. and the European Union tomorrow will sign the treaty formalizing the post-Brexit trade agreement the two sides reached on Christmas Eve, Bloomberg News reported. After European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel sign the document, it will be flown by Royal Air Force jet to London where Prime Minister Boris Johnson will do the same. British lawmakers will get only a day to debate the agreement, because it needs to be implemented by the time the Brexit transition period ends at 11 p.m. on Dec. 31.

The European Union and the United Kingdom made public Saturday the vast agreement that is likely to govern future trade and cooperation between them from Jan. 1, setting the 27-nation bloc’s relations with its former member country and neighbor on a new but far more distant footing, the Associated Press reported. EU ambassadors and lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel will now pore over the “EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement,” which contains over 1,240 pages of text. EU envoys are expected to meet on Monday to discuss the document, drawn up over nine intense months of talks.

Britain yesterday urged businesses to prepare for Brexit, just days before a transition period designed to smooth the UK’s departure from the European Union comes to an end, Reuters reported.Britain and the EU clinched a trade deal on Thursday - one which preserves zero-tariff and zero-quota access to the bloc’s single market but which will still cause disruption. The transition period, under which Britain stayed aligned to the EU’s trading and regulatory rules, ends at 2300 GMT on Dec. 31.

Indian stocks fell, taking a sudden plunge about one hour ahead of the close as investors assessed the latest coronavirus outbreaks as well as a new lockdown in the U.K, Bloomberg News reported. The S&P BSE Sensex closed down 3% to 45,553.96, the biggest decline since May, with all stocks in the red. Reliance Industries and utilities were the biggest contributor to the losses with the oil refiner down 2.6%. Meanwhile, a broader gauge of about 200 stocks that includes mid caps tumbled 3.4%, the most since May.

The High Court has made formal orders winding up four companies employing 487 people here that are part of the UK fashion group Arcadia, The Irish Times reported. The companies will continue to trade under the liquidators into the new year pending any disposal of the Arcadia group. Mr Justice Brian O’Moore, when making the winding-up orders on Monday and appointing joint liquidators, said this was “another sad milestone in the decline of bricks and mortar retailing in Ireland”.