Scotland's Chief Statistician today released the latest Council Tax Collection Statistics which provides Council Tax collection figures for Scottish local authorities, up to and including the financial year 2023-24. In 2023-24 for Scotland as a whole, the total amount of Council Tax billed (after Council Tax Reduction) was £3.015 billion.
Just as the world is coming out of the tea crisis, another breakfast staple, orange juice, is in the spotlight. Supply constraints have led to prices shooting up by more than 20% in a year.
Tax changes pledged in the Conservative Party manifesto today (Tuesday) would mean a typical employee seeing their personal tax bill fall by £170 in 2028-29. But these pledges rely on making £12 billion of welfare cuts that recent history suggests will not be achievable over the next Parliament.
The latest GDP data serves a reminder to whoever wins the next election that their central goal must be to end Britain's economic stagnation, the Resolution Foundation said today (Wednesday). The economy did not grow in April, halting the momentum of 0.6 per cent growth in Q1 2024.
With a plethora of elections around the world in 2024, voters considering their options can expect to be presented with all kinds of numbers and statistics aimed at giving credibility to various claims from various parties. But data, graphs, percentages and surveys can be misleading or manipulated.
We all know what the ‘bads' in our economy are - tobacco, alcohol, sugar, carbon, plastics, and more. Some of them we tax heavily because we know they are ‘bad’.
Welfare spending is set to increase by over £20 billion a year by the end of the next parliament, driven almost entirely by rising spending on pensioners and those with a health condition. But reductions in support for renters will increase the risk of homelessness, while limits and caps on support is set to push the majority of large families into poverty, according to major new research published today (Thursday 13 June 2024) by the Resolution Foundation.
Members of the Council's Economy and Infrastructure Committee have endorsed the Final Business Case (FBC) for the Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport, signifying another major step forward in the development of Highland as a global centre for Green Energy and inward investment. Chair of the Economy and Infrastructure Committee, Cllr Ken Gowans welcomed the report.
There were 320 suspected drug deaths between January and March 2024. This was 8% (23) higher than the previous quarter and 7% (22) higher than during the same period of 2023.
For the first time since the beginning of the election campaign there has been a clear shift in the poll averages shown on the BBC poll tracker writes BBC senior political analyst Peter Barnes. On 3 June Nigel Farage took over as leader of Reform UK and announced he would be standing as a candidate in the election.
Poll cards for people across the two Highland UK Parliamentary Constituencies have started to be issued. As a result of the recent boundary changes, parts of The Highland Council local government area now fall into the new constituencies.
Average two-year fixed mortgage rates fluctuated by less than 1% (between 1.99% and 2.97%) across seven years between April 2015 and April 2022, with five-year fixed deals remaining similarly steady during that time period. The average two-year fixed mortgage rate was less than 2% (1.99%) in July 2020, but had more than tripled to 6.85% just over three years later in the aftermath of base rate rises and the 2022 mini-Budget announcement.
The following information is for the period from February to April 2024. Annual growth in regular earnings (excluding bonuses) was 6.0%, the same as for the previous three-month period; and annual growth in employees' average total earnings (including bonuses) was 5.9%, the same as for the previous three-month period.
The UK labour market continues to cool, with the employment rate only just above its mid-pandemic low point, suggesting that kickstarting jobs growth will be a major task for the next government, the Resolution Foundation said in response to the latest ONS labour market statistics. The latest data showed widespread signs of cooling, although data uncertainty make some indicators noisier than usual.
The estimated number of vacancies in March to May 2024 was 904,000, a decrease of 12,000 or 1.3% from December 2023 to February 2024. Vacancy numbers decreased on the quarter for the 23rd consecutive period in March to May 2024, with vacancies decreasing in 9 of the 18 industry sectors.
This month's figures continue to show signs that the labour market may be cooling, with the number of vacancies still falling and unemployment rising, though earnings growth remains relatively strong. Short-term movements varied across our different measures of employment.
Statement from the G7+ Energy Coordination Group and the Government of Ukraine at the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 in Berlin. Ukraine has survived an onslaught of Russian drones, missiles and shelling targeting its Integrated Energy System, thanks to the brave efforts of the Government of Ukraine, Ministry of Energy, energy companies and the Ukrainian people, and with support from the international community.
Monthly production output was estimated to have fallen by 0.9% in April 2024; this follows a rise of 0.2% in March 2024 and 1.0% in February 2024. The monthly decrease in output for April 2024 resulted from a fall of 1.4% in "manufacturing"; this was partially offset by rises in "water supply and sewerage" (1.3%), "mining and quarrying" (0.8%) and "electricity and gas" (0.5%).
The value of goods imports increased by £3.7 billion (8.2%) in April 2024, because of increases in imports of machinery and transport equipment and fuels. The value of goods exports remained stable in April 2024, with a fall in exports to the EU offset by a rise in exports to non-EU countries.
Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates have been reweighted for periods from July to September 2022; headline UK seasonally adjusted series before this have been modelled, but other series, including regional, have a discontinuity at this point, and because of increased volatility of LFS estimates, estimates of quarterly change should be treated with additional caution. In February to April 2024, the highest employment rate in the UK was in the South East (78.3%) and the lowest was in Wales (68.9%).
