Professor Lord Darzi appointed to establish the state of the nation's health service. Report will provide ‘raw and honest assessment' of issues facing health service Work will be led by Rt Hon Professor Lord Darzi, OM, KBE, a lifelong surgeon and innovator, independent peer and former health minister Findings will feed into government's 10-year plan to radically reform the nation's health service Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, has ordered a full and independent investigation into the state of the NHS, to uncover the extent of the issues facing the nation's health service.
Elected leaders and representatives across democracies tend to be old, wealthy, male and belong to the ethnic majority of their respective countries. This lack of diversity is a problem: it suggests that those who govern are out of step with the broader society that they seek to represent.
The Security Industry Authority (SIA) has (11 July) published the findings from its public consultation on the future of its business approval scheme. The consultation ran from 22 February to 8 April 2024.
The Financial Ombudsman has reported that complaints about the banking sector are at their highest level in at least a decade. Concerns about current accounts, credit cards and fraud and scams have driven a significant increase in banking and payment complaints.
There are regular reports of delivery scams, with 55% of respondents to last year's Big Scottish Scam Survey having experienced a delivery scam in the past year. One scam text message (shown on the left) says that 'Steven' attempted to deliver to you at 14:23pm.
There have been several recent reports of phone scams where a cold caller says they work for the NHS or a local health team and offers to install a panic button in the resident's property. They ask for personal and card details, supposedly to cover a £1 'installation fee'.
The UK's current housing crisis manifests in several ways, with inadequate numbers of new homes (especially affordable ones), high house prices and rising rents. There are major affordability problems especially for young people, and growing inequalities with older and retired homeowners, as they amass substantial additional wealth through rising house prices.
Labour won the 2024 election by a landslide. But a significant story from the night's results was the low turnout across the nation - the lowest since 2001.
The number of reported investment scams relating to social media platforms has trebled since 2019, with total losses rising from £13m to £75 million. 66% of investment scam cases begin on social media, with Instagram and Facebook as the most common sources.
It sounds like a dream for many people currently working five days a week: how about just doing four days and having a long weekend? When the weekends feel too short and the pressure of holding down a full-time job pushes workers to the limit, a four-day working week may appear very attractive. How does this happen in practice though, and can it become commonplace? Well, recent news about four-day working week trials show different outcomes.
The new government has made boosting economic growth its central goal. Chancellor Rachel Reeves wasted no time in announcing changes to the planning system designed to encourage more housebuilding and infrastructure investment.
HMRC is warning customers to be wary of scam emails, texts and phone calls in the run up to the Self Assessment deadline on 31 July. HMRC received over 202,000 reports of suspicious messages about tax last year, of which over 74,000 were offering bogus tax rebates.
Junior AI Developer (Multimodal AI) About the company: Norscot is a thriving company that has been innovating in offsite construction since 1984, specialising in both timber frame kit home and fenestration systems. We are aiming to develop a smart inventory management system based on Multimodal AI applications.
Saving money regularly can help improve sleep, a new report suggests. Putting a monthly amount aside, however small the sum, also helped people to relax and be more optimistic about the future, the study by academics at Bristol University found.
Monthly construction output is estimated to have grown by 1.9% in volume terms in May 2024; this follows a fall of 1.1% in April 2024 (revised from a fall of 1.4%). The increase in monthly output came from increases in both new work (2.7%), and repair and maintenance (0.8%); anecdotal evidence from survey returns noted that warmer weather contributed to increased output in May, with the Met Office confirming in their Monthly climate summary (PDF, 4.6MB) that May 2024 was the warmest on record.
A record number of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) projects were secured in 2023 in Scotland. According to EY's annual independent analysis of inward investment, 142 FDI projects were secured last year, an increase of 12.7% on 2022 and double the rate of growth experienced across the UK.
Monthly real gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have grown by 0.4% in May 2024 after showing no growth in April 2024 (unrevised from our last publication). Real gross domestic product is estimated to have grown by 0.9% in the three months to May 2024 compared with the three months to February 2024, driven by a growth of 1.1% in services output.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has launched a digital tool to help businesses estimate what registering for VAT may mean for them. The VAT Registration Estimator has been developed after feedback from small businesses suggested an online tool would be helpful to show when their turnover could require businesses to register for VAT and its effect on profits.
A package of measures to help ensure refugees and people seeking asylum are supported to make their new communities their home has been unveiled. The New Scots Refugee Integration Strategy: Delivery Plan 2024-2026 - developed by the Scottish Government, Scottish Refugee Council and COSLA - includes commitments to work with employers to help them recruit refugees, to identify ways to improve English language provision and to ensure services are co-ordinated effectively.
We estimate that monthly services output increased by 0.3% in May 2024, following an increase of 0.3% in April 2024 (upwardly revised 0.1 percentage points). The Index of Services (IoS) saw monthly increases in 8 of the 14 sectors in May 2024 with the largest contribution to monthly growth coming from "wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles" (1.8%); the next largest increases were "professional, scientific and technical activities" (1.0%); and "accommodation and food services activities" (2.4%).