budget 2017 – Hinterland https://hinterland.org.uk Rural News Fri, 15 Nov 2019 06:10:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.2 Key points from budget 2017 – at a glance https://hinterland.org.uk/key-points-from-budget-2017-at-a-glance/ Wed, 22 Nov 2017 21:55:40 +0000 http://www.hinterland.org.uk/?p=4851 Sorry this is long but it’s a great budget summary in my view. Some interesting moves on housing but perhaps not enough to get the supply line moving to the level required. To me the interesting angle is the OBR forecast which demonstrates a significant fall in projected growth for the medium term.

Stamp duty

Housing

  • 100% council tax premium on empty properties.
  • £28m in three new housing pilot schemes – in the West Midlands, Manchester and Liverpool – to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027.
  • £44bn of capital funding to help build 300,000 homes annually by mid-2020s.
  • New money for homebuilders fund.
  • £630m ‘small sites fund’.
  • £8bn of financial guarantees to support private housebuilding.
  • £2.7bn housing infrastructure fund.
  • £1.1bn for new urban regeneration.
  • £34m to train construction workers.
  • A review to be chaired by Oliver Letwin to look at ways to speed up planning permission.
  • Five new garden towns.
  • One million new homes on the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor by 2050.

Rent

  • £125m of funding over the next two years to help 140,000 people.

Universal credit

  • £1.5bn to remove seven-day waiting period; new claimants in receipt of housing benefit will get it for two weeks.

Brexit

  • £3bn set aside for Brexit preparations.

Economic growth

  • Revised down to 5% in 2017 from 2%.
  • Forecasts are 1.4% in 2018, 1.3% in 2019, 1.3% in 2020, 1.5% in 2021 and 1.6% in 2022.
  • In March the forecasts were 1.6% in 2018, 1.7% in 2019, 1.9% in 2020 and 2% in 2021.

Government borrowing

  • £49.9bn this year, down by £8.4bn from the previous forecast.
  • Down from £39.5bn next year to £25.6bn in 2022-23.

NHS

  • £10bn capital investment in frontline services over the course of this parliament.
  • £2.8bn of extra funding for England.

Living wage

  • Up to £7.83 an hour, from £7.50.

Income tax

  • Basic rate rises to £11,850 from April; 40% threshold increases to £46,350.
  • Chancellor has previously pledged to increase basic rate to £12,500 by 2020.

Electric cars

  • £400m for charging infrastructure fund.
  • Those charging electric vehicles at work will not face taxes.

Diesel cars

  • 1 percentage point increase in company car tax.
  • From 2018, an increase in tax on cars that don’t meet standards – to go up by one band.
  • Proceeds to fund £220m clean air fund.

Education

  • Maths:£40m for maths teachers; £600 premium for schools for each student taking A-level maths.
  • Computing:triple number of science teachers to 12,000; new national centre for computing.
  • National retraining scheme for digital expertise.

Northern powerhouse

  • £1.7bn transforming cities fund.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

  • £650m extra for Northern Ireland.
  • £2bn extra for Scotland.
  • £1.2bn extra for Wales.

Oil

  • Tax changes to encourage investment; ‘Transferable Tax History’ for oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Duties on spirits, wine and beer

  • A new tax band for still cider and perry with alcohol content between 6.9%-7.5% to target white cider.

New railcard

  • 4.5 million people aged 26-30 to get a third off rail fares.

Airlines

  • Increase on air passenger duty on premium-class tickets.

Grenfell Tower

  • £28m for mental health services and local regeneration for Kensington and Chelsea council.

Fuel duty rise

  • Cancelled.

Tax avoidance

  • Measures to raise £4.8bn by 2022-23.

Business rates

  • £2.3bn cost to bring forward the change to Consumer Prices Index from Retail Prices Index by two years to 2018.
  • After next revaluation, future revaluations to take place every three years rather than five.
  • Staircase tax: businesses hit will have original bill reinstated.
  • Discount for pubs (rateable value less than £100,000) extended by one year to March 2019.

VAT

  • Consultation on threshold of £85,000 at which small businesses pay VAT.

Digital tax

  • £200m a year extra from income tax on UK sales.
  • Target £1.2bn a year in lost VAT from online shopping.

Research and development

  • £2.3bn of investment.
  • Increase tax credit to 12%.
  • £500m for artificial intelligence and 5G initiatives.
  • Investigate charges on plastic waste.
  • £20bn of new investment in UK knowledge-intensive industries.
  • £2.5bn for the British Business Bank.
  • Encourage pension fund investment.
  • Boost to Enterprise Investment Scheme.
  • Replace funding from Europe.
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Freeze but no strategy: the budget and public services https://hinterland.org.uk/freeze-but-no-strategy-the-budget-and-public-services/ Wed, 08 Mar 2017 20:45:48 +0000 http://www.hinterland.org.uk/?p=4355 I think this “Guardian” take on the budget is too one sided by half but it does contain this interesting excerpt which is hard to argue with in terms of the implication of the latest budget and the public services we in Local Government provide. It tells us:

For all the tinkering on social care and school funding, public services will continue to diminish in volume, and employment. The state, defined as current public spending, will continue to shrink – from 35.4% of GDP to 33.4% by 2021-22 (pdf).

 

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