Three London boroughs where house prices are falling
While UK property prices are generally rising, some London boroughs are experiencing annual decreases, with central areas like Islington down more than 8 per cent, Kensington and Chelsea down 15 per cent, and Westminster a full 20.1 per cent.
NAEA Propertymark president Toby Leek notes that despite London 's attractiveness, high house prices relative to wages, increased stamp duty, limited housing supply, and higher interest rates are making it difficult for aspiring homeowners to enter the market.
Data indicates a shift with more people leaving cities for smaller towns or rural areas, influenced by factors like the pandemic altering work-life balance perceptions and the desire for larger, more affordable properties.
Personal finance analyst Alice Haine highlights that Londoners face challenges due to high mortgage payments, rising living costs, and frozen tax thresholds, making relocation to cheaper areas appealing.
Bank of England data reveals a continued decline in mortgage approvals for home purchases, and with interest rates expected to remain high, buyers and those remortgaging may need to adjust their plans.
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Sky News
37 minutes ago
- Sky News
The big problem facing UK as deadline to finalise US trade deal looms
When push comes to shove, the question of whether British industry faces crippling tariffs on exports to the US or enjoys a unique opportunity to grow may come back to three seemingly random words: "melted and poured". To see why, let's begin by recapping where we are at present in the soap opera of US trade policy. Donald Trump has just doubled the extra tariffs charged on imports of steel and aluminium into the US from 25% to 50%. In essence, this would turn a painfully high tariff into something closer to an insurmountable economic wall (remember during the Cold War, the Iron Curtain equated to an effective tariff rate of just under 50%). Anyway, the good news for UK steel producers is that they have been spared the 50% rate and will, for the time being, only have to pay the 25% rate. But there is a sting in the tail: that stay of execution will only last until 9 July - on the basis of President Trump's most recent pronouncements. 1:00 For anyone following these events from the corner of their eyes, this might all sound a little odd. After all, didn't Sir Keir Starmer announce only a few weeks ago that British steel and aluminium makers would be able to enjoy not 25% but 0% tariffs with America, thanks to his bold new trade agreement with the US? Well, yes. But the prime minister wasn't being entirely clear about what that meant in practice. Because the reality is that every trade agreement works more or less as follows: politicians negotiate a "heads of terms" agreement - a vague set of principles and red lines. There then follows a period of horse-trading and negotiation to nail down the actual details and turn it into a black and white piece of law. In this case, when the PM and president made their big announcement 28 days ago, they had only agreed on the "heads of terms". The small print was yet to be completed. Right now, we are still in the horse-trading phase. Negotiators from the UK and the US are meeting routinely to try and nail down the small print. And that process is taking longer than many had expected. To see why, it's worth drilling a little bit into the details. The trade deal committed to allowing some cars to pass into the US at a 10% rate and to protecting some pharmaceutical trade, as well as allowing some steel and aluminium into the US at a zero tariff rate. When it comes to cars, there are some nuances about which kind of cars the deal covers. Something similar goes for pharmaceuticals. Things get even knottier when you drill into the detail on steel. 2:13 You see, one of the things the White House is nervous about is the prospect that Britain might become a kind of assembly point for steel from other countries around the world - that you could just ship some steel to Britain, get it pressed or rolled or worked over and then sent across to the US with those 0% tariffs. So the US negotiators are insisting that only steel that is "melted and poured" in the UK (in other words, smelted in a furnace) is covered by the trade deal. That's fine for some producers but not for others. One of Britain's biggest steel exporters is Tata Steel, which makes a lot of steel that gets turned into tin cans you find on American supermarket shelves (not to mention piping used by the oil trade). Up until recently, that steel was indeed "melted and poured" from the blast furnaces at Port Talbot. But Tata shut down those blast furnaces last year, intending to replace them with cleaner electric arc furnaces. And in the intervening period, it's importing raw steel instead from the Netherlands and India and then running it through its mills. Or consider the situation at British Steel. There in Scunthorpe they are melting and pouring the steel from iron made in their blast furnaces - but now ponder this. While the company has been semi-nationalised by the government, it is still technically a Chinese business, owned by Jingye. In other words, its steel might technically count as benefiting China - which is something the White House is even more sensitive about. 👉 Tap here to follow Politics at Jack and Anne's wherever you get your podcasts 👈 You see how this is all suddenly becoming a bit more complicated than it might at first have looked? This helps to explain why the negotiations are taking longer than expected. But this brings us to the big problem. The White House has indicated that Britain will only be spared that 50% tariff rate provided the trade deal is finalised by 9 July. That gives the negotiators another month and a bit. That might sound like a lot, but now consider that that would be one of the fastest announcement-to-completion rates ever achieved in any trade negotiations in modern history. There's no guarantee Britain will actually get this deal done in time for that deadline - though insiders tell me they think they could be able to finalise it in a piecemeal fashion: the cars one week, steel another, pharmaceuticals another. Either way, the heat is on. Just when you thought Britain was in the safe zone, it stands on the edge of jeopardy all over again.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Bereaved families of dead pensioners could be pursued over winter fuel payments
Bereaved families of tens of thousands of dead pensioners could be pursued by tax officials to recoup winter fuel payments under a new system being explored by the Treasury, the Guardian has learned. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, confirmed on Wednesday that more pensioners will get winter fuel payments reinstated this year after weeks of uncertainty over the government's decision to make a U-turn on scrapping the benefit. Ministers are looking at restoring the payments as a universal benefit and then recouping the money when high-income pensioners fill in their tax returns, as creating a new means test would be a highly complex option. However, government insiders are concerned about a time lag of at least six months between the payment of up to £300 being made and it then being clawed back. It is feared that thousands could have died in that time, leaving grieving families to pick up the bill. One source said: 'We should never have scrapped the winter fuel payment in the first place, but the whole process of reinstating it has been completely chaotic. The optics of us demanding the money back from grieving families are dire.' The chancellor has brought forward confirmation of the change to the £11,500 income threshold over which pensioners are no longer eligible for the benefit to next week's spending review from the autumn budget, after a backlash against one of the most unpopular policies of the Labour government. In a further attempt to win public support and quell Labour backbench concerns, ministers are announcing on Thursday that all pupils in England whose families claim universal credit will be eligible for free school meals under an expansion of the scheme. Hundreds of thousands more children across the country will be able to access means-tested free school meals when the provision is extended from September 2026, after campaigners and school leavers urged ministers to take action on child poverty amid fears of delays. Reeves has already launched a charm offensive to persuade fractious Labour MPs that her spending review will not be a return to austerity, announcing £15bn for trams, trains and buses outside London as part of a £113bn investment in capital projects over the rest of the parliament. The chancellor wants capital spending to be at the centre of the government's narrative at the review next week in an acknowledgment that MPs, many of them in marginal seats, need a better economic story to address rising discontent among the public. Nearly 2.1 million pupils – almost one in four of the total in England – were eligible for free school meals in January 2024. The Department for Education has said more than half a million more children are expected to benefit from the expansion, with nearly £500 put back into parents' pockets every year. It suggested that the expansion will lift 100,000 children across England completely out of poverty, with the move being the most effective way of tackling the issue outside the benefits system. Keir Starmer has said the government will look at scrapping the two-child benefits limit. 'It is the moral mission of this government to tackle the stain of child poverty, and today this government takes a giant step towards ending it with targeted support that puts money back in parents' pockets,' the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said. The expansion of free school meals was almost universally welcomed by anti-poverty campaigners and teaching unions. Nick Harrison, chief executive of the Sutton Trust, said: 'This is a significant step towards taking hunger out of the classroom. 'Children can't learn effectively when hungry, so this announcement not only helps to tackle the effects of child poverty, but will also likely help improve education outcomes for disadvantaged young people.' Kate Anstey, at the Child Poverty Action Group charity, said: 'This is fantastic news and a gamechanger for children and families. At last, more kids will get the food they need to learn and thrive and millions of parents struggling to make ends meet will get a bit of breathing space.' Asked about the winter fuel payment after a speech in Rochdale, Reeves told reporters: 'We have listened to the concerns that people had about the level of the means test, and so we will be making changes to that; they will be in place so that pensioners are paid this coming winter. 'We'll announce the detail of that and the level of that as soon as we possibly can. But people should be in no doubt that the means test will increase and more people will get a winter fuel payment this winter.' The option of paying all pensioners a winter fuel payment and then asking for wealthier people to repay the money is a similar approach to that taken by the former Conservative chancellor George Osborne when he reduced child benefit eligibility for better-off parents. A senior official at HMRC, Jonathan Athow, confirmed to the Treasury select committee on Wednesday that if the tax system was used to make the changes, it would not be possible until next year. 'We'd have to get to April next year before we knew somebody's income, before we could then make any decisions about how [recouping the payment] would then be implemented,' he told MPs. The government's reversal came despite Downing Street denying that it would make changes to winter fuel payments after the Guardian revealed that it was rethinking the cut amid anxiety at the top of government that the policy could wreak serious electoral damage. The chancellor also hinted at tensions between cabinet colleagues saying she had had to turn down spending requests as she struggled to balance the books. 'Not every department will get everything that they want next week,' she said, 'and I have had to say no to things that I want to do too.' Just two Whitehall departments are still to agree their multi-year budgets with the Treasury before the spending review, the Guardian understands, with the home secretary, Yvette Cooper and the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, holding out on policing and social housing budgets. She also ruled out bending her fiscal rules, as some Labour MPs have urged her to do, and which she acknowledged would be the subject of much discussion over the coming days. It means that tax rises or further spending cuts are more likely this autumn.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
We must build Gen Z's financial confidence to unlock UK growth, says Barclays boss VIM MARU
Over the last decade, people and business in the UK have navigated staggering change including Brexit, a global pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis. During this time, Barclays has tracked shifts in UK consumer spending, which accounts for around 60 per cent of the nation's GDP, with huge potential to unlock growth. As one of the UK's largest banks with sight of 40 per cent of credit and debit card transactions, our insight paints a fascinating picture. Our data shows that the macroeconomic shocks of the past ten years have chipped away at confidence in the strength of the UK economy, which fell from 45 per cent at the end of 2015 to 28 per cent in our most recent survey in May 2025. Interestingly confidence reached its highest point in September 2016, following the Brexit referendum, at 48 per cent and (perhaps unsurprisingly) its lowest in October 2022, at 15%, following Liz Truss' 'mini-budget'. We have also seen fundamental shifts in how and where money is spent. Two thirds of UK consumers are paying more attention to their budget than they did 10 years ago. Yet discretionary spend grew by 9.2 per cent annually on average 2021-2024, outpacing essential spend, as people prioritised memorable experiences such as travel and entertainment. And we're tapping to pay, with ten times as many monthly contactless transactions compared to 2015. Changing demographics in the UK have driven these shifts and will become significantly more important over the next decade. In 2015, Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, hadn't yet reached adulthood, today they are three-times more likely to be saving for a major life milestone than anyone else. Gen Z's economic influence is also rapidly increasing. We are standing on the brink of the 'great wealth transfer'. A projected $18.3tn in wealth is expected to be transferred globally by 2030, and in the decades ahead, Gen Z will be the largest beneficiaries, making them a growing economic force. Despite this, 67 per cent of Gen Z consumers feel confident in their ability to live within their means – lower than the 74 per cent national average. I view Gen Z as something of a financial paradox. They are set to come into significant wealth but lack the means to live comfortably today. Their spending is selective and purposeful, but they are also more prone to 'doom spending' – buying on impulse to soothe socio-economic anxieties. Almost two thirds of Gen Z renters would find it impossible to buy a home without help but they are also prioritising spending on fitness, travel and beauty – because if their long-term financial goals feel unattainable, why not spend on the things that bring them joy? To better achieve their financial goals and to navigate the 'great wealth transfer', Gen Z need financial confidence. First and foremost, we must improve financial literacy. According to National Numeracy, 42 per cent of 18-24 year olds seeking to improve their maths and numeracy skills say it's to better manage their money. Banks like Barclays have a responsibility to help. I'm proud that our LifeSkills programme gives young people access to financial education resources which have been used in 94 per cent of UK secondary schools. However, this is a complex issue that plays out beyond financial services and demands collaboration between different industries across the private sector and government. We must also help Gen Z to access credible, trustworthy financial advice, particularly when it comes to growing their financial resilience and wealth. Our research shows that a quarter of Gen Z plan to invest more money in the next three years, and that 46 per cent of young people use Tik Tok for financial advice. I find this alarming, given that over half of retail investors don't carry out basic checks when using finfluencers' guidance, making them vulnerable to investment scams and poor advice. It would be helpful for social media platforms to introduce a verification system to help Gen Z identify credible influencers. There is also a clear need for education and support to help Gen Z understand how to manage, invest, protect and make the most of their money. Gen Z are already defining UK spending. In five years, they will account for up to 70 per cent of the workforce. In a decade, they will be considerably wealthier than they are today. This generation is due to reshape the financial system; by building their financial confidence, we can support them to make the most of their money and lay the foundations for a growing, prosperous economy.
