Latest news with #localEconomy
Telegraph
15 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Suspend Tory second homes tax raid, Grant Shapps urges Labour
A senior Conservative has urged Labour to suspend his party's second home council tax premium. Sir Grant Shapps has called for the double council tax to be paused in 'areas where markets are seizing up and tourism is taking a kicking'. The former housing minister has also piled pressure on Angela Rayner to conduct an impact assessment and stop making 'decisions in the dark'. He is the latest politician to back The Telegraph's campaign against the 100pc council tax surcharge on second homes, which came into effect in 230 town halls on April 1. Kevin Hollinrake, shadow housing minister, said: 'This tax should be used to keep council tax bills down, or to build affordable housing. Labour is doing neither of these. 'There has been a cavalier approach to implementing it, with Labour doing no research on its effect on the housing market and leaving local residents to pick up the tab. 'Labour is using this tax as a club to hammer middle England, and trying to pull the wool over the eyes of hard-working families while they're at it.' Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader, said: 'Owning property used to be a right and a freedom. Today it is an excuse for the Government to use extortion.' Mrs Rayner's department has previously refused to investigate the impact of the second home council tax raid on local economies, housing markets or tourism. Instead, the Government said it was up to individual councils to decide whether it was 'effective'. Despite this, The Telegraph revealed that eight in 10 local authorities with the second home premium failed to carry out impact assessments. Sir Grant, who served as housing minister between 2010 and 2012, said: 'Labour's cack-handed council tax whack on second homes is walloping ordinary families with four-figure bills while doing absolutely nothing to get roofs over people's heads. 'I spent my time as housing minister cutting red tape and backing aspiration, not penalising it. So here's my three-point common-sense fix: first, commission an independent impact assessment – no more decisions in the dark. 'Second, hit pause on that 100pc premium in areas where markets are seizing up and tourism's taking a kicking. Third, hand power back to councils to target genuinely empty or derelict properties instead of clobbering every granny annexe in sight. 'Do that, and we'll help communities thrive instead of driving them into the ground.' The second homes premium was introduced in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act by Michael Gove in 2023 to fix the housing crisis. But it has since been utilised by town halls as a way of boosting depleted coffers. Since its introduction in 2017, the property market has crashed in areas of Wales. Pembrokeshire suffered an 8.9pc decline in house prices after owners raced to sell up their properties and avoid the tax raid. Despite pushing prices down, the properties being sold remain out of the budget of locals, Carol Peett, a buying agent at West Wales Property Finders said. During his tenure as housing minister, Sir Grant overhauled social housing. He abolished the Tenant Services Authority, which was responsible for regulating social landlords. The powers were passed to the Homes and Communities Agency. In 2012, the Conservative government introduced the affordable rent regime, to give housing associations a way to increase their income and carry on building new homes during the era of austerity. He left the role when he was appointed chairman of the Conservative Party. A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesman said: 'We are determined to fix the housing crisis we have inherited through our Plan for Change, and we know that having too many second and empty homes in an area can drive up housing costs for local people and damage public services. 'That is why local authorities have powers introduced by the previous government to choose to add up to 100pc extra on the council tax bills of second homes and up to 300pc on empty homes.'
Entrepreneur
2 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Tulsa Sees Massive ROI on Remote Workers Grant Program
The city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been offering its Tulsa Remote program since 2018. The incentive program offers a $10,000 grant to remote workers to move to Tulsa for at least one year. So far, about 3,500 grants have been issued. Now, a new study found that the offering has been a financial success, giving more than $4 back to the city's residents for every $1 spent. In the report, "The Effects of Tulsa Remote on Inducing Moves to Tulsa: Estimates and Implications," Tim Bartik, a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute, found that the program was six times more efficient at creating jobs than a business tax incentive of the same cost. Tulsa Remote also led to an improved quality of life for residents who were not a part of the program. Related: Working Past Retirement Age? Here Are the 10 Best States for Employed Seniors, According to a New Report. "Ultimately, if a local community is considering a remote worker attraction program, voters will want to know what such a program might mean for their standard of living," Bartik said in a statement. "Are the original local residents better off?" Bartik found that the program increased property values and led to more spending at local retailers, which in turn created local jobs. The new residents also helped to increase the local tax base by more than they use in services, allowing local governments to cut taxes or expand services, Bartik said. The report also notes that more than 100 communities are offering incentives to move there. Business Insider highlights 21 of them here, with programs offering everything from cash to free land. According to Tusla Remote's 2024 Sustainable Growth & Economic Impact report, people who have moved to Tusla for the grant, called "Remoters," have collectively generated $622 million in direct employment income. Meanwhile, 70% are still there after completing the program. Two of those "Remoters," Faith Langevin and Matt Costanza, tell that they left Atlanta, Georgia, for the program in Tulsa and are still there three years later. "We found our community," Langevin told "I think we became better people." Related: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Says Only One Group Is Complaining About Returning to the Office
Forbes
27-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
A Scorecard To Help Local Leaders Attract Small-Scale Manufacturers
Back in 2014, Ilana Preuss founded Recast City with the aim of helping cities and towns revive their ailing downtowns with small-scale manufacturers, from artisans to commercial shared kitchens, working out of vacant storefronts. Ilana Preuss Now, to reach even more communities, Preuss recently introduced SPARK Scorecard, an online tool local leaders can use to assess their economic and entrepreneurial environment, gauge strengths and weaknesses and get advice on next steps. 'By investing in these local businesses, they can become the epicenter of local economic growth,' says Preuss, who also is the author of Recast Your City: How to Save Your Downtown with Small-Scale Manufacturing (Island Press June 2021). She works with municipalities, chambers of congress, and downtown development authorities, among others, that want to boost their local economies. Perhaps they have a lot of vacant storefronts that could be used to house small manufacturers. Or they want to create more jobs or diversify their local economies. 'They understand they need to build up the pipeline of small businesses in their communities,' says Preuss. To help them, Preuss created a method with which communities can analyze and understand what's going on in their economies and build up not just small-scale manufacturing, but also the entire local ecosystem. 'Most programs dive in on the entrepreneur,' says Preuss. 'We're saying, what about fixing the foundation and not just the kitchen sink.' Preuss's online tool draws on lessons she's learned since starting her business and her previous work in economic development. Early last year, she and her colleagues created a document with those lessons and quickly realized it could be turned into an interactive tool. They released it in March. It uses a scorecard, which evaluates 30 indicators across 10 elements, to help downtown development authorities and other local economic leaders figure out where to start in their community. Factors range from whether there's space for businesses to expand to the possibility of providing micro loans and other funding assistance. 'We get into the details of what a small-scale manufacturing ecosystem needs to support small product businesses in the community,' says Preuss. 'Most communities are at the early stages of figuring out how to build an ecosystem.' Recommendations local leaders have learned through the process range from partnering with neighborhood organizations to find home-based businesses to determining how to change permitting and zoning to make sure companies can move into storefronts without facing too many hurdles. Recast City works with community leaders in one-on -one four-month intensive sessions to create development plans. It also hosts cohort programs for five or six communities to teach participants the method for developing strategies and engaging with business owners on their own. 'We mentor them to develop action plans and support them in the implementation, connecting them with experts who've done projects like this,' says Preuss. Local leaders from La Grande, Ore., who took part in a program last year, were looking to redevelop a street downtown. They identified food products and other small businesses in the community that could move into the area. They also worked with property owners to understand the barriers they were facing, according to Preuss. So far, they've been able to bring in a commercial shared kitchen and help some businesses move downtown. For example, Kimberly Voelz is converting a historic building once housing a car dealership and machine shop, which she bought in 2023, into a winery and tasting room. She plans to open to the public next month. 'The city of La Grande and the Economic Development Department have been instrumental in moving my project along' she says. Leaders from Elgin, Ill., were able to change their zoning to allow artisan businesses to operate. They also launched a training program to help property owners and businesses understand the opportunity. And they're developing a retail product incubator downtown as part of a mixed use residential building development, according to Preuss.
The Herald
21-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald
Diversification the way to go in a changing world
Change is inevitable — what matters is how we anticipate and respond to it. By planning for change, we can find opportunities for growth and evolution and build adaptability and resilience. It is common cause that the world is facing increasingly rapid change across a wide and complex span of issues. Most recently, global tariff wars and upheavals in economic and geopolitical relationships have been layered onto the impacts of climate change and technology advancement and automation on economies and societies. This all ripples into our local manufacturing- and exports-driven economy and its employment capacity, in turn affecting the tourism, hospitality, retail and services sectors. We have also long known that our local economy is over-reliant on the automotive industry, now facing unprecedented challenges due to the shift to new energy vehicles in key export markets and the impact of cheaper imports into the local market. Diversifying the local economy in the face of change is increasingly urgent, not only for retention of existing investments and employment, but also to attract new investments in future-orientated sectors which build on our existing strengths in manufacturing, technology and agro-processing, and create new jobs along a localised value chain. The NMB Business Chamber set up the Local Economy Reinvention Think Tank about two years ago to respond to that challenge, to look forward into a changing world and identify opportunities to build a diversified, sustainable manufacturing and exports hub for the continent. We brought together some of the Bay's leading innovative thinkers, challenging them to think out of the box on what the economy of the future could look like and map the path to adapting our current strengths into new areas of economic activity. Shifting to a low-carbon economy is a priority, while it is also critical that identified projects must be scalable and self-sustaining, able to stand up as viable business cases. It is also crucial not only to create new jobs but to grow a pool of 'future fit' skills in the metro. Think Tank workstreams are investigating local economic opportunities linked to the planned Hive Hydrogen green ammonia plant at Coega; and fuel cell technology and manufacturing, alternative mobility solutions and new energy vehicle technology, adaptation of manufacturing activities to reduce carbon footprints (and local development of the technology to do so). Several of these prospects have now moved from the brainstorming stage into technical scoping and feasibility assessments captured into 'white papers' outlining the strategic, operational and financial model of a specific project and its forecast economic and social impacts. We have taken a value chain approach that aims not only to diversify local manufacturing, but to stimulate up- and downstream linkages that support local participation by both small and large businesses at various points in the supply chain. For example, our white paper on a proposed industrial hemp project — based on this crop's existing viability in the Eastern Cape, but hampered by quality and consistency of supply — starts with integrating small-scale farming and commercial agriculture enterprises into a value chain of agro-processing, manufacturing and end-user supply. The project scope encompasses training and ongoing mentoring to enable farmers to meet quality and volume requirements of the agro-processors they will supply. This 'link' in the value chain is intended to empower rural communities around the Bay and create jobs in those areas. It also links into local opportunities for SMMEs to manufacture products and supply services to support the agricultural element. A further link is into the logistics, storage and transport of the raw product, then into a local agri-processing plant, and onward into supplying national and global hemp value chains to meet the demand for renewable and low-carbon materials in diverse sectors. The automotive manufacturing sector is a key target, for sound-deadening and insulation components from renewable sources. Further hemp value chains include manufacturing of biofuels, biodegradable plastics and textiles, hemp seed oils, biomass for energy generation, carbon credit trading and battery chemicals and components. Each of these holds potential for a local business or incoming investor to capitalise on the opportunity and enter the value chain at a point aligned to their existing business or to diversify their operations. Pre-feasibility assessments are also under way on local manufacturing and installation of solar geysers and small-scale hydrogen generation and storage for cleaner, greener residential energy, as well as a project for carbon dioxide capture and electrochemical conversion, to 'green' the industrial energy supply. The Think Tank will release these white papers into the public domain, detailing the feasibility and the logistics of implementing these concepts, for consideration by entrepreneurs, investors, green venture capitalists and government. The benefit is that we have done the groundwork, and we may have insights and information which others don't have, but we are not saying we are 100% correct. We want to stimulate thinking, provide a spark for bigger ideas and collaborations to evolve; for interested parties to take them up, run with them, expand on them and turn them into profitable enterprises. Watch this space. Kelvin Naidoo is m anufacturing and technical director of Auto-X and a cting president of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber. The Herald
CTV News
16-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Slow start to tourism season on Halifax waterfront
Despite the upcoming long weekend, some businesses on the Halifax waterfront are seeing a slow start to the tourism season.
