Today the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak announced his Autumn Budget. A summary of key points of relevance to our clients is below:
Taxes
- An additional year of business rates relief for firms in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. They will be able to claim a 50pc discount on their bills up to £100,000.
- More frequent assessments of business rates every three years
- Relief on investments in green technologies.
Investment and skills
- £1.4bn set aside for a Global Britain Investment Fund to help attract foreign investment.
- R&D tax credits have been expanded to help encourage investment in cloud computing and data costs. The Chancellor said he will aim to ensure that investment from the tax break is spent in the UK rather than overseas.
- “Core science funding” will increase to £5.9bn a year by 2024-25.
- Pay- The National Living Wage will increase to £9.50 an hour, up from its current level of £8.91. This is a rise of £1,000 a year for a full-time employee.
Crime
- Ambition to recruit 20,000 new police officers
- Additional £2.2bn will be directed towards courts, prisons and probation services, including £500m to reduce the backlog in courts
- Programmes to tackle neighbourhood crime, reoffending, county lines crimes, violence against women and girls, victims' services, and better response to rape allegations.
Property and land
- £11.5bn allocated to build up to 180,000 affordable homes
- £1.8bn to bring 1,500 hectares of brownfield land into use
- £5bn will be directed towards removing unsafe cladding on high-rise flats, partly funded by a Residential Property Developers Tax – a 4 per cent tax on developers' profits over £25m.
Family
- £300m for parenting programmes for families
- £200m for Supporting Families programme
For any further information please contact our team on enquiries@bpcollins.co.uk or call 01753889995.
