{"id":4571,"date":"2022-02-09T10:52:49","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T10:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2022\/02\/09\/news-in-review-42\/"},"modified":"2022-07-05T14:09:48","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T13:09:48","slug":"news-in-review-42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/2022\/02\/09\/news-in-review-42\/","title":{"rendered":"News in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong><em>\u201cI\u2019m afraid we do have to raise Bank Rates\u2026 This is a lot of pressure\non households\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>Financial\nannouncements came thick and fast last week, impacting household budgets and\nliving standards for millions across the UK. As anticipated by many economic\ncommentators, on Thursday the Monetary Policy Committee voted to increase Bank\nRate from 0.25% to 0.5%, in an effort to dampen the pace of price rises over the longer\nterm. Despite this move, the Bank of England (BoE) still expects inflation\ncould reach 7.25% in April when energy bills are set to rise. This would\nbe the fastest price growth since 1991 and is well above the Bank&#8217;s 2% target.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>Earlier on Thursday, British\nenergy regulators raised the energy price cap in England, Wales and Scotland by\njust under \u00a3700 from April. The same day, Rishi Sunak&nbsp;outlined plans to ease cost of living pressures, saying<em>,\n\u201cRight now, I know the number one issue on people\u2019s minds is the rising cost of\nliving. That\u2019s why the government is stepping in with direct support that will\nhelp around 28 million households with their rising energy costs over the next\nyear.\u201d <\/em><em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>The measures\ninclude:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-list\">\n<ul><li>All domestic electricity customers will receive an upfront discount worth \u00a3200 off their energy bills from October, the discount will      then be automatically recovered from people\u2019s bills in equal \u00a340      instalments over the next five years<\/li><li>Households in England in Council Tax bands A-D will receive a \u00a3150 rebate, made directly by local authorities from April &#8211; this will not need to be repaid<\/li><li>Discretionary funding of \u00a3144m will be provided to support vulnerable people and individuals on low incomes who do not pay Council Tax, or who pay Council Tax for properties in Bands E-H<\/li><li>Devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to receive \u00a3565m of funding as a result of the Council Tax Energy Rebate in England. <\/li><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>In an eventful day for the\nUK, Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey commented on the MPC\ndecision, <em>&#8220;Unfortunately, we\u2019ve got a squeeze from energy prices, and\nyou see the Ofgem announcement this morning, and in order to counter the\nthreat, and the risk that we see of further pressure coming from the labour\nmarket<a>, I\u2019m afraid we do have to raise Bank Rates. This\nis a lot of pressure on households<\/a>, and we have to be very clear, a lot of\npressure on those households who are less able to afford it.&#8221;<\/em><em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>Markets react<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>Rising interest rates and inflation\nwarnings across Europe weighed on global markets at the tail end of last week. European\nCentral Bank President Christine Lagarde refused to rule out raising interest\nrates this year after its policymakers expressed <em>\u2018unanimous concern\u2019 <\/em>about\nsoaring prices. Later, strong US labour data buoyed\ninvestors, who were energised by the\nhigher-than-expected jump in jobs &#8211; a sign that the world\u2019s biggest economy is\nrecovering faster than hoped. On Tuesday the FTSE 100 briefly hit\na new two-year high before slipping back as a fall in oil prices impacted the\nenergy sector.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>Levelling up\nstrategy<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>On 2\nFebruary, the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove unveiled plans to transform\nthe UK. Central to the plans announced are 12 national missions including local public transport\nsystems becoming much closer to London standards, improving access to 5G\nbroadband and the elimination of illiteracy and innumeracy in primary school\nleavers &#8211; &nbsp;all to be achieved by 2030. Michael Gove commented, <em>\u201cOur 12\nnew national levelling up missions will drive real change in towns and cities\nacross the UK, so that where you live will no longer determine how far you can\ngo.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong><em>\u201cUK manufacturing made a solid start to 2022\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>January\u2019s IHS Markit\/CIPS\nPurchasing Managers\u2019 Index fell slightly from December (57.9 to 57.3)\nreflecting a small slowdown in the growth of new orders. Although input cost\nand output inflation are easing, supply chain constraint continues to prove\nchallenging, but is regarded <em>\u2018passed its peak.\u2019<\/em> Director at IHS Markit\nRob Dobson commented on the recent data set, <a><em>\u201cUK\nmanufacturing made a solid start to 2022<\/em><\/a><em>, with growth of output\naccelerating as companies reported fewer supply delays.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>Here to help<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p>Financial advice is key, so please do not hesitate to get in contact\nwith any questions or concerns you may have.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"hd-block hd-block-paragraph\">\n<p><strong>The value of investments can go down as well\nas up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. The past is not a\nguide to future performance and past performance may not necessarily be\nrepeated.<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI\u2019m afraid we do have to raise Bank Rates\u2026 This is a lot of pressure on households\u201d Financial announcements came thick and fast last week, impacting household budgets and living standards for millions across the UK. As anticipated by many economic commentators, on Thursday the Monetary Policy Committee voted to increase Bank Rate from 0.25% [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32,112],"tags":[],"hd_content_source":[116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4573,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions\/4573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4571"},{"taxonomy":"hd_content_source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.contentdeployment.co.uk\/tomd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hd_content_source?post=4571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}