Governments First Budget

It would be good if the government were to offer grants for builders to construct new homes exclusively as starter homes.

Ability to build new homes at an affordable rate must vary by Local Authority area Doodledog. Councils generally own land which is redundant which they can build on still, and per council area there are not large numbers of council homes sold annually. Where I live the strategy has been to build more small units of accommodation, and some larger homes that were formerly privately owned that come up for sale have been bought back by the council at full market rate. People do get very attached to their houses, and I think wherever possible they should be enabled to buy them, just my personal view.

Casdon

Rosie51

Casdon

Angela Rayner bought her council house before the heavily discounted rate was introduced. People will still be able to buy their council houses under similar terms to hers.

I don't dispute that Casdon, but Greyisnotmycolour, has called TakeThat7 incredibly selfish for wanting to buy her council house. Discounts aside, the taking a council house out of public ownership is exactly the same.

I don’t have a problem with council houses being sold to tenants, if they want to stay in a house that is already their home, fine. However, the house should be sold to them at a price that enables the council to reinvest to build another house for another tenant at an affordable rent.

Can that happen though? There can't be both a discount and enough money to build an equivalent new house.

Also, the numbers of council houses should be growing, not just replaced like for like. If people want to buy they should buy on the open market. Council tenants are paying lower rent than those forced into the private sector, who have less and less chance of being offered a council house with a decent rent if the houses are constantly being sold. They are doomed to pay others' mortgages with rents that are often so high that they can't save deposits to buy houses of their own.

I think that people buying them are selfish, but I can't blame them for that. It is free money, and realistically, someone turning down the opportunity might spend the rest of their lives paying rent. If they did buy privately, they would be putting a hypothetical family before their own, which is a big ask. I don't think many people are highly principled enough to do that.

For that reason, I think that the RTB should be stopped altogether.

Jeremy Clarkson
@JeremyClarkson
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Farmers. I know that you have been shafted today. But please don’t despair. Just look after yourselves for five short years and this shower will be gone.

It has always been possible to buy your council house Primrose53, Angela Rayner bought hers in 2007. In 2012 David Cameron introduced a new scheme which offered much more advantageous terms to tenants to incentivise them to buy.
www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/cameron-launches-reinvigorated-right-to-buy-31168

Not terribly far from where I live, there is what I can only describe as a model council house estate. They are solid, well built and planned semis surrounded by grass, trees and a park. A very pleasant area indeed. They were all sold off at a discounted rate, which was something that should never have happened. All the houses which must amount to over 100 have now been taken out of the social housing stock, and never replaced.

So bad.

NotSpaghetti

Allira

My post was to Wyllow but others appeared in between.

I dont recall a new tax on farms being mentioned in the budget at all?

This could push up food prices.
As I said previously, most governments have little or no understanding of farming.

OR it could mean passing the farms on to family at an earlier age?

And being able to guarantee you'll survive another 7 years? No death in an accident for example? A farm worth one million pounds or less wouldn't be a farm, it would be a smallholding. It is a worry that farms will have to be sold ending generations farming the same land. Starmer seemed to understand that in this video, but that was before he came to be PM.

There are some good changes in this budget, but this change isn't one of them.

x.com/NFUtweets

Casdon

Angela Rayner bought her council house before the heavily discounted rate was introduced. People will still be able to buy their council houses under similar terms to hers.

No she didn’t she’s not that old! My parents bought their council house in 1986 at the maximum discount having paid full rent for 35 years. My Dad always said they had paid for that house twice over.

Rosie51

Casdon

Angela Rayner bought her council house before the heavily discounted rate was introduced. People will still be able to buy their council houses under similar terms to hers.

I don't dispute that Casdon, but Greyisnotmycolour, has called TakeThat7 incredibly selfish for wanting to buy her council house. Discounts aside, the taking a council house out of public ownership is exactly the same.

I don’t have a problem with council houses being sold to tenants, if they want to stay in a house that is already their home, fine. However, the house should be sold to them at a price that enables the council to reinvest to build another house for another tenant at an affordable rent.

Thanks.

Whitewavemark2

Imo council housing should remain exactly that. I also think that the rent charged should reflect people’s ability to pay. It may do so I don’t actually know how the poorest are assisted?

I agree that social housing should stay as such, but not that people should be dragged down by means-tested rents. People need incentives to make their lives better, and increasing rent in line with earnings would discourage that, as does means-testing benefits of all kinds so that qualifying for them is contingent on not earning over a threshold by restricting hours or not saving more than a fixed amount. People on low incomes should be able to save and to work overtime without penalty.

Everyone who wants it should be eligible for social housing, and that would be possible if nobody could buy it, and the houses stayed in council ownership.

Whitewavemark2

Imo council housing should remain exactly that. I also think that the rent charged should reflect people’s ability to pay. It may do so I don’t actually know how the poorest are assisted?

It depends on their income and rent. Many receive support through Universal Credit and Housing Benefit, if they're pensioners.

Allira

My post was to Wyllow but others appeared in between.

I dont recall a new tax on farms being mentioned in the budget at all?

This could push up food prices.
As I said previously, most governments have little or no understanding of farming.

OR it could mean passing the farms on to family at an earlier age?

Rosie51 - yes of course I would apply the same to Angela Raynor, why wouldn't I?

Imo council housing should remain exactly that. I also think that the rent charged should reflect people’s ability to pay. It may do so I don’t actually know how the poorest are assisted?

Casdon

Angela Rayner bought her council house before the heavily discounted rate was introduced. People will still be able to buy their council houses under similar terms to hers.

I don't dispute that Casdon, but Greyisnotmycolour, has called TakeThat7 incredibly selfish for wanting to buy her council house. Discounts aside, the taking a council house out of public ownership is exactly the same.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Good to hear that from you Shinamae I’m glad to hear you’re happy with the Budget. Genuinely. You work hard and deserve some rewards.

Very kind, thank you so much 🦋

Angela Rayner bought her council house before the heavily discounted rate was introduced. People will still be able to buy their council houses under similar terms to hers.

Key points in Budget

National insurance
Employees will not pay more directly, Reeves says, but she will raise employers’ national insurance contributions by 1.2 percentage points to 15% from April 2025.
The government will also reduce a secondary threshold when contributions are due from £9,100 to £5,000.
Those measures will raise £25bn a year by the end of the forecast period, the biggest single tax raising measure in the budget.

Income tax
Reeves says the government will increase personal tax thresholds on income tax and national insurance in line with inflation from 2028-29, something that had been floated as a possibility. This avoids dragging people into higher tax bands.

Capital gains and inheritance tax
Capital gains tax will be increased. The lower rate will be raised from 10% to 18%, and the higher rate from 20% to 24%. There will, however, be no increase on the 18% and 24% capital gains rate imposed on the sale second homes.
The government will extend a freeze on the threshold for inheritance tax to 2030, allowing £325,000 to be inherited tax free. From 2027 inherited pension pots will also be subject to the tax.
Reliefs will be reformed for business and agricultural assets. After £1m, those assets will attract inheritance tax of 20%.

The minimum wage
Reeves confirms that the “national living wage”, the legal minimum for over-21s, will increase by 6.7% to £12.21, equivalent to £1,400 a year for an eligible full-time worker.
There will be a single-adult rate phased in over time to eventually equalise pay for under-21s.

Tobacco and alcohol
The government will implement a levy on vapes, which will be increased in line with tobacco.
Tobacco taxes will rise by 2% above retail prices index (RPI) measure of inflation for the rest of this parliament, and tax on hand-rolling tobacco will increase by 10%.
Taxes on alcohol will rise in line with the RPI, but Reeves announces a cut in draught duty by 1.7%, which she says is a penny off a pint in the pub.

Fuel duty
Reeves says increasing fuel duty next year would be wrong, so she extends the freeze for a year and maintains the last government’s 5p cut.
Fuel duty was frozen between 2011 and 2022, and cut by 5p in March 2022 after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Private school fees
VAT will be brought in on private school fees from January 2025.

Schools and education
Reeves says the Department for Education will receive £6.7bn of capital investment, a 19% real-terms increase. That includes £1.4bn to rebuild more than 500 schools in the greatest need.
The schools budget will increase by £2.3bn to support the hiring of teachers.
There will be £2.1bn for school maintenance, a £300m increase.
Reeves announces a £1bn increase in funding for special educational needs.
There will be another £300m for higher education.

NHS
Reeves promises a 10-year plan for the NHS in the spring, targeting 2% productivity growth next year.
She announces a £22.6bn increase in the day-to-day health budget, and £3.1bn increase in the capital budget. That includes £1bn for repairs and upgrades, and £1.5bn for new beds in hospitals and testing capacity.

Housing
The government will spend £5bn on housing investment in 2025-26, including increasing the supply of affordable housing.
The government will reduce right-to-buy discounts, and local governments will retain the earnings from council housing sales to allow them to reinvest.
The government will hire “hundreds of new planning officers” to accelerate housebuilding.

Transport
Reeves commits to the Transpennine Route Upgrade, improving capacity at Manchester Victoria and electrifying the Wigan to Bolton route. She also promises to support east-west rail links between Oxford and Cambridge.
Reeves confirms the government will fund tunnelling of HS2 to London Euston.
There will be a £500m increase in the roads budget next year to target potholes.

Energy
Reeves announces £3.4bn for the warm homes plan to upgrade buildings, lowering energy bills.
The government will fund Great British Energy, a new body to be based in Aberdeen.
Public spending
There will be a 1.5% increase in real spending on government departments, and 1.7% when including capital spending.
Defence
Reeves announces a £2.9bn increase in military spending next year, as well as funding for second world war commemorations next year.
Local government
There will be £1.3bn for additional grant funding for local government, including £600m for social care.
Greater Manchester and the West Midlands will get integrated settlements next year, allowing them to take more control of their spending.

Public investment
Reeves says more public investment is needed in the UK. A new rule will target debt falling as a share of the economy. She confirms that debt will be measured as public sector net financial liabilities, recognising benefits from investments.
The rule will apply in 2029-30, and then net financial debt will fall by the third year of every forecast.
There will be regular reports on government investments from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
She says the government will invest £1bn in aerospace, £2bn in automotive to support electric vehicles, and £500m for life sciences.
Government research and development spending will reach £20.4bn in 2025-26, including £6.1bn in sectors such as engineering, biotechnology and medical science.

Planes and private jets
Air passenger duty will increase by up to £2 for each economy short-haul flight, Reeves says.
Private jets will attract an extra 50% air passenger duty, up to £450 per passenger for a flight.

Business taxes and non-doms
The government will introduce permanently lower business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses from 2026-27. Until then they will receive 40% relief on business rates up to a cap of £110,000.
Employment allowance will be increased from £5,000 to £10,500, reducing national insurance for smaller businesses.
Taxes on carried interest, generally paid by private equity managers, will rise from 28% to 32% from April.
Reeves confirms the oil profits levy will be increased to 38% and extended.
The concept of non-domicile residents will be abolished from April.
Compensation schemes
Reeves says the government will compensate victims of the infected blood scandal with £11.8bn, and there will be another £1.8bn for victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal.

Other measures
Reeves says the government will raise £6.5bn through targeting tax avoidance, including by umbrella companies.
OBR
Reeves says Labour inherited a £22bn “black hole” with allegedly unfunded pledges by the Conservative government.
The OBR, the government’s budget watchdog, has published a review saying that the previous government did not disclose details of spending. Those details would have made forecasts materially different, Reeves says.
Reeves says the government will implement 10 recommendations from the OBR’s review.

nflation and growth forecasts
The chancellor will maintain the Bank of England’s 2% target for inflation.
Inflation will average 2.5% in 2024, rising to 2.6% in 2025, before gradually dropping to 2% in 2029, according to OBR forecasts. Inflation was at 1.7% in September, below the Bank of England’s 2% target, and down from 11% in October 2022.
The OBR slightly upgrades its growth forecast for this year and next, but adjusts them down in later years. GDP growth is forecast to be 1.1% in 2024, then 2%, 1.8%, 1.5%, 1.5%, and 1.6% in 2030, Reeves says. At the spring budget under the then Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt the OBR had forecast 0.8% growth this year, 1.9% in 2025, and 2% in 2026.

Government borrowing
Reeves announces new rules to not borrow for day-to-day spending. The current budget will be balanced within three years of forecasts.
The government will run a deficit of £26.2bn in 2026, but will achieve a surplus of £10.9bn in 2027-28, £9.3bn in 2028-29 and £9.9bn in 2029-30.
Public sector net debt will fall from £127bn in 2024-25, falling gradually to £70.6bn by 2029-20.”

This was a massive amount to take in, and I think that it will take a few days for the full details and implications to emerge.

Greyisnotmycolour

TakeThat7

I'm very pleased about the change to right to buy. You now have a permanent roof over your head, why would you want to deprived others of that benefit? There is nothing to stop you from buying any other property on the open market. If you are paying a substantially reduced rent, compared to the private rental market, it will allow you to save. Buying social housing property is an incredibly selfish thing to do. Since Thatcher introduced that policy, houses lost to buyers have not been replaced resulting in the current housing crisis.

While you're berating TakeThat7 any comment on those like Angela Rayner who bought a council house in the past? Would you tell her she is an incredibly selfish person?

That’s a 3.4 billion “grant” when they have dropped our budget by 6BILLION …of our own money The Barnett formula is not a GRANT it’s a small portion of the money we hand over to WM every year .It has always been this way.WM coins it in from Scotland ..hundreds of billions from OIL in the past 40 years now they,ve got their thriving mitts on our energy ,over one billion pounds worth A DAY to be transferred to England by 2030 !!Yet we pay more here for the energy we supply .
Please check FACTS fried green tomatoes media propaganda isn,t true .THE Scottish NHS is the best performing of the 4 nations our alcohol deaths while unacceptably high at 610 per 100000 is lower than Englands at 660 per 100,000 and as for other issues with WM banning us from making changes to drug law or even something simple like glass recycling …we can’t get our system up and running because WM haven,t got theirs in place.
We,re not second class citizens we,re a colony …in all but name!!

What the budget means for personal finances.

1. State pensions will go up by 4.1%
The chancellor confirmed that the triple lock on pensions will mean a 4.1% increase from April next year – increasing the full new state pension from £221.20 to £230.25 a week, or by £470.60 a year.

The standard minimum guarantee for single pensioners will go up from £218.15 a week in 2024-25 to £227.10. That means that those earning less than £11,809 a year will be eligible for pension credit. This is all the more important now universal winter fuel allowance has been scrapped and will only be paid to those on pension credit.

2. Other benefits will rise, too
Some of the other state benefits are linked to inflation – and the recent drop in the headline figure for the cost of living mean in April they will increase by just 1.7%.

Universal credit is the biggest. The standard allowance for a single person aged 25 or over is currently £393.45 a month – it will rise by £6.69. For a couple aged over 25 it will go up by £10.50 from £617.60.

Other inflation-linked benefits, such as child benefit, will go up by the same amount. For child benefit, that should take the rate for the first child up from £25.60 to £26 a week, and the rate for additional children from £16.95 to about £17.20 each. However, the government said it had scrapped plans to base the clawback of child benefit on household, rather than individual, incomes.

Carer’s allowance, which the Guardian has campaigned for an overhaul, will go up by £1.39 a week from £81.90. At the same time the earnings limit – the amount that carers can earn up to and still claim the benefit – will go up by £45.

3. Fiscal drag will end on incomes, but not inheritances
Thresholds for income tax were frozen in April 2021, and the previous government said they would stay the same until April 2028. There had been speculation that Reeves would extend that for two years, but she announced she had decided against it. From April 2028 the thresholds will rise in line with inflation.

Freezing tax thresholds leads to fiscal drag. If you get a pay rise, for example, more of your extra earnings fall into a higher tax band than would have been the case had the thresholds risen in line with inflation. You still have more money in your pocket, but not as much as you might have expected. Unfreezing the thresholds will mean you keep more of any rise.

The main inheritance tax (IHT) threshold has been frozen at £325,000 since April 2009, although an additional residence nil rate band was added in 2017. Reeves announced she would continue a freeze on the thresholds from 2028 already announced by the previous government to 2030. Rising house prices mean more estates are likely to face IHT as a result of this, although just 6% paid it this year, so it will remain a minority concern.

4. Pensions will attract inheritance tax
Several types of asset are free from IHT meaning they can be left without the beneficiaries paying a penny. The chancellor closed some of the loopholes – typically only used by wealthy.

Currently you can leave your unspent pension fund to anyone without them paying IHT. From April 2027 this will change. You will still be able to leave the money to a spouse or civil partner without them paying the tax – there’s no limit on how much you can leave them – but if you leave it to someone else, they may need to pay. IHT is 40% on anything over the £325,000 threshold.

Agricultural land and business property can also currently be left without an IHT bill. That will start to change in April 2026, although there will be an allowance to pass on up to £1m worth of these assets tax-free.

5. Stamp duty on second homes will rise
People who want to buy a second home will be hit with additional stamp duty charges in a move the government claims will benefit first-time buyers.

From 31 October the higher rates for additional dwellings (HRAD) surcharge will go up from 3% to 5% – it is paid by anyone who already owns a home and is charged on top of the main stamp duty rate. On a property costing £300,000, it means an extra £6,000 in tax.
It could result in a reduction in demand from second-home buyers and investors – Reeves said that over five years it would result in another 130,000 property transactions for first-time buyers and people buying a primary home.

6. Capital gains tax on shares will rise
The tax charged on gains from shares has gone up, with immediate effect. For investors whose income is taxed at 40%, the capital gains tax (CGT) they may pay on shares has increased from 20% to 24%. For basic-rate (20%) taxpayers, the rate has gone up from 10% to 18%.

This brings it in line with the rate that would be charged on profits from an investment property.

However, you can still make a gain of £3,000 a year before paying the tax, and the Isa investment limit has been left at £20,000 a year until 2030, so many small investors will not pay CGT.

7. The minimum wage is rising
Low earners are to get a pay rise in April as the “national minimum wage” is increased by 6.7%. After the rise employers will need to pay workers aged 21 and over at least £12.21 an hour. This will move the minimum annual salary for working a 35-hour week from £20,820.80 to £22,222.20 – an increase of just over £1,400.

Workers aged 18 to 20 will see their wages go from £8.60 to £10 an hour, giving them an extra £2,500 if they work full-time. Apprentices and under-18s will get a £1.15 an hour increase, taking them to £7.55.

The minimum hourly wage for an apprentice is also increased next year, with an 18-year-old apprentice in an industry such as construction seeing their minimum hourly pay increase by 18.0%, a pay bump from £6.40 to £7.55 an hour. 

These figures are all before tax, and the freezing of personal allowances means that workers will pay more income tax than if their those allowances had moved up in line with inflation. They will, however, still be better off as a result.

As well as take-home pay, the rise in the minimum wage also has an impact on pension contributions, as they are linked to earnings. The pensions firm Aegon says a worker earning £12.21 an hour who is auto-enrolled into a workplace pension will benefit from a total annual pension contribution of £1,278 a year, made up of their own and their employer’s pension contributions – £112 more than this year.

8. Tax on petrol won’t go up
In a surprise move, Reeves announced that the freeze on fuel duty would remain – had it not, she said the cost of petrol would have gone up by 7p a litre. For a Ford Focus with a 55-litre tank, that means the cost of filling up is £3.85 less than had the change been made.

Alan Cochrane, the Scottish editor of the Daily Telegraph. Pearls of wisdom fall daily from his lips.

Cont.

clear from the words of both Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves that their patience with the poor performance of the SNP – at the expense of Scottish voters – is wearing thin.

The SNP will be hard-pressed to claim austerity in the wake of the Chancellor pointing out that the extra cash she plans to spend on public services in England and Wales will result in a £3.4 billion handout for Scotland under the Barnett formula, which allocates cash to the other parts of the UK.

In announcing this not inconsiderable sum, which she said was the largest ever in real terms dished out to Scotland, she added that it “must” be spent on improving public services like the NHS.

Primrose53

TakeThat7

I'm talking about them stopping right to buy

This government doesn’t want aspirational people. They don’t want people being able to buy their own homes or make a lot of money through sheer hard work.

They want to keep them under the thumb and dependent on them for miserly handouts. I believe they will only be happy when we are living in grey concrete boxes and marching about in Lenin caps and drab clothes.

If they don’t want people to be aspirational how come they’re putting so much money into the state schools that the Conservative government neglected for 14 years?